This is, as the title of the book it comes from suggests, an “essay on the essay.” Sanders starts out by describing a scene of a man standing on a soapbox speaking to the people as they walked by on the busy streets of some unnamed city. The essayist, Sanders argues, is much like a soapbox orator because of the fact that “the essayist has nowhere to hide,” when he/she writes. Unlike writers of fiction or playwrights who can hide behind a narrative or script, the essayist’s thoughts and soul are out in the open for the reader to accept (or reject). Sanders says, “the essay is the closest thing we have, on paper, to a record of the individual mind at work and at play. Sanders is another great tool to have in my belt as I set out to define the essay form for myself. His frank manner of describing an essay will be helpful as I study other essayists—I can see which essayists dwell within the classical form which Sanders describes, and where essayists might deviate from a classical form. One moment of Sanders’ essay that I particularly enjoyed and that will be particularly helpful to me is when he talks about the tangential aspect of essays—“chasing rabbits,” he calls it. Chasing rabbits is going off on tangents as one would never do in a formal or academic paper; it is the delightful meandering that is characteristic of an essay. It is one that is difficult to imitate, thought, because as Sanders admits, you can’t deviate too much but if you deviate too little, your reader will be bored. So this will be something to practice in my own writing. As far as my project differing from this, my project will be an adopting of these forms in my own writing, so it will be different because I will be working on application instead of just defining.
Friday, January 27, 2012
annotated source 01/23
Sanders, Scott Russell. "The Singular First Person." Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre. Ed. Alexander J. Butrym. Athens: U of Georgia, 1989. Print.
This is, as the title of the book it comes from suggests, an “essay on the essay.” Sanders starts out by describing a scene of a man standing on a soapbox speaking to the people as they walked by on the busy streets of some unnamed city. The essayist, Sanders argues, is much like a soapbox orator because of the fact that “the essayist has nowhere to hide,” when he/she writes. Unlike writers of fiction or playwrights who can hide behind a narrative or script, the essayist’s thoughts and soul are out in the open for the reader to accept (or reject). Sanders says, “the essay is the closest thing we have, on paper, to a record of the individual mind at work and at play. Sanders is another great tool to have in my belt as I set out to define the essay form for myself. His frank manner of describing an essay will be helpful as I study other essayists—I can see which essayists dwell within the classical form which Sanders describes, and where essayists might deviate from a classical form. One moment of Sanders’ essay that I particularly enjoyed and that will be particularly helpful to me is when he talks about the tangential aspect of essays—“chasing rabbits,” he calls it. Chasing rabbits is going off on tangents as one would never do in a formal or academic paper; it is the delightful meandering that is characteristic of an essay. It is one that is difficult to imitate, thought, because as Sanders admits, you can’t deviate too much but if you deviate too little, your reader will be bored. So this will be something to practice in my own writing. As far as my project differing from this, my project will be an adopting of these forms in my own writing, so it will be different because I will be working on application instead of just defining.
This is, as the title of the book it comes from suggests, an “essay on the essay.” Sanders starts out by describing a scene of a man standing on a soapbox speaking to the people as they walked by on the busy streets of some unnamed city. The essayist, Sanders argues, is much like a soapbox orator because of the fact that “the essayist has nowhere to hide,” when he/she writes. Unlike writers of fiction or playwrights who can hide behind a narrative or script, the essayist’s thoughts and soul are out in the open for the reader to accept (or reject). Sanders says, “the essay is the closest thing we have, on paper, to a record of the individual mind at work and at play. Sanders is another great tool to have in my belt as I set out to define the essay form for myself. His frank manner of describing an essay will be helpful as I study other essayists—I can see which essayists dwell within the classical form which Sanders describes, and where essayists might deviate from a classical form. One moment of Sanders’ essay that I particularly enjoyed and that will be particularly helpful to me is when he talks about the tangential aspect of essays—“chasing rabbits,” he calls it. Chasing rabbits is going off on tangents as one would never do in a formal or academic paper; it is the delightful meandering that is characteristic of an essay. It is one that is difficult to imitate, thought, because as Sanders admits, you can’t deviate too much but if you deviate too little, your reader will be bored. So this will be something to practice in my own writing. As far as my project differing from this, my project will be an adopting of these forms in my own writing, so it will be different because I will be working on application instead of just defining.
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