Favorites
Posted by Andrew Brown
Grace-”Roots and Wings”
I’m three years old. One, two, three fingers old. I’m a big kid. I unbuckle my seat-strap. I jump out of my stroller. I love jumping. I love running. Sprinting full blast, I come to a complete halt. Something has caught my eye: flower-like puffs sprouting from the ground. I had never seen them before.
I love this passage from Grace’s piece “Roots and Wings”. I think she manages to actually put us in her shoes as a little kid. She doesn’t just describe the moment, she evokes it. Her description “One, two, three fingers old” makes me feel like a kid again, and I can just see Grace doing that. I’ve had that sentence stuck in my head pretty much the whole semester.
I also think this passage really serves as an anchor in “Roots and Wings”. Much of the essay is about the dandelion as a metaphor, which is a bit abstract, but this particular passage is very concrete. As the reader you’re not thinking about the abstract ideas of growing up, parenting, or becoming your own person. Instead, you are alive in this moment with Grace, watching and feeling as she discovers dandelions for the first time.
Margrette-”My Life in the Words I Remember and the Ones I Don’t”
And you have to work with what you have; you can’t force meaning into the words of your life, you can’t craft memories that aren’t there, you can’t fill in the gaps of your memory with what probably happened, what should have happened, what makes sense. Sometimes the things you don’t say, the things you forget, are forgotten to make the things you remember that much more important.
This passage really struck me when I first read it because, like all good writers, Margrette managed to express something that I felt, but couldn’t quite articulate. I have always loved to read, but I have never had a very good memory for the books I’ve read. But a few of them are absolutely burned into my mind. I may have only read them once, but I can basically recite them to you. I never quite realized why those particular books stuck with me, or why certain moments and conversations are so vivid in my memory until I read this conclusion to Margrette’s essay. I also think this passage works very well as a conclusion to the essay. Each of the anecdotes Margrette offers is interesting, but it’s not entirely clear how they are all linked until this conclusion. This passage ties them all together and presents them as a cohesive package.
X7: Passport Magazine
Posted by Andrew Brown
I plan to submit my Project 2, titled “The Journeyman”, to Passport Magazine. Passport is a student-run publication and bills itself as Duke’s “International Magazine”. Passport “brings educational and entertaining stories to the Duke community” and ”will cover almost anything, and the more unique the story, the better.” The magazine is published twice a year and attempts to cover at least six continents in every issue. Submissions to Passport must be 500-1500 words, which works great since “The Journeyman” is ~1400 words. Submissions are accepted via email and then edited collaboratively in a group setting. I think “The Journeyman” is perfect for Passport because it is a unique, engaging profile with an international angle. In fact, “The Journeyman” touches on almost every theme covered by Passport: travel, cultural assimilation, foreign culture, and even foreign policy.
The Journeyman
Posted by Andrew Brown
I began this profile by interviewing Mustafa for our X5 assignment. I was immediately blown away by his story and was incredibly excited to write about it. My first attempt was fairly short and really tried to let Mustafa’a voice do the talking. I intentionally avoided commenting much on what he had to say. For my second draft I tried to give the reader a fuller picture of Mustafa. I described more about his background, his personality, and what makes him interesting. My third draft was mostly a refinement of the commentary I added in draft two. I focused on more tightly interweaving my commentary with Mustafa’s voice and story, which made the essay flow much better and seem like a coherent whole. Finally, I revised the essay to correct a few errors related to the details of Mustafa’s life, and also added a higher quality picture of him. I really enjoyed writing this piece because I knew my purpose from the beginning: share Mustafa’s story with the rest of the world.
R9
Posted By Andrew Brown
The Harkness Table
Posted by Andrew Brown
Process Note
This piece began as my X2, when we were instructed to write about an object. I then developed it further for both my Rev 1 and my Rev 2. Although this piece started off focusing only on the Harkness table, I knew immediately that it would be bigger than that. My writing group loved the part of my X2 where I railed against desks. For my Rev 1 I focused on adding more history about the origins of the Harkness Table, and how it is associated with Exeter, my high school. Although some of the information I added was necessary, it was apparent from my writing group that I had veered off course a bit. For Rev 2 I cut out about half of the history on the Harkness table, and instead focused on adding information about education furniture in general. I wrote a whole section on the origin of the basic classroom desk, and tracked how that invention helped spur the creation of the Harkness table. For the final draft I focused on better integrating the various sections of my piece. There seemed to be gaps in my logic at times, so I tried to mend those. I also added images of both the original classroom desk and the Harkness table; I think these will help bring the objects to life for the reader. On the whole I think I’ve written an interesting piece about American education that is both informative and thought provoking.
R5: Bringing the Past to Life
Posted by Andrew Brown
Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation brought the idea of creative nonfiction to life for me. Before reading Vowell it seemed to me that there were basically two types of creative nonfiction: memoir and interviews. Basically I felt constrained to write something either from my own memory, or to conduct some type of interview and write “creatively” about it. Professor Harris confused me a bit the last two weeks with his instructions to look for more documentation and do more research because I didn’t understand how documentation should fit in with a piece about my own life. Vowell helped me understand this.
Throughout Assassination Vacation Vowell interweaves personal anecdotes about her experiences researching the book with the actual quotes and bits of information she set out to collect. This style sounds odd, but Vowell executes the technique remarkably well. Her personal comments and quips not only bring liveliness and humor to incredibly morbid topic, they actually shed new light on some aspects of the history.
One of my favorite passages is Vowell’s description of trying to find Dr. Samuel Mudd’s house. Vowell writes:
“About ninety minutes into the roughly ten-mile drive from the restaurant to the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House, I become convinced of Mudd’s guilt. Klam and I, armed with one road atlas, two historical maps of John Wilkes Booth’s route, an old article from the Washington Post travel section, directions from various locals gassing up their cars, and six printouts from MapQuest.com, are lost for two hours. Mudd’s house in rural Maryland is so hard to find, even in the daylight, even with a lap full of maps, that I don’t see how Booth and Herold, who were horseback riding under the influence of whisky they acquired at the Surratt Tavern, could have found Mudd’s house in the middle of the night if they didn’t know exactly where they were going, and whom they could trust.”
In that passage she brings the journey of John Wilkes Booth to life in a way that you would never to be able to in traditional historical literature. The house wasn’t simply hard to find or out of the way; it was impossible to find with an atlas, two maps, a newspaper article, help from locals, and MapQuest! I hope to use some of Vowell’s techniques to bring my writing to life.