Connecting the Dots

It’s all starting to make sense. The definitions of reading and writing, the class discussions about what go into each of these. Keeping up with the news because it fits right into the cookie cutter mold of someone writing, and another reading. Nice job, we noticed. Personally, I find this book almost a little awkward. The “Intertexts” and “Projects” is where we come to a fork in the road. When you encounter one of these, when do you read it? It’s like the author is derailing our train of thought by putting these everywhere on the page. Oh well, ill either ignore them or figure something out that satisfies. On to the meat and potatoes of this post, and probably the most boring part as well. Our author Joseph Harris, defines reading and writing in many ways. He gives a very by the book definition of writing as a “Social practice: the use of certain tools (paper, pen, computer) in a well-defined context (the academy) to achieve a certain end of make a particular product (a critical essay)” He then explains why he chose to name each chapter the way he did and the meaning behind it.

            After the dictionary definition already given in this book, I was hoping for some sort of bigger picture. And then it happened. “A writer forwards the views of another when he or she takes terms and concepts from one text and applies them to a reader of other texts or situations.” Take a few seconds, let it sit in, that’s basically unit 1 in a nutshell. And in the first 6 pages even better. We didn’t even have to wait till the very end of the book to be pissed off like we were in high school after reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved.