Limits

When you look at Son of Mr. Green Jeans, you begin to see the structure formulating his work. The ABC’s form a restrictive guideline to his work. Can some of your best work come from limits that are within or out of your control? Think of George Lucas and his $11 million dollar baby Star [...]

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Drift

I’ll start this by saying that I, too, struggled with Dumas’ piece.  It’s certainly not an easy read, though I found I liked it a bit more the second time around, having a sense of what to expect.
What I appreciated most about Dumas was that she really plays with sentence structure, which I think is [...]

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The Second Person

I was always taught that writing in second person was for children’s adventure novels or trivial things. This of course, excludes letters and things that are actually only addressed to one other person.
I found Duras’ use of the second person both intimate and distance. At first, I questioned whether she was trying to draw her [...]

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Creativity

I agree with both Tom and Chris about the merits of these two works. I think that both Duras and Moore biggest strength is the creative approach they take in engaging the reader. Honestly, there have been plenty of essays that we’ve read that I haven’t liked at all. After a while, reading essays becomes [...]

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Puzzle Pieces

In reading Son of Mr. Green Jeans, I am reminded of Kathryn Chetkovich’s Envy, when she reads “those pages of his I wished I had written.” I wish I wrote this: it’s brilliant. Seemingly random, fully independent snippets mesh together ingeniously to create a cohesive whole. Moore leaves us with a unique, [...]

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The Reader

Marguerite Duras uses the second person quite a bit.  “The Atlantic Man” is addressed to some unknown person (although we know from the forward that it’s Yann Andrea), and stands as a list of commands, qualities, and effects that she wants to explain to him.  However, during the course of the reading, I can’t shake [...]

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Intertwining Connections

I think it’s pretty fantastic the way that Moore weaves together tidbits about animal mating habits, sitcom actors, scientific studies, and personal anecdotes—despite being seemingly random components—while remaining anchored to his theme of missing fathers. This establishes a rapport with the reader, as living without ones father is a common experience. The parts about animals [...]

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“Goodness” changes

Today, I’m a rather messy person – dropping clothes and towels on the floor, misplacing irreplaceable items left and right, letting dirt pile up until it discolors the carpet. But once upon a time in the past-tense realm of childhood, I was a neat freak. Any handwriting expert would tell you this.
My perfectionist’s drive manifested [...]

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Shirley Temple Dreams

When I was a toddler, I had an uncanny likeness to Shirley Temple. She’s the famed singing/dancing child star of the 1940s, with cherubic sausage curls and a round dimpled face that could melt the heart of the Grinch. My mother grew up watching Shirley Temple, and she bestowed her love of all things having to [...]

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Vampire

I’ll be honest, it took me a while to come up with something for this post.  I’m a fencer for Northwestern, but I’m flattened so routinely by some of my much more skillful teammates that I hesitate call myself “good.”  I played piano for eight years, but I was horrible about practicing and it took [...]

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Potato Sacks

At the end of each year, my grammar school held an outdoor celebration, aptly entitled Field Day. The school was divided into eight teams, each of them having members from grades K-5.  The competition involved a long series of athletically oriented events, and we maneuvered through them in small groups, competing against groups from other [...]

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Making Silly Jokes

It was last period on a Wednesday during the last month of Junior year.  My friend Nevin and I were sitting in study hall when we came up with the idea to run for office.  The election was on Friday, and people had been campaigning for weeks.  “Let’s make a bunch of silly posters”, we [...]

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I’m so good I’m doing it right now

The procrastinator’s logic in putting things off is best explained in the following quote from season two of Grey’s Anatomy:
“Maybe we like the pain.  Maybe we’re wired that way.  Because without it, I don’t know; maybe we just wouldn’t feel real.  What’s that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?  Because it feels [...]

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Narcissism can be fleeting or permanent

My mom tells me that I was always a talker, even before I could “talk” (or well, speak  English) I would ramble in my own language. Eventually words began to form. To this day, my mother isn’t quite sure what my first word was. I’ve never let her live that down, because I’ve always hoped [...]

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Forever Young

I consider myself a pretty talented person. I was smart enough to make it into Northwestern, athletic enough to play varsity basketball in high school, and musically gifted enough to play violin in my school’s orchestra. But none of this compares to how talented I feel I was when I was little, and this makes [...]

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Old Dreams, New Dreams

I come from a family of athletes.
My dad played Little League, my mom was on the swim team, and my brother was the captain of two varsity sports — and let’s not forget the time he was approached to be trained for the Olympics.
My parents like to refer to me as a genetic mutation.
It’s not [...]

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To know failing.

I always liked directing. I have been good at it. I have been bad at it. Realizing you are good at something lasts until you start to try it.
I started directing in an acting class because I couldn’t memorize lines. The teacher was shocked to see that I had a little bit of talent when [...]

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What am I good at? Not much

I thought about posting something about my memoir because I couldn’t think of anything I’ve been good at besides high school, being responsible, blah blah, all the normal boring shit for a NU student. But after I thought about it I decided I’d rather keep my essay under wraps—it’s undergone substantial growth and rewriting, but [...]

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Not great, but maybe good.

I still have a Livejournal. Most kids got one, or something similar, like a Xanga or Diary-X, when they were in junior high and then discarded of it sometime in high school when they realized they were too cool to be using sites like that anymore. But I still use mine regularly. So do a [...]

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Essay Sketch: Conversion and WASP Pride

My essay is, right now, about my half-brother James, who is 11 years older than me, and how my family and I reacted to his ex-girlfriend Donya, who he dated for 5 years.  My family had a rough, passive-aggressive sort of relationship with her, particularly due to the fact that my parents were extremely displeased [...]

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Essay sketch: Mostly I’m just curious

I want to write about why girls have sex.  I want to try and understand why some are uneasy on the subject while others are expressive and quick to share.  Is sex a power device?  I can’t help but feel like it isn’t for women.
In a house full of girls who all believe in doing things [...]

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Daddy don’t you smoke those cancer sticks: Essay Linchpins

A quick sketch of my yet-to-be-fully-realized essay. It is about my long-time hate affair with my father’s on again off again cigarette addiction. It pretty much maps the highs and lows of our “family life,” and was an excellent outlet for the adolescent anger I was determined not to have.
 
- My father, discovered by his [...]

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Jumbled Attempt at an Essay

I’m attempting to write an essay on my relationship with my religion, and more broadly, prejudice against one’s own people. Coming up with relevant linchpins is the easy part; connecting them coherently, not so much. As usual, my struggle will be with deeper analysis of a meatier subject.

Linchpins (I won’t go into a [...]

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Pictures: Second Essay Sketch

Okay, so this is a rough-ass draft. I didn’t write it as only linchpins, although it is in pieces that somewhat resemble them. I’m having a lot harder time writing on this topic than I thought I would, but I think it is a good one and I simply need to spend a lot of [...]

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Linch Pins of Essay: Fat Camp

My essay is about my struggle with weight loss and body image throughout my life. I ask why people can be so defined by other people’s opinions. I ask why I can be so defined by other people’s opinions. There’s always the “health” versus “vanity” question. I argue it’s sometimes a bit of both. Still, [...]

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Smoking

1. The first time I wanted to smoke. With three teachers from highschool. They took me to a back porch and there we smoked. It felt beautifully secret.
2. The first time I did smoke. With another novice, which was entirely underwhelming. Smoking in a flat in Edinburgh. Realizing that this was not the secret I [...]

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