1st Short Essay



2nd Shorter Essay: A Personal Essay, Two Options

Due Thursday, 11 February by 12:30 pm, to JT Olin box

Your options

You have two options for your 2nd Shorter Essay; both are considered “personal essay”, in that – while based in fact and seeking to establish an interpretive dialogue between writer and reader – they draw on the writer as source. A successful relationship is predicated on the writer’s persona, if s/he seems, as Philip Lopate wrote, “to give us [readers] the maximum understanding and intelligence of which he or she is capable” (xxvi). He suggests a fine place for any writer to begin: “Just as often as they tell us what they know, they ask at the beginning of the problem what they don’t know – and why. They follow the clue of their ignorance through the maze.” (xxvii).

Lopate, Philip, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay. New York: Anchor Books, 1997

Option One: This I Believe

“This I Believe” is a project National Public Radio (NPR) renewed in April 2005. Based on the eponymous radio program of the 1950s, “This I Believe” invites individuals to write about a single core belief that guides daily life. The result has been a varied collection of personal statements that make something seemingly abstract (a belief) into something concrete, without losing the speaker’s complexity, voice, or individuality. As the instructions on NPR advise:

Be specific. Take your belief out of the ether and ground it in the events of your life. Consider moments when belief was formed or tested or changed. Think of your own experience, work and family, and tell of the things you know that no one else does. Your story need not be heart-warming or gut-wrenching -- it can even be funny -- but it should be real. Make sure your story ties to the essence of your daily life philosophy and the shaping of your beliefs. . . . Avoid preaching or editorializing. Tell us what you do believe, not what you don't believe. Make your essay about you. (This I Believe Essay-Writing Instructions, 26 January 2010, )

Meant to be read aloud, “This I Believe” essays use conversational language. While the essays are highly personal, not all address monumental occasions, events, or beliefs. When a piece addresses a belief shared by many (in God, for instance, or doing the right thing), its author tries to particularize that belief, to ground it and make it concrete. The first option for your 2nd Shorter Essay will be writing a “This I Believe” essay of your own. The topic is up to you. However, follow the advice from the founders and inheritors of the project at NPR by grounding your belief in personal experience.

➢ Requirements: A meaningful claim based on one of your core beliefs and something that illustrates it: a concrete example or a personal anecdote of when that belief was revealed, challenged, confirmed, or shifted. Find the absolute best language for your belief statement, and permit yourself no more than one or two sentences as introduction.

➢ Cautions: A meaningful controlling idea is not “I believe in breakfast” or “I believe in Fruit Loops,” but rather “I believe in eating Fruit Loops every morning so that my day begins with color and sweetness.” Don’t forget to particularize your belief. Don’t forget to cite outside sources if you use them. Don’t forget to make an argument. Don’t dictate what other people should believe.

➢ Permissions: Do not concern yourself with explaining every aspect of your belief, or scouring your memory for a dramatic test of your belief; rather, offer a glimpse into some belief that makes you who you are, providing the detail and particularity that no one else could.

► Reflection: Consider the structure and global organization of the sample “This I Believe” essays and your own. What do you find effective or lacking about these structures? How do they compare to “traditional” essay structures? What effect did you intend with the structure and flow you chose for your essay? (For this essay, please focus your discussion on one of the first three areas of the writing standards.) Did you try anything unusual in your essay? Any parting thoughts?

Something extra (+1/3 of 1 grade)

✓ The limited introductory paragraph may have presented a challenge to you both in trimming and in moving forward with the rest of the essay. For a little bump in your grade, you may write a more “traditional” introduction in the form of a substantive paragraph (5-8 sentences). Then write another substantive paragraph (or more) commenting on the changes that introduction would have forced in the remainder of your essay. This must be turned in with your essay to earn credit!

Option Two: Talk of the Town

“Talk of the Town” pieces have appeared in The New Yorker since its first issue. They are succinct yet insightful glimpses into a particular world – usually a world within New York City. In her description of these short pieces, Lillian Ross quoted longtime editors Harold Ross and William Shawn:

It will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. . . . It will hate bunk. . . . It will print facts that will have to go behind the scenes to get. . . . It hopes to be so entertaining and informative as to be a necessity for the person who knows his way about or wants to. . . . [It requires] discipline, technical agility, swift movement, the power to make every word and every touch count, a feeling for facts, a warm response to people, and a sensitiveness to the particulars of place, situation, and event. (Ross, xvii)

“Talk Stories” often centered on an event, be it one formal and public (such as a political convention or art opening) or one casual and personal (a visit to a tailor, or a subway conversation overheard), that said something meaningful about living in a particular place. As those subjects suggest, some talk stories were of obvious importance, and others illuminated the quotidian. Regardless of their occasion, Talk of the Town pieces contained “mesmerizing facts of durable interest” (Ross, xix) and got quickly to the “heart” of their stories with a succinct yet detailed portrait, and in doing so made themselves important to the reader.

For your 2nd Shorter Essay, you may choose to write a “Talk Story” from Whitman and / or Walla Walla. The topic is up to you. However, follow the advice from the venerated editors above by keeping your topic simple, immediate, fact-based, durable, and interesting.

➢ Requirements: A meaningful idea based on a single “event” and thoroughly-described details from that event. While you will likely find many details at your disposal, challenge yourself by expanding and elaborating on one as a primary support for your controlling idea. Regardless of the point-of-view you choose, your personality should reveal itself in the writing.

➢ Cautions: Don’t be obvious. A meaningful idea is not “Walla Walla is a nice place to live” or “Whitman has lots of stuff going on” or “Students don’t like homework.” Don’t forget to cite outside sources if you use them. Don’t forget that you’re making an argument through the details you choose.

➢ Permissions: Do not concern yourself with giving a “whole” picture of Whitman, Walla Walla, or the event you cover; rather, provide a revealing snapshot and enough detail to show that your impression is valid, informative, and “of durable interest . . . to the person who knows his way about or wants to.”

► Reflection: Choosing amongst a wealth of evidence for the most apt is an exercise in discipline and restraint – it may seem counter-intuitive to leave out perfectly good details or examples in favor of sticking through a long description of just one. How did you choose amongst your evidence and examples? What difficulties and rewards did you experience in deepening your investigation of one example? Did you try anything unusual in your essay that you’d like to explain? Please address one of the five standards. Any parting thoughts?

Something extra (+1/3 of 1 grade)

✓ Here’s an opportunity to expand upon what you couldn’t in your essay. Write at least one more substantive paragraph (5-8 sentences) of your “Talk Story”, focusing on examples or details that were treated lightly in your essay or dropped altogether. Then write another substantive paragraph discussing what would have been gained and / or lost by adding the additional piece. This must be turned in with your essay to earn credit!

For this essay, you will read selections from:

The New Yorker

Ross, Lillian, Ed. The Fun of It: New York: Random House, 2001.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. 1862. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1992.

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