Fishing for compliments?
I found the Interlude in How to Read Literature Like a Professor very interesting. In a way, it seemed like he was trying too hard to explain himself and make it look like he does all this work. It seems to me that he is fishing for approval and praise. He even says, "The few pages of this chapter have taken you a few minutes to read; they have taken me, I'm sorry to say, days and days to write" (85). By saying this it seems like he is almost complaining, like writing this book is so hard to do and we should appreciate it for what it is. I don't like this because we all know it takes authors months and months to perfect a story, but we don't see them complaining about how long it took them to write a couple pages. Even if he doesn't mean for this to be complaining, it comes off as 'I am better than you because I spend all this time on one book so you can read and interpret literature better.'
This is just what I think, what about you?
5 Comments
Leave a comment
Recent Comments
Julianne Banda on Fishing for compliments?: Rosalind, I agree, was he thin
Nathan Hart on Fishing for compliments?: I found this section highly an
Rosalind Blair on Fishing for compliments?: I do not think that anyone rea
Aja Hannah on Fishing for compliments?: I don't think Foster was compl
I don't think Foster was complaining even though he may still have talked too much. I've written stuff before and what takes readers minutes to read has taken me days, sometimes months to write. What Foster is trying to say is that in that time the author's ideas and influences has changed so what he intended to say or write has first has developed overtime and could be something very different.
I do not think that anyone really knows exactly what Foster was trying to say here by I agree Foster seemed to have taken a tone in some of the things he said that could be interpreted as complaining. I think this has a lot to due with him refering to the book as a "germ" on page 85. Was the book becoming a pest to him as he wrote it? Even if he did not intend for it to come off that way, it was definitely wordy and drawn out.
I found this section highly annoying. He tells about his day. How he helps his children with his car, made some bread, and ate some lunch. Do i really care?? NOT AT ALL. This section is a waste of my time. Do i really care what he went through to write this book. No, I dont. I want to read what he has to say about literature. Whats next? Is he going to tell us how mant times he goes to the bathroom, or picks his nose. I think he is trying to boast about how he is so harding working. We understand that.
Rosalind, I agree, was he thinking the book was a pest? That's what went through my mind when reading and caused me to write this blog. There are better ways Foster could have said it took him a long time to write this book, but anyone should know writing a book doesn't just happen, it takes a long long time.
Actually I found this part very inspiring, being someone who hopes to eventually become a good writer. I think he was trying to draw attention to the process of writing. A reader can finish a page of a book in 5 minutes, even less. That same page may have taken the writer a substantial amount of time to finish. Why? The author pays attention to every detail. Pick up a thesaurus and look at the word "understand" how many synonyms for that word will you find. But one can be more appropriate for a specific use. Choice wording is just one of the many details a writer factors. Have you ever had to write a paper and didn't want to or got frustrated and went and decided to get something to eat or given yourself any excuse just to get away from it. It's something like that. A writer will go back and forth agonizing of their work; the reader just reads it.