Camille Corot’s “Interrupted Reading” (1870)
Start here, with this updated essay from the Medium account for this course:
That is the first part of your assignment: to use that instructional essay to help you analyze the central text below. Any discussion of how we are redefining the act and art of writing essays has to start there, with a meta-discussion of analysis and critical thinking.
Paul Graham, “The Age of the Essay”
I encourage you to practice interrupted reading with this text. The copy provided to you in class numbers the paragraphs, which goes along with the subheadings the author uses to encourage interrupted reading:
Interrupted reading is what it sounds like: You read a bit, pause, and then analyze what you’ve read. You don’t want to destroy the act of reading, though, which is why you’ve started this assignment by looking at analysis and over-analysis. You need a balance.
To encourage you to get started, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Graham’s essay on essays:
The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens.
With the result that writing is made to seem boring and pointless. Who cares about symbolism in Dickens? Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball.
How did things get this way? To answer that we have to go back almost a thousand years…
The complete essay gives you the rest of the history, and then it gives us the philosophy and practicality we’ll need to spend the rest of the school year developing your ability and desire to write.
Remember to use our reformatted copy for in-class and interstitial annotations, questions, etc., and to use the comment section here to talk to me and to each other.
In my opinion, i think that if students had an opportunity to free write once is a while it would change our perspective on writing and would not have us feeling as uncooperative to write essays. The fact that we are limited to topics we dont necessarily have any interests in gives us the lack of enthusiasm in regards to essay writing. Writing is not something that is supposed to have a strict outline, or a set of rules, or a minimum/maximum amount of words. Writing is supposed to be unique and creative in ones mind.
I agree. I think that you pose a couple of good points in that comment and I think that it would be interesting to see if english teachers know why they give us outlines for essays. If all of the teachers knew about why and how the structured essay came to be, they might not be so structured in how they teach writing. I don’t know if I have ever heard a teacher talk about breaking away from the bonds of standardized tests. (Other than Mr. Eure) If all of the teachers in the district read the essay that we all read, we’d be able to better understand and teach this style of writing.
You make a very interesting point there. I feel as though many educators are stuck in these habitual ways of teaching. There are guidelines that are to be followed but have they ever tried to break away from these standards? Just because it may be the “norm” and it is comfortable for them because they are used to it doesn’t mean it is the most effective way to instruct students. I would love to hear how teachers would react and if they’d be open-minded after being exposed to something other than the ordinary teaching styles.
I definitely agree with your thesis and the points you propose. Our greatest strengths as people derive from our passions and our interests. Likewise, writing is an incredibly effective method in expressing emotions and beliefs to and for our peers. Paul Graham is certainly correct when he states “The most obvious difference between real essays are not exclusively about English literature.” As aforementioned, the strongest and most meaningful essays stem from our interests, passions, and enthusiasms. If we were provided the opportunity for a “free write” session, I believe many of our opinions on writing in general would drastically shift in a positive direction. Writing should be enjoyable and meaningful, it’s a powerful tool to convey knowledge and information. The presentation of an opportunity to write freely on a topic of our choice, could make significant strides towards making all of us stronger and more capable writers and cognitive students in general.
What I find interesting about Paul Graham’s whole outlook on the age of the essay, is the disconnection from students. I feel, as though I have not written an essay debriefing literary analysis in years. Instead we spend most of our time writing essays on historical figures, or the comparing and contrasting of several empires. We write more in history class (at least AP does) then I feel I am required to write in any of the English classes I have taken. I have been lucky enough to write many creative choice pieces in my school time, instead of the horrible writing types that he describes. I am sure there are other schools around America, who format their learning into the way he is describing in the piece, however I do feel as though there is more room to grow and be creative, then he talks about.
I agree. The last time I wrote an essay about literature was when I was in eighth or ninth grade and I feel as though it was necessary to do so. It may not have been enjoyable but, it was an easy way for our teachers to teach us how to communicate ideas effectively and organized through writing. Last school year and this school year have still forced me to write about things that don’t interest me however, I haven’t written a traditional essay about literature in quite some time. The only essays I have written recently are ones for history class (just as Rachel mentioned) and those essays have been rushed and written in a small 40 period. I’m not sure omission of traditional essays completely is even a good thing?
I think younger students may have to write what we are now thinking of as “school essays” to learn basic writing skills. For younger students, it’s hard to achieve coherence and clarity without a thesis to use as a guide. But that doesn’t mean this has to be done to the exclusion of Paul Graham-style essays. I’ve found this year that writing essays that explore a specific question are extremely useful to develop one’s ideas on a subject, but maybe those conclusions could be applied to a thesis-guided essay later on in order to obtain the linearity that is expected of authors.
Last year we had a few writing assignments that were based on literature, analyzing the choices authors made. I’m not sure if that counts or not.
I think, at least for me, if I didn’t have to follow a certain guideline or a certain topic when writing an essay, I would enjoy it a lot more. Usually when we write essays, it’s about something i’m not interested in like history or a certain book. Reading Paul Graham’s essay really put into perspective about what we write in our years of schooling and how it’s most likely already been done.
I’m the exact same way. When I’m allowed to free write, I feel as though I look forward to it more. As a result, I’m much more focused in class, because what I’m writing about actually interests me. I recognize the fact that we are forced to write the essays we do base on the education system, but I think that if we were allowed to write without guidelines, it would be a nice change of pace compared to how we usually write.
To me, the most memorable part of Paul Graham’s essay is that Graham recommends that the writer Flow Interesting. This recommendation stands out to me because I have never heard a phrase like that before. Another reason why this recommendation stands out to me is because before, any writer in the same classroom as me flowed in the same direction and in the same pattern. If we don’t all flow in the same direction and in the same pattern, then writers may become more creative and the class could be more unique.
I too found that detail important. I agree with you that when writers “flow interesting”, there is a lot more variety in our writing. I found this to be because we are all interested in, and all notice, different things. When I read this line, I tried to reconcile this detail with Graham’s general philosophy of essay-writing and came to the conclusion that flowing interesting is a large component of his key idea that writers shape and reshape their essays through the process of writing it. If we adhere to a thesis or other arbitrary guideline, we aren’t exploring a subject (we aren’t “trying”) and writing the essay is less beneficial, both for the author and the reader. I think it all comes down to how we define the essay: whether we flow interesting or follow a thesis is tied to our overall philosophy of whether an essay exists to prove a point or to come to a conclusion about something curious.