Presentation Comments, part II

I really liked all of Group 6's essay ideas. The David Sedaris book that they decided to read sounded hilarious, but it sounded as if they managed to get a lot of good ideas from the text. I really liked Owen's idea of talking about finding truth in memoirs. I thought he brought up a lot of good points about how people would think that memoirs would be a perfect place to find the truth of someone's life because they wrote it, but in fact, they twist and alter the truth sometimes to get the desired effect.
I can't remember whose idea this was, or maybe it was everyone, but the quote about David being the brother he's always been after his sister telling him a story that she didn't want repeated was a good quote, and I like how different people and theses managed to incorporate that quote into their papers to further their argument. It shows the versatility of the book, and the abilities of the people writing the papers =) Good job guys!

Presentation Comments

I really liked Joanne's thesis about the formula for a best-selling novel, because its something we, as English majors, see all the time reading books, but never really consciously think about. I loved the first sentence she gave us as an example of "the hook;" I know it made me want to read the book! I also liked how Joanne talked about how James Patterson is an amazing author, but we would never learn about him in an English class because academia says he is not literature. Alas. I suffer the same way trying to explain to people that Stephen King is an amazing example of intellectual literature, but people always write him off because he writes horror novels. I think that Joanne's paper will be extremely interesting, because it's not normally something we think about consciously.

I also liked Chris' idea for his paper from the same group. He talked about the postcards as a type of art form, and the postcard killers weren't crazy or insane; they just wanted their art to be known. I thought this was a neat way to look at the book, because I feel like most people would look at the killers as if they were completely insane. Chris' spin on the book, however, seems to take them out of a negative light, and makes them human, rather than the psycho animals many people would make them out to be. Also, art has never been my strong suit, but it interests me, so it would be interesting to see how Chris transforms the postcards into an art form in his paper.