Reading Response - Maria Diaz-Gonzalez

I did not read very much of either Keyes nor Pyne’s books, although I anticipate I will make further use of them as I continue to write my thesis. What little I did read of Keyes’ book made me a little nervous. 

It took me a very long time to want to write an honors thesis at all. Only once I began seeing it as an opportunity to do something I’d been dreamed of doing in my childhood (write a story) did I decide that it was something I wanted to do rather than something that I felt I was supposed to do. During this Honors College, Professor Hobbs’ encouragement and the guidance I’ve received from the several faculty and students involved in the program made me feel like I might actually be able to complete this thesis. 

Put simply, during the process so far, I haven’t felt very scared. I did feel scared when I still believed I was going to write an academic paper, but I feel much less so now. Keyes’ book makes me nervous because it seems that fear is the most legitimate place for writing to come from. I have been wondering a bit lately if maybe I am too sure about my writing, since there are a couple of elements I’m pretty set on including in it. I think I realized yesterday that I can potentially write the story without much research, even though it won’t be much good. I’ve yet to figure out if I think that is a good or a bad thing, although I’m leaning towards bad. 

I am also nervous about his implication that the best writing comes from a place that is deeply personal. If I understood him correctly, it is near impossible for an author to write well about something that they have little proximity to. I don’t however, know what the boundaries of personal connection are. I for example, have never experienced enslavement or many of the things that I plan to have the characters in my thesis experience. Even while writing the things that they experience, I still can’t really relate. I am nervous then, that my writing will be false in a sense, since on a personal level, I actually have no idea what I am writing about.  

The bit that I’ve read of Keyes’ book made me think a lot, though I have yet to reach any conclusions. The little I read of Pynes’ book didn’t hold my interest too much, so I don’t have much to say on it, although I intend to very carefully read the sections on character and setting. 

Michael's reading reaction

I found that Voice and Vision helped clarify what I am aspiring to as I begin writing my history thesis. While I always wanted to conduct serious scholarship, and I believe I have done so thus far, I also wanted my writing to be delightful - in short, I hope that my love and curiosity for this subject could be infectious through my writing. This may be an ambitious goal, but Pyne gave voice to that desire, and helped me reflect on how to get there.

Early in the text, Pyne identifies a genus of book which he calls “Academic trade.” In Pyne’s words, this is a book “that is based on solid scholarship and that aspire to reach beyond an ever-narrowing circle of specialists - a book that, quantum-like, hovers between two states, something that might appeal to both university presses and to trade publishers.” Producing such a work, which could be both assigned in courses and book clubs, becomes the end of a series of “arts and crafts” that Pyne details through the text.

Several of these elements were applicable to my project. Perhaps most important for me was Pyne’s discussion of drama. Drama, of course, can prove an immensely powerful tool for any narrative writer, including historians. Indeed, Pyne opens his chapter on the subject by arguing, “Drama is what keeps readers turning pages. The slickest transitioning, the wittiest voice, the most elegant phrasing, will not hold their attention for more than a few sentences. What matters is their urge to know more…” Fortunately for me, my project provides fertile ground for historic drama. Over the course of my thesis, I follow an individual as he makes his way through a profoundly volatile and violent historical moment, all while preserving a set of principles that had the potential to harm him. This setup makes for great dramatic material - as Pyne writes, “This is most easily achieved in narratives that revolve around quarrels or quests, narratives that put people in situations where they conflict, strive, and choose.” Keeping this in mind, one focus in writing my narrative will be to bring out the extent to which my protagonist’s actions represented a conscious, principles, and risky choice.

Pyne’s chapter on character was also helpful for my writing. Character holds importance in all writing - as Pyne states, “few texts of any kind will claim much readership without a central character or a cast of surrogates.” However, this literary element will be especially central to a biographical thesis. For me, then, the question becomes how I can make my character (Fauchet) compelling, and how I can use the drama of his revolutionary career to make a broader argument to the reader. After discussing the role of characters, Pyne goes on to provide a gallery of examples from past writing, classifying the characters by their role in the narrative. While some may not prove to be useful models for my exposition of Fauchet, others are worth looking at. Pyne’s profile of Joan Didion’s book The White Album and Didion’s character James Pike present parallels for my thesis. In Didion’s text, Pyne sees a special type of genre, the “character profile,” a brief biography. For Didion and other writers, the character profile poses a special challenge - writing a sketch that will “contain everything necessary, and cannot afford anything more.” As I work to compact Fauchet’s life and thought into a thesis, this will be the challenge of my own writing as well.

Patrick's Book Response

          I appreciated both The Courage to Write and Voice and Vision, and I believe that their writers intended to help make the writing process easier, but in different ways. In the former, Ralph Keyes helps the reader through the emotional and psychological process of writing a book, or indeed any work. He acknowledges that writing is difficult, scary, and at times painful, but he also asserts that there is value to it still and outlines various ways to persevere. Stephen Pyne’s book, however, focuses on the details and form of writing, rather than the writing process itself. While I consider myself knowledgeable in at least some good writing techniques, Pyne’s thoroughness in covering mundane topics was helpful.

            When considering my own thesis, I found The Courage to Write to be the most helpful and encouraging, as I have been and still am concerned about working on and finishing my thesis. Part of what made the book helpful and has made Honors College helpful for me was the encouragement to just start working. Keyes noted that we all have habits or rituals that we fall back on while writing, and each individual is unique in how they write. While my writing style may not be the most efficient or the best, particularly on first drafts, it is valuable in that it is the way that I prefer to work.

            With that in mind, I hope to build off of the way that I prefer to work by setting deadlines for myself so that I can work to meet each one individually, rather than just the whole thesis having one deadline. As of now, I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity with Honors College to sit down with my thoughts and to see what other people in the history cohort have been working on, and therefore my first goal is to finalize my topic. I believe that will be easiest if I spend more time looking for primary sources and finding what aspect of the historical record I can add to. I’ve worked primarily with secondary sources the past week, trying to get a grasp on both the First Barbary War and the War of 1812 before I tried to analyze primary sources. That has been helpful, but my topic currently is not focused enough or organized enough to carry me through to May.

            I’m excited to keep researching and writing, and it’s good to know that most everyone who works on as large a project as a thesis faces stress and writers’ block. I hope to refine my topic soon and I plan to set up a work schedule that I find helpful. Honors College has been a huge help with this project, and I look forward to not only working on my own thesis but also to hearing how the rest of the history cohort moves forward.

Book Response

Bing Honors College Book Responses

            In The Courage to Write, Keyes identifies a fear that plagues writers everywhere: a fear of judgment and a fear of failure.  With writing, one can avoid failure quite easily.  It is possible not to fail (and not to succeed) simply by not writing anything at all.  For me, Keyes book demonstrates that it is worthwhile to put something down on the page.  Regardless of how rough it might be at the beginning, I know that my writing requires iteration and work.  The earlier this starts, the better.  It does not necessarily feel good to write at the outset of a project, particularly if you know you are producing words simply with the intention of changing them later.  But taking the plunge into a project (and moving from the “research” process to the “writing” process) is the vital first step that is required to produce something worthwhile.

            I think my most significant takeaway from Pyne’s book is that reading other good historical (or non-historical for that matter) writing can be an effective source of inspiration throughout a project.  I know that as I continue with writing the first draft of my thesis, it will be helpful to try and model some of my writing and analysis loosely on some of the best secondary sources that I have encountered in my research.  Additionally, I am planning on drawing on other texts I enjoy for stylistic inspiration as I try to craft a narrative that will be pleasing to read, while at the same time presenting a substantive scholarly contribution.

            As I move forward with my thesis, I am expecting that the writing process will reveal holes in my research that I need to fill.  In particular, I know that I will have to construct a more robust contextual framework within which to situate my analysis of primary source material.  This, once again, demonstrates the necessity of taking the plunge into writing, because it will show me what more I need to accomplish on the research front.  I am excited to continue my work as we head into fall quarter and see where it takes me.

Holly's book response

Initially, I found the style of The Courage to Write to be a little offputting. I personally rarely suffer from the fear of the white page, especially in the field of historical writing, and found Ralph Keyes' bald-faced admission of writer's anxiety to not apply to my experience. For me, if I craft an essay well in its structure and goals before I begin, I am unlikely to encounter the paralysis of not knowing what on earth to write about, because I have already decided what I am going to write about. However, after I wrote my first five pages for Honors College, I began to see how Keyes' work did apply to me. Keyes spends a fair amount of time discussing how authors find the courage to continue writing once they have begun, and I found myself becoming distracted from my writing after I had been at it only two hours. I know that this book will be helpful in reminding me that the process of long-form writing is hard, and that it is only with the determination to continue working and parsing through my research that I will be ultimately successful.

Having now written about my thesis and having written sections of my thesis, I feel I am better aware of the pitfalls I will face throughout the year as I continue to write the paper. I now find it easy to talk about my thesis on a very superficial level (the one-minute pitch version of this paper is a breeze). However, I now also know clearly how large my project is, and that I have significantly more work to do in going through my research and deciding how each part either fits or is unnecessary. I have, in many respects, more research than I need for this project, and so need to be selective in using only the research that feels necessary -- I cannot allow myself to get distracted and try to make everything in my notes fit into the paper.

As for Pyne's Voice and Vision, I plan to delve into it more substantively as I write more of the text of my thesis over this year, but I will be using his guiding principles as I go. Particularly, I foresee using his idea that style should do work. My writing style is very conversational and makes my voice fairly apparent, but I often struggle balancing this style with more conventional "academic" writing. Pyne's work was helpful in telling me to embrace the balance between the two, and to acknowledge how "style" can be academic. One of the guiding principles I am most conscious of as I set out to write my thesis this year is that I need to balance style with analysis. I like my writing style, and have consistently received the feedback that others like it as well. I write texts that flow, and so I generally receive little criticism on my substance because my texts are pleasant to read. If I am self-aware in writing for substance and academia as well as for style, understanding that one does not preclude the other, I think my writing will be all the stronger.

Introduction - Maria Diaz-Gonzalez

Heaving.

Heaving.

Heaving and tearing as her soul that had not yet escaped her, threatened to fly out. Her breath thinned as she tried to push air out and gulp more in, but there was no air in the bellows. Her stomach contracted, bulging and pulsing and trying to expel the weight it had been carrying for months.

She shrieked silently and sobbed violently and pushed. The bellows heaved in tandem with her and their movement, which she’d grown accustomed to after months, sickened her once more. Then suddenly, the weight, the child fell out of her. Slick, bloody and shiny, the child wailed once and coughed immediately at the putrid air that surrounded it. Yet that one cry had been enough.

Perhaps the beasts above deck had heard it, for the door to the bellows opened and the white-skinned animals descended. They inspected the dark beings pressed together in the belly of their ship; the chains binding them began rattle as the animals released body after body and left them prostrate on the floor.

Her breath continued to thin, and by the time the white beast pressed his hand to her mouth it was too weak to be felt. She felt the chains loosen as he grabbed her feet and pulled her away from the shelf. With a thud her body fell to the floor, and he chained her ankle to a dead woman’s wrist while another beast started pulling the bodies above deck.

As she was being dragged, she caught a glimpse of her child encased in a white hand. The baby had stopped crying soon after birth, as if she knew that there was no good air to be had in the bellows. The beast that held her child was young – more so than she who lay expiring at his feet– and soon he took to holding her child by one ankle, not knowing how to hold such a delicate thing.

The young white beast walked slowly beside her, as another of his kind dragged the chain of dead and dying bodies. She felt the stairs digging into the small of her back and the base of her neck. Hollow clunks rang in her skull, becoming duller as her breath became weaker.

She counted seven clunks before the sunlight pierced her half-open eyes, letting her know that she’d arrived on deck. She tiredly watched the young beast beside her and wondered why he examined her child with such bewilderment.

Looking feebly at the dangling body of her child, she suddenly noticed it: there were stars splashed across the darkness of the newborn’s body. It was as if the night sky, which she herself had not seen for many months, had mistaken the child’s skin for part of itself. She did not know how a child born in the heat of the bellows could have ever touched the sparkling sky. In her tortured head she struggled to recall when in her 11 months in the bellows she had come so close to the burning stars.

Then, as she felt a renewed pull on her shackled ankle she thought “Oh.”

The markings on the weight that had fallen out of her were not stars. They were bloodstains.  

The following is the introduction to Karintha; the first piece in the book CANE by Jean Toomer. 

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,

 O cant you see it, O cant you see it 

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon . . . 

When the sun goes down. 

Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Young men danced with her at frolics when they should have been dancing with their grown-up girls. God grant us youth, secretly prayed the old men. The young fellows counted the time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them. This interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could mean no good to her.

Example Intro: Erik Larson

Evils Imminent

            In Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century amid the smoke of industry and the clatter of trains there lived two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen sills.  Each embodied an element of the great dynamic that character the ruse of America toward the nineteenth century.  One was an architect, the builder of man of America’s most important structures, among them the Flat-iron Building inNew York and Union Station in Washington, D.C.; the other was a murderer, one of the most prolifif in history and harbinger of an American archetype, the urban serial killer.  Although the two never met, at least not formally, their fates were linked by a single, magical event, one largely fallen from modern recollection but that in its time was considered to possess a transformative power nearly equal to that of the Civil War…

            Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.  In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.

Source: Erik Larson, The Devil in The White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (2003) <-- Larson is the best non-fiction archival writer I know.