Saturday, November 16, 2019
Creative Writing Commentry Essay Example for Free
Creative Writing Commentry Essay The kite runner presents a tale of intertwined personal conflicts and tragedies, its a compelling novel set in 1970s Afghanistan, revolving around a tragic incident that allows Hosseini to examine themes of loyalty and betrayal, revealing its significant flaws in 1970s Afghan society. This capturing plot is what attracted me to use The Kite Runner as my stimulus text as it presented me with an opportunity to explore the themes of loyalty and betrayal whilst adding a modern twist to it. For my creative piece I decided to compose a short monologue of a friend witnessing his life long companion being a victim of knife crime, this short monologue mirrors that of Amirs thoughts during the scene in the kite runner whilst his half-brother Hassan is being raped by another boy from the neighbourhood. From this monologue it is clear I have specifically formed it by taking certain aspects from the rape scene of the kite runner and also empowered another aspect from the kite runner by utilising the theme of betrayal and also considering the historical context of the novel as it was set at a time of conflict in Afghan community during the 1970s therefore by modernising it so it relates to the social context of today, as knife crime is almost a daily, fashionable occurrence in modern society, just like conflicts between the Pashtuns and Hazaras were during 1970s Afghanistan. The title Loyalty Juxtaposes the actual monologue as it portrays an act of disloyalty, and in a sense betrayal. This was done to make the reader think back to the title after reading it as the plot of the monologue is likely to have been a contrast of their assumptions before they actually read it, this also adds a sense of ambiguity and leaves the reader to speculate or predict what may have happened next as I purposely did not make it clear what the narrator does after Jamals final words, does he in fact empower the title by then pursuing his murderer? This is a question that is likely to linger in the readers thoughts. My title has a similar effect to that of Khaled Hosseinis novel, as the title The Kite Runner is one which immediately create assumptions about a story which portrays freedom and unity, however just like my monologue, the novel juxtaposes its title as the story is based around oppression in Afghan society and intra-conflicts between a religion . Like Khaled Hosseini, I employed the use of short and single word sentences in the build up to my climax to create a sense of anticipation just before one of the main characters Jamal is stabbed Jamals filled with panic. Confusion. Regret. This is also done in kite runner towards the rape sceneHe unzipped his jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned himself behind Hassan. Hassan Didnt struggle. This was done as It creates a hostile environment, reinforcing the readers belief that something dramatic is inevitable. Another technique I have adopted from Khaled Hosseini is his use of flashbacks to provide the reader with information of the two boys relationship before this tragic night, this is effective as it allows them to understand why this young boys thoughts are filled with such hatred and hostility towards himself for not helping his dying friend. Furthermore I attempted to employed Hosseinis use of imagery effectively in my Creative piece, this is shown through my description of the scenes prior to the knife incident Jamal still lay on the ground dampened by the slight drizzle of rain. Stationary. His blood slowly dripping from his jacket to the ground landing into the pool of water, diluting it. This is similar to the way Hosseini approaches the climactic scene of his novel when he describes the alley in which Hassan is raped A havoc of scrap and rubble littered the alley. Worn bicycle tires, bottles with peeled labels, ripped up magazines, yellow newspapers, all scattered amid a pile of bricks and slabs of cements. Another technique of Hosseinis that I attempted to replicate was the way in which he structured The Kite Runner, many critics have suggested that Hosseini develops a structure in the novel where he is able to set up expectations at the beginning of the novel, then turn these expectations into a reality by the end. I have attempted this by incorporating flashbacks into my first paragraph making it appear as something dramatic is going to occur in the next paragraph, whilst Hosseini employs flashbacks also to represent the fact that the key character Amir will be forced to rectify these early experiences to salvage what is remaining of his guilty conscious. I also incorporated a similar sentence structure in my piece utilising short sentences and pauses. Overall I have tried to replicate certain aspects from my stimulus text The Kite Runner, mainly those involving form structure, the key themes and also the significance of the title and flashbacks, the historical and social context of the novel, the use of imagery, juxtaposition of the themes as loyalty and betrayal are almost opposites of each other. I believe I have been successful in achieving most of these factors as the majority are included in my creative peice.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
A Burning Intellect in Fahrenheit 451 :: Fahrenheit 451 Essays
A Burning Intellect in Fahrenheit 451 In the 1950 novel Fahrenheit 451, AUTHOR Ray Bradbury presents the now familiar images of mind controlING worlds. People now live in a world where they are blinded from the truth of the present and the past. The novel is set in the, perhaps near, future where the world is AT war, and firemen set fires instead of putting them out. Books and written knowledge ARE banned from the people, and it is the firemen's job to burn books. Firemen are the policemen of THE FUTURE. Some people have rebelled by hiding books, but have not been very successful. Most people have conformed to THE FUTURE world. Guy Montag, a fireman, is a part of the majority who have conformed. BUT throughout the novel Montag goes through a transformation, where he changes from a Conformist to a Revolutionary. Guy Montag has never questioned his job before the day he met Clarisse McClellan. FOR ONCE Montag is confronted with the idea that, he does NOT understand the whole truth about books.<WHAT DO YOU MEAN?> Montag meets Clarisse one day, as he is walking home from work, and they BEGIN A conversation. During their conversation Montag is questioned why books are illegal and why firemen burn the books. CLARISSE also asks him if he had ever read any of the books that he burned. His reply was that it is against the law. Clarisse even asks, "... long ago [did] firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?"(Fahrenheit 451, page 38) Montag replies by telling her that that is nonsense, and that "Houses have always been fireproof,..."(Fahrenheit 451, page 38) Here you can see how brainwashed and blinded the truth is for the people. Clarisse says good night to Montag, and right before she leaves she asks him, "Are you happy?"(Fahrenheit 451, page39) Before Montag can rep ly Clarisse is gone, and she leaves Montag pondering her question. As he tells himself that her question was nonsense, he starts to realize that he is not happy with his life. Someone else who changed Montag's thinking, changed it by their actions not by tell him anything.<YOU NEED TO EXPLAIN MORE SO THE READER KNOWS WHAT YOU MEAN.> One day the firemen got a call with an address of someone who was hiding books. The firemen, doing their job like always, went to the house to find the books and burn them.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Fredric Jameson and the No Wave Art Movement Essay
In postmodern art, history is self-consciously reappropriated and re-fashioned into new forms. Postmodern art, Jameson argues, was a logical outcome of late-capitalism, which in its late stage has allowed society to abolish the distinction between high culture and mass culture, producing a culture of degradation. This was first taken up as an aesthetic by Andy Warhol. In the text, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990, Adamson and Pavitt note that Jameson, ââ¬Å"found Warholââ¬â¢s glittering series Diamond Dust Shoes to be particularly unnerving because of its incorporation of ommodity cultureâ⬠(70). Art, according to both Warhol and Jameson is above all, a commodity, something to be bought and sold. Warholââ¬â¢s work illustrates Jamesonââ¬â¢s contention that, ââ¬Å"Aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity productionâ⬠(4). This conflation of art and commodity creates a field of cultural production that is incapable of depth and v aluable social critique. According to Jameson, the abstract aesthetic of modernism was an expression of the new social forms of abstraction specif ic to capitalism. In modernism, the universalization of the money-form manifests as a range of social abstractions including, for example, societyââ¬â¢s dominant ââ¬Å"way of seeingâ⬠and representing the world aesthetically. In the age of global capitalism, the utopian sublime of modernism, to which Jameson referred, has disappeared, and has been replaced by the postmodern cultural logic of consumption. With the universalization of capitalism, the distinction between culture and economics has collapsed. In postmodernism everything, including art and culture, is subject to the logic of commodif ication. In the text, The Cultural Turn, Jameson submits that postmodernity ââ¬Å"makes the cultural economic at the same time that it turns the economic into so many forms of cultureâ⬠(81). This essay submits that the No Wave art movement that occurred between 1974 ââ¬â 1984 in New Yorkââ¬â¢s Lower East Side is indeed postmodern, by Jamesonââ¬â¢s standards, and yet resists this conflation of art and commodity that Jameson maintains is characteristic of this paradigm. Jamesonââ¬â¢s text, Postmodernism, suggests that with artââ¬â¢s entry into the commodity sphere art becomes propelled not by ideas but by money (Adamson et. al, 70). John N. Duvall is critical of Jamesonââ¬â¢s linkage between culture and commodif ication in the postmodern context. Duvall writes in his text, Troping History, ââ¬Å"It is precisely change that, for Jameson, can no longer be imagined in postmodernism, since aesthetic production has been subsumed by commodity production, thus emptying the modernist aesthetic of affect and hence of political effectâ⬠(4). Jamesonââ¬â¢s characterization of postmodern art as enveloped in commodif ication overlooks art produced during this period that consciously existed outside the margins of the art market and acted as a resistance to the conditions of a commodif ied artistic arena. As alluded to by Duvall in the previous quotation, Jameson does not account for the possibility of political art production in postmoderism. As Perry Anderson notes, ââ¬Å"by the positioning of the postmodern between aesthetics and economics,â⬠Jameson omits, ââ¬Å"a sense of culture as a battlefield, that divides protagonists. That is the plane of politics understood as a space in its own rightâ⬠(18). As Marvin J. Taylor describes, ââ¬Å"Downtown artists were profoundly aware of the failure of modernist revolutions, but were unwilling to abandon the possibility of a better worldâ⬠(22) 1. It is precisely this urge for a better world that Jameson contends is an impossibility in the context of late-capitalism, and absent from postmodern art production. To classify the No Wave Art Movement as postmodern requires a working definition of this cultural epoch. The postmodern paradigm is commonly associated with a range of aesthetic practices, involving irony, parody, self-consciousness, fragmentation, playful selfreflexivity and parataxis (Waugh, 325). Characterized largely by the qualities of appropriation and simulation many postmodern artists addressed mass media and commodif ication in their 1 The terms ââ¬Å"No Waveâ⬠and ââ¬Å"Downtown sceneâ⬠are used synonymously in essays that describe movement. So too are these terms used interchangeably in this essay. work, including those artists in the No Wave Movement, specif ically Barabara Kruger, who came out of this movement and whom we look to specif ically at the end of this paper. As Glen Ward notes in his description of the chronology of postmodernism, ââ¬Å"More complex ideas about postmodernism quickly infiltrated the art world. Next to painting, photography and media-based work regained the limelight in the mid-1980s by seeming to provide a more obviously political postmodernismâ⬠(41). Rather than being incorporated into the late-capitalist system some theorists argue that postmodern art is a response to capitalist corruption, voicing an opposition to the world of commodities rather than becoming entrenched in it. There is no shortage of theorists and critics who have characterized the No Wave Art movement within the postmodern paradigm. As Carlo Mccormick describes in his essay, A Crack in Time, which appears in The Downtown Book, ââ¬Å"â⬠¦ etween 1974 and 1984 in Downtown Manhattan occurred the true postmodern moment: a time when modernism was most certainly dead and, unmoored from its schematics, creativity was based on flux, uncertainty, and searchingâ⬠(71). The No Wave Art movement can be characterized by several recurrent postmodern themes including notions of authenticity; the Downto wn scene questioned the function of terms like authorship, originality, appropriation and tied them to the transgressive practices of theft, piracy and plagiarism. The second recurrent theme explored in the No Wave scene included performativity; challenging notions of representation in an environment of fragmented and multiple identities. Thirdly, the No Wave art scene is inextricably linked to its politics. As Taylor describes, Downtown art was activist and aggressive. Work was informed by the feminist movement, queer activism, AIDs, and poverty in postwar United States. As an expression of these politics, the No Wave Movement sought to criticize notions of institutional accreditation. This included an exploration of power structures, including the role of education, technical skills and technique. In her description of the Downtown Scene Gumpbert writes, ââ¬Å"What so many Downtown artists of this era did share is that they conceived their work as alternative, if not outright subversive, vis-a-vis traditional curatorial and exhibition practices. Incorrigibly and resolutely defiant, Downtown artists interrogated systems of accreditation, broke down generic disciplines, and directly engaged with political issuesâ⬠(14). Artists of the No Wave Art scene engaged with the political issues that plagued New York City at the time. This signif ies a potent antithesis to Jamesonââ¬â¢s notion of postmodern art as vacuous and incapable of politicization. Taylor writes, ââ¬Å"Suspicious of easy assimilation into the traditional Uptown art scene, Downtown artists mounted a full-scale assault on the structures of society that had led to grinding poverty, homelessness, the Vietnam War, nuclear power, misogyny, racism homophobia and a host of other social problemsâ⬠(22). As an aesthetic movement the No Wave Art scene stood as a highly politicized rejection of the evolution of art as commodity. It was also a domain of extreme artistic production, ââ¬Å"ââ¬Å"From graffiti art to appropriation to Neo-Geo, virtually every major development in American art during that period seems to have originated in one or more of the mostly small, mostly storefront spaces that sprang up in the contested urban zones that characterized a neighbourhood in the early stages of transition from slum to middle-class playgroundâ⬠(Gumpert, 84). The scene existed actively outside the art market, residing largely in ââ¬Å"informal alternative spacesâ⬠(Gumpert, 13). As an expression of an alternative antiestablishment attitude much of the work produced at this time took the form of graffiti art or performance art. According to Gumpert, ââ¬Å"Artists, took to the streets in the late 1970sâ⬠(11). Notable artists of this time include, the graffiti works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Herrings works in the cityââ¬â¢s subway platforms and on sidewalks and Richard Hambleton, whose work appeared in poorly lit downtown alleys and construction sites (11). The No Wave movement was also composed of a subcultural punk scene, a host of postmodern writers and experimental filmmakers and video artists. Most famously perhaps was the Times Square Show, that took place in 1980 in an empty massage parlour, with works from more than a hundred artists. These examples demonstrate the desire of many of the artists in the No Wave art movement to ââ¬Å"breakout of the framework of the established art worldâ⬠(11). The work that is categorized as No Wave was characterized by a certain ephemerality, which allowed the artists and their works to resist the constraints of the commercial market. This offers a critique of Jamesonââ¬â¢s assumption that art produced in the postmodern paradigm is inextricably linked with an economic motivation. As Gumpert explains in the forward for the text, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974 ââ¬â 1984, A majority of the works [shown in these spaces] were process oriented and situationally specif ic, involving a relationship between materials, concepts, actions and locations. They were sometimes spontaneous, improvisational, open-ended, and often collaborative. The works existed within a given time and then ceased to exist. As a result much of this work was labeled ephemeral, the intent being to create an experience rather than a product, and new terms were devised to describe it, such as installation and performanceâ⬠¦ During this periodâ⬠¦ artists out of necessity created and took control of their own contexts (10) In order to preserve much of the ephemeral work produced between 1974 ââ¬â 1984 in New York, it was archived and documented in photographs, notes, and films. Irving Sandler accounts for the motives behind documentation in the No Wave art scene, ââ¬Å"[theyââ¬â¢re] sympathies were countercultural, they believed that the documentation of a work was not art and thus not salable. They had turned to process artâ⬠¦ installation art, body art, and conceptual art because they did not want to create art commodities. Many also believedâ⬠¦ that their refusal to produce salable objects would subvert the art marketâ⬠(24). This demonstrates a anti-market sentiment in the production of postmodern No Wave art. Jameson does not account for this type of art production in the theories that he forwards in his text, Postmodernism. Writing about the No Wave literature, Robert Siegle identif ies a central insurgency against established structures of culture that existed in New York at that time. He wrote, ââ¬Å"It is, then, an insurgency, but not one that expects to break free of some kind of specif ic corrupt institution. It is an insurgency against the silence of institutions, the muteness of the ideology of form, the unspoken violence of normalizationâ⬠(4). Siegle describes No Wave writing as quintessentially postmodern in its approach to the ââ¬Å"silence of institutionsâ⬠and to the ââ¬Å"position of the speaking subjectâ⬠. Rather than attempting to overthrow institutions, No Wave literature, according to Siegle, is premised on the attempt to understand how the discourse of institutions constructs who we are, thereby using that knowledge to problematize cultural discourse. Although in his text, Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency, Siegle speaks specif ically of writing, this assessment applies equally to all artists in the No Wave scene. Through the deployment of the postmodern techniques that Jameson describes, artwork in the No Wave context, was far from the depthless commodity that Jameson imagined. It was rather highly political, productive and subversive. In his text, Postmodernism and Consumer Society, Jameson furthers his claims that in postmodernism expressive depth is replaced by an aesthetic superficiality in a phenomenon that he describes as ââ¬Å"the waning of affectâ⬠. This ââ¬Å"waningâ⬠is directly associated to a diminished political imagination. Jameson uses a comparison of the work of painter Edvard Munch and Andy Warhol to evidence this modern to postmodern shift. He contends that in postmodernism historical depth is replaced by nostalgia. Simultaneously, parody is replaced by pastiche, and an art of surface and loss is substituted for a history which ââ¬Å"remains forever out of reachâ⬠(198). Jameson feels, ââ¬Å"it is no longer clear what artists and writers of the present period are supposed to be doingâ⬠(196). This invoking of nostalgia and pastiche creates a condition in which artists can only comment upon or reproduce past art. This is articulated with Jamesonââ¬â¢s description of postmodern art practice as being characterized by ââ¬Å"the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the pastâ⬠(196). In, The Postmodern Turn, Kellner and Best describe Jamesonââ¬â¢s theory noting, ââ¬Å"Coolness, blankness, and apathy become new moods for the decelerating, recessionary postmodern condition in an age of downsizing and diminishing expectationsâ⬠(134). Jameson seems to articulate his own failings in his description of postmodern art. He admits that he is confounded by the postmodern and political work of Hans Haacke who questioned the institution and capitalism through his postmodern art installations. Of Hacke, Jameson writes, ââ¬Å"The case of Haacke poses, however, aâ⬠¦ problem, for his is a kind of cultural production which is clearly postmodern and equally clearly political and oppositional ââ¬â something that does not compute within the paradigm and does not seem to have been theoretically foreseen by itâ⬠(159). The No Wave art movement equally confounds Jamesonââ¬â¢s theory towards a postmodern art that is bound by a sense of complicity. Much critique has been garnered by Jamesonââ¬â¢s position on the art of the postmodern. Theorist Linda Hutcheon is critical of Jamesonââ¬â¢s positioning of pastiche as a baseless technique, But the looking to both the aesthetic and the historical past in postmodernist architecture is anything but what Jameson describes as pastiche, that is ââ¬Å"the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion. â⬠There is absolutely nothing random or ââ¬Å"without principleâ⬠in the parodic recall and re-examination of the pastâ⬠¦ To include irony and play is never necessarily to exclude seriousness of purpose in post-modernist art. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the nature of much contemporary aesthetic production ââ¬â even if it does make for neater theorizing. (26 -27) Downtown artists actively sought to address this issue of art production within a capitalist system. Their work is characterized by a postmodern multiplicity. In his essay on the Downtown scene, Siegle notes, Far from being defeated by contradictions, these postmoderns take form it the cue for an alternative logic. Far from being rendered hopeless by the seemingly inevitable drift of (inter)national politics, they borrow form disinformation the ironic habitation of familiar forms for cross-purposes. Far from being paralyzed by the anxiety of past mastersââ¬â¢ influence, they appropriate them for commentary on classic motifs (such as mastery, originality, autonomy, representation) and art-world structures (such as publishing houses, galleries, museums, and criticism). Far from feeling compromised by the investment economics of art, they turn the art market into a microcosm of consumer capitalism and subvert its operations. 10) No Wave artists, though they invoked themes of capitalism, were in fact openly critical of it. They did not create art with the intention of financial gain. Taylor presents Bourdieuââ¬â¢s theory on cultural capital to elucidate the artistic practices of those in the No Wave art scene and their pursuit for symbolic capital rather than economic. He writes, ââ¬Å"If th e whole field of cultural production could be thought of as all those artists, poets, musicians, editors, publishers, critics, performersâ⬠¦ hen there could be subsets of this group who did not all conform to the desire for economic capital, but rather, and mostly because their work was experimental, sought ââ¬Å"symbolic capitalâ⬠from their peersâ⬠(31). Jameson argued that postmodernism marks the final and complete incorporation of culture into the commodity system. This integration The No Wave art scene, in fact, actively critiqued this condition. Though the No Wave Art movement occurred under the conditions of late-capitalism, the work produced during this period does not embody this notion of depthless commodity Jameson maintains is the primary characteristic of postmodern art. Barbara Kruger is an example of a No Wave artist whose work engages with themes of the media and the market while being simultaneously postmodern, anti-capitalist, and political. Krugerââ¬â¢s work, particularly her piece, Untitled, (When I hear the word culture I take out my cheque-book), serves as a response to the commodity culture postmodernism is so entrenched in. This work directly addresses Jamesonââ¬â¢s concern that postmodern art is incapable of an authentic engagement with politicization. Kruger evokes many postmodern themes in her work yet avoids the non-criticality of commodif ied art practice that Jameson forwards. Kruger invokes the postmodern technique of pastiche recombining previously articulated styles while actively producing new meanings through this act re-appropriation. For Jameson, ââ¬Å"Pastiche is a recycling of the past without the critical edge of satire or the subversive role of parody; it is a gesture to the past in a mediasaturated culture that lives in a perpetual presentâ⬠(Murphie, Potts, Macmillan, 58). Where Jameson forwarded the notion that pastiche was merely ââ¬Å"blank parodyâ⬠(184) Kruger enacts pastiche as a meaningful technique. As noted in Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 ââ¬â 1990, ââ¬Å"She managed to break the conceptual barrier between art and mass media by selecting images from magazines from the 40s and 50s. Choosing them based on their poses and presenting phrases over themâ⬠¦ Stereotypes were thus turned into the vehicle for delivery of a totally different messageâ⬠(368). Some of the postmodern themes deployed by Kruger include, the questioning of meta-narrative tructures, highlighting the decentred nature of contemporary culture, and the divorcing of sign and signif ier. In her work Kruger operates within the language and iconic system of consumer culture while offering a critique of those very conditions. As outlined in this essay Jamesonââ¬â¢s theory of the cultural logic of late-capitalism fails to identify the critical aspect th at characterized much of the work produced under the conditions of postmodernism. This is specif ically demonstrated through the work of No Wave artists operating out of New york in the 1970s and 80s. While invoking the aesthetic themes common to postmodernism the work produced in the No Wave scene was highly political and did not act as a static representation of commodif ied art culture. The work of Barbara Kruger specif ically dealt with the concern of art as existing in a commodif ied global economy rather than simply falling victim to it. It was in fact the movementââ¬â¢s shift towards commodity that marked the No Waveââ¬â¢s sceneââ¬â¢s decline. The year 1984 is signif icant to this movementââ¬â¢s trajectory. In his essay entitled, Playing the Field: The Downtown Scene and Cultural Production, An Introduction Marvin J. Taylor writes, ââ¬Å"By 1984 the larger art world had encroached on the scene. That same year Mary Boone displayed and began to sell Basquiatââ¬â¢s paintings for up to $20, 000â⬠¦ The major art journals, galleries, and auction houses had co-opted the restricted field of Downtown art, creating superstars and an influx of economic capital that would eventually overtake the symbolic capitalâ⬠(36). It was exactly this move into the realm of the market that ended the production of postmodern art within the Downtown scene. Postmodern artists active in the No Wave art movement Jamesonââ¬â¢s proposition that art made under postmodern conditions is incapable of exacting a political message. Works Cited: Adamson, Glenn, Jane Pavitt, and Paola Antonelli. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990. London: V&A Pub. , 2011. Bertens, Hans. The Idea of Postmodernism: A History. London: Routledge, 1995. Cameron, Dan. East Village USA. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004. Duvall, John N. Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies. Albany: State University of New York, 2002. Hager, Steven. Art after Midnight: The East Village Scene. New York: St. Martinââ¬â¢s, 1986. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Jameson, Fredric. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998. London: Verso, 1998. Kellner, Douglas, and Sean Homer. Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Perry Anderson. The Origins of Postmodernity. London: Verso, 1998. Sandler, Irving. Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s. New York: Icon Editions, 1996 Siegle, Robert. Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Taylor, Marvin J. The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2006. Ward, Glenn. Postmodernism. Chicago: Contemporary, 2003. Print. Wheale, Nigel. The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge, 1995.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Birdsong: Man and Stephen
Birdsong Essay Sebastian Faulks shows us many horrors of World War One by using language and structure of the novel. For example this shows the imagery of the horrors of war at the hospital when Stephen got injured and what happened with the boy. Faulks starts of with Stephen Wraysford and how he is coming back to life but with pain. His pain is nothing compared to the man next to him, the man apparently could ââ¬Å"visualize the painâ⬠also its says he could see it hovering over him this I think could relate to two thing either his pain or the mans spirit. Faulks describes the imagery for us how bad it is- ââ¬Å"His body decomposing as he lay there, like those that hung on the wire going from red to black before they crumbled into the earth leaving only septic sporesâ⬠- this shows us the horrors of what war does to people. Also Faulks uses this one man to describe the many other men that go through this in the war. Faulks uses descriptive language and we can visualise the boy when ââ¬Å"His mouth was pulled open and his neck were stretchedâ⬠and also ââ¬Å"The skin of his cheeks and forehead was marked with bluish-violet patches. His eyes were oozing, as though with acute conjunctivesâ⬠- shows us the graphic imagery of the boys eyes. Stephen tells us in about this boy, not knowing who he is and having no relation to Stephen at all this shows that Stephen has sympathy and thoughts about what these soldiers go through I think he is comparing on how lucky he is that his pain was very minor to the ones that other people s uffer. Stephen describes the boyââ¬â¢s body ââ¬Å"The soft skin on the armpits and inner thighs was covered in huge, raw blistersâ⬠. Makes the reader visualise and actually see what Stephen is seeing. On page 187 it tells us that the boys voice came back to Stephen and ââ¬Å"He begged to dieâ⬠- this shows us the effect on how the damage and the pain that the boy actually must be going through. Faulks also shows us how hard the nurses job is and how her love can take over her jobâ⬠Impotently, she held both her arms wide in a gesture of motherly love, as this would comfort him. â⬠Stephen hopes that the boy would die soon, it is all so reverse he should be praying for him to live soon, but seeing and hearing the agony the boy is going through death would be more peaceful. On page 188 Faulks describes the boy the last time before he dies and we can see and imagine how his condition would be like for example-ââ¬Å"He lay motion-less, trailing his raw skin. His infected lungs began to burble and froth with yellow fluidâ⬠Faulks shows Stephen with no emotion or sympathy for the boy no remorse ââ¬Å"Stephen prayed that the boy would dieâ⬠the nurse was the opposite to what he was like she was ââ¬Å"pale, shocked, then burst into shuddering tears. She has sympathy for the boy and some feeling of lost. The next horror incident is when they go over the top to attack and Faulks uses emotional horror in the letters when they write back home. Faulks shows in Michael Wiers letter is formal like he says ââ¬Å"Donââ¬â¢t worry about me, please. It is warm enough. â⬠-shows he is covering up reality and not showing or telling the real truth because even if he does they would be able to understand it. And he says that ââ¬Å"May your prayers be with the men who will go over the topâ⬠- shows respect and feelings to all the other soldiers. Stephens letter to Isabelle shows how lonely he is and what he has experienced
Thursday, November 7, 2019
In Regards To
In Regards To In Regards To In Regards To By Maeve Maddox A web search for ââ¬Å"in regards toâ⬠brings up 680 million links, thousands of which lead to articles telling readers that ââ¬Å"in regards toâ⬠is nonstandard English. Apparently quite a few English speakers have managed to avoid reading any of them. Nonstandard ââ¬Å"in regards toâ⬠continues to spread, and not just on blogs and in comments written by the educationally challenged. Here are some examples from sites that aspire to some sort of professional expertise: Elasticity of Ridership In Regards to Transit Fare and Service Changes headline over an About.com article ICA President McLean Changes Tune in Regards to CCE headline at The Chronicle of Chiropractic Nitrogen Inversion in regards to Stereochemistry title of study guide at ucla.edu McDonalds in regards to globalization and business change title of an essay offered at a UK site The phrase ââ¬Å"in regard toâ⬠means ââ¬Å"about, regarding, concerning.â⬠Speakers who put an ââ¬Å"sâ⬠on regard in ââ¬Å"in regard toâ⬠and ââ¬Å"with regard toâ⬠are perhaps confusing these phrases with ââ¬Å"as regardsâ⬠: As regards your question concerning the membership of the Universal House BBC policy as regards interviewers/journalists and their relationship with government officials In the expressions ââ¬Å"in regard toâ⬠and ââ¬Å"with regard to,â⬠regard is a noun; in the expression ââ¬Å"as regards,â⬠regards is a verb. The noun regard does take the plural in certain other idioms. For example, Give my regards to your parents. Best regards, Sam Speakers who find it difficult to remember to omit the ââ¬Å"sâ⬠can avoid nonstandard ââ¬Å"in regards toâ⬠and ââ¬Å"with regards toâ⬠by using regarding in their place. Related post: In Regard to Your Letter Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely?Used To vs. Use ToHow to Punctuate Introductory Phrases
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Definition and Examples of a Writer
Definition and Examples of a Writer A writer is: (a) a person who writes (articles, stories, books, etc.); (b) an author: a person who writes professionally. In the words of author and editor Sol Stein, A writer is someone who cannot not write. Etymology:à From an Indo-European root, to cut, scratch, sketch an outline Examples and Observations Everyone is a writer. You are a writer. All over the world, in every culture, human beings have carved into stone, written on parchment, birch bark, or scraps of paper, and sealed into letterstheir words. Those who do not not write stories and poems on solid surfaces tell them, sing them, and, in so doing, write them on the air. Creating with words is our continuing passion.(Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and With Others. Oxford University Press, 2003)A writer is someone who writes, its true, but a writer is also someone with a large capacity for adversity. Youll want to cultivate that capacity. Stamina is a writers first quality.(Bill Roorbach, Writing Life Stories. Writers Digest, 2000)We all know its hard work. Nobody asked any one of us to become a writer. No one will care if you dont become one.No one but you, that is.(George V. Higgins, On Writing. Henry Holt, 1990)Writers are sentenced to their sentences, which sometimes set them free.(Adam Gopnik, As Big as the Ritz. The New Yo rker, September 22, 2014) Gushers and TricklersIn regard to the work habits of professional authors, Robertson Davies insisted that there are just two kinds of writers, gushers and tricklers. Take a moment to consider which category you fall into.[James] Thurberà was a gusher; for one story which was 20,000 words when finished, he wrote a total of 240,000, and fifteen different versions. It is interesting that the torrential Thurber is the one who talked most about that dread of all writers - drying up. . . . Frank OConnor was also a gusher; he rewrote some of his stories even after they had been published.The tricklers may be represented by William Styron, who says: I cant turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragrapheach sentence, evenas I go along.à Dorothy Parker, also a trickler, said: I cant write five words but I change seven!The industry of the gushers commands respect; Joyce Cary, Frank OConnor, andà [Truman] Capotewe see them writ ing andà revising, rejecting pages by the handful, and finally piecing their work together from the mass. But the tricklers have an agony of their own; they cannot continue until the last line written is as right as they can make it. Both methods seem to take about an equal amount of time.(Robertson Davies,à A Voice from the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading, rev. ed. Penguin, 1990) A Writing ExerciseBefore you begin writing about your life, I want you to think about how you feel about writing. We all have our personal mythology of what a writer is and does. I want you to write for fifteen minutes to complete the following sentence: A writer is someone who _______.Write for fifteen minutes without stopping, letting yourself explore the possibilities. Let go of all your inhibitions and enjoy yourself. Remember to be honest. When you are finished, take a look at what you have written. Did anything surprise you?If you are working with a partner, take turns reading what each of you has written and discuss the work.(Janet Lynn Roseman, The Way of the Woman Writer, 2nd ed. Haworth, 2003)Writers WriteIf you simply define a writer as someone who is writing, clarity sets in. Youre truly a writer when youre writing; and if you dont write regularly, dont pretend to give yourself that title. Start writing more, Ray Bradbury tells would-be writers at conferences, itll get ri d of all those moods youre having.(Kenneth John Atchity, A Writers Time: Making the Time to Write, rev. ed. W.W. Norton, 1995) You Are a WriterA writer is a writer. You care about writing. It isnt men or women. . . . You sit down, you write, you are not a woman, or an Italian. You are a writer.(Natalia Ginzburg, interviewed by Mary Gordon, Surviving History. The New York Times Magazine, Marc. 25, 1990)What Is a Writer Like?- A writer is like a bean plant: he has his little day, and then gets stringy.(attributed to E.B. White)- Being a writer is like being one of those riskily overbred pedigree dogsa French bulldog, for instancepoorly suited for survival despite their very special attributes. Being a writer is in defiance of Darwins observation that the more highly specialized a species, the more likelihood of extinction.(Joyce Carol Oates, A Widows Story: A Memoir. HarperCollins, 2011)- A writer is like a Gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like the government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.(Ernest Hemingw ay, letter to Ivan Kashkin, Aug. 19, 1935)- Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.(attributed to Lawrence Kasdan) The Downside of Being a WriterYou may have gathered from all this that I am not encouraging people to try to be writers. Well, I cant. You hate to see a nice young person run up to the edge of the cliff and jump off, you know. On the other hand, it is awfully nice to know that some other people are just as nutty and just as determined to jump off the cliff as you are. You just hope they realize what theyre in for.(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. by Susan Wood. Ultramarine, 1980)On the whole, professional writers are a lot of whining bastards who wouldnt last a day in a real job. . . . The true mortification of being a writer is having to meet other writers from time to time, and listen to their mundane egotistical rantings.(Duncan McLean, quoted by Jim Fisher in The Writers Quotebook: 500 Authors on Creativity, Craft, and the Writing Life. Rutgers University Press, 2006) Pronunciation: RI-ter Writers on Writing Toni Morrison on WritingWhy Do Writers Write?ââ¬â¹Writers on Writing: E.B. WhiteWriters on Writing: Overcoming Writers BlockWriters on Rewriting Also see: WritingCollaborative WritingCompositionWriters BlockWriting CenterWriting GroupWriting Process
Saturday, November 2, 2019
ENVIORNMENTAL REGULATIONS Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words
ENVIORNMENTAL REGULATIONS - Coursework Example The absence of minimum wage rate in Singapore is a matter of concern especially for migrant workers. Due to increasing problems of environmental pollution caused by several industries and by industrialization policies pursued since the late 1960s, Malaysia developed its first framework environmental legislation called the Environmental Quality Act 1974. During the start of its life, the act took major steps to curb the ever increasing pollution in the country and it was not until 1987 that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures were introduced to undertake preventative measures as well. Section 34A of the Environmental Quality (Amendment) Act 1985 makes it obligatory for anyone who wishes to undertake some activity to conduct a study to weigh the environmental impacts that the activity will have and the measures to be undertaken. The Malaysian EIA procedures are comparable to the National Environmental Policy Act 1969 (NEPA) model of the USA (Memon, n.d.). The number of environmental laws has grown rapidly and may be sufficient in number but not in quality. These laws have been unable to curb the ever increasing pollution in Malaysia. One of the reasons is that the legislation was mainly passed to cover and address situations as they arose with time, not to address the core environmental issues. There are also a significant number of breaches of environmental law but enforcement action is extremely low: to date only 5 cases are reported in the law reports of Malaysia under the heading of environmental law (Bt. Maidin, 2005). Singaporeââ¬â¢s environmental issues are typical of an urbanized city. The issues relate to pollution from industrialization and urbanization and the protection of nature areas. The overall environmental management lies with the Ministry of Environment (ENV) established in 1970 which has become a full-fledged ministry and is responsible for a number of areas such as providing infrastructure for waste management, and
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