Expository Writing

The story “The Lost Boys”, written by Jeff Gordinier, tells to us the tale of a selected few unfortunate young men who have been excommunicated from their polygamist-Mormon sect for various reasons. While Gordinier’s writing takes on the tone of a descriptive narrative, imbedded there is an argument and he utilizes certain phrases and passages to make the case. This forces the reader to quickly subscribe to the argument, or not. In this invention, I will be analyzing the argument, and deciding if the author’s tactics allow the case to be made efficiently.

The argument, and the emotions that are provoked by the choice of language (phrases, wording, etc.), being made by Gordinier in “The Lost Boys” is one of sorrow and sympathy. The author attempts to create an empathetic (and very descriptive) narrative, in which he forces you to feel sympathy for the “lost boys”, such as Tom Sam Steed, and Raymond Hardy. The overall “argument”, if it needed to be isolated and put in a spotlight, would be that all of the people in the polygamist village need to be freed and The Prophet should, ultimately, be put behind bars. Jeff Gordinier is very successful is painting this argument and making it believable and real for the reader.

Using the character of Tom Sam Steed, Gordinier first sets out to make the reader feel sorrow for the characters, with the exception of The Prophet. Due to the sympathy that he elicits for the “lost boys”, his language has the oppposite effect with regards to The Prophet. Gordinier first introduces Tom Sam Steed and describes how he first got placed on probation; “Yes, he’d gotten in trouble for seeing movies. He’d watched Charlie’s Angels at a theater in Salt Lake City, and for this, the impure and diabolical influence of Cameron Diaz, Tom had been put on probation” (149). The author uses the phrase “impure and diabolical influence” to describe something as harmless as an actor. This is just one of the strategies that Gordinier utilizes to force his argument and influence the reader to feel sorrow and sympathy for the characters in “the lost boys”. Later, the fragmented questions brought forth by The Prophet only support the feelings towards Tom; “Are you a homosexual? Who is your father?” (150). Finally, The Prophet comes to a decision that Gordinier throws bluntly into the middle of the paragraph - “You won’t have a chance for salvation in this lifetime. You’re welcome to the scriptures, but that is all” (150).

Jeff Gordinier uses similiar strategies throughout the story, as he leaves the reader no choice but to form a hatred against The Prophet (as it should be) and to feel remorseful for the other characters, the pawns of The Prophet. However, absent from his tale of sorrow and desertion are absolutely any other opposing views. Gordinier does not falter in his damnation of The Prophet and his evil ways. It is my belief that the absence of such opposing views makes the argument much stronger, as it somehow portrays that there is no conceivable way that The Prophet could be liked or supported.

The ending of the argument shows the young men who have been excommunicated from The Prophet’s polygamist sect living in conditions of filth

1.) “The voice of the prophet wasn’t what you’d expect. It was soft.” - The Prophet
2.) “The prophet didn’t raise his voice, not even when he was doling out the worst of punishments…” - The Prophet
3.) “Warren Jeffs spoke very, very slowly.” - The Prophet
4.) “A lot of the Cricker families had cassette tapes of the prophet’s sermons. They’d sit around and listen to them.” - Discipline, The Crick, The Prophet
5.) “You got to know that voice real well.” - Discipline, Authority
6.) “Between the sermons and the constant physical labor, there wasn’t much to do out there…” - Discipline, The Crick
7.) “…the prophet had so many rules that the place was beginning to feel like a gulag.” - Discipline, The Prophet
8.) “The prophet was almost a feudal lord - a civic and corporate godfather who controlled every acre of land..” - Discipline, Authority, The Prophet
9.) “No movies, no TV…, no video games, no Internet, no smokes, no cussing, no showing attitude…” - Discipline, Authority
10.) “He would also say that those who failed to achieve perfect obedience would be cast into eternal damnation.” - Discipline, The Prophet, Authority
11.) “You found stuff to do, though, in spite of the rules, and that’s what got you into trouble.” - Discipline, Authority
12.) “Now for even the most miniscule of infractions…They were being excommunicated.” - Discipline, Authority
13.) “…Tom Sam Steed considered himself a true believer.” - Authority, The Prophet
14.) “the impure and diabolical influence of Cameron Diaz…” - Discipline, The Prophet
15.) “He was floating in limbo on the margins of the church, but he badly wanted back in.” - Authority, Excommunication
16.) “…lobbying for a face-to-face meeting with Warren Jeffs” - The Prophet, Authority
17.) “Warren Jeff’s house - a gigantic walled and gated community of its own, really, since Jeffs was said to have anywhere from forty to seventy wives.” - The Prophet
18.) “…the prophet’s hand and learned that it, too, was soft: a smooth sac of filigreed bones.” - The Prophet, Authority
19.) “With their white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes…” - The Crick, Incest
20.) “The prophet’s questions, though…they tripped him up…Are you a homosexual? Who is your father? - The Prophet, Discipline
21.) “soft and slow voice…” - The Prophet
22.) “You won’t have a chance for salvation in this lifetime. You’re welcome to the scriptures, but that is all.” - The Prophet, Authority
23.) “Tom was told he could no longer associate with his family. He could no longer set foot on church property.” - Authority, Excommunication
24.) “Almost as an afterthought, Jeffs pointed out that Tom would be wiped off the face of the earth when the destructions came.” - Excommunication, The Prophet
25.) “Not much time passed, maybe twenty minutes, before Tom…decided to kill himself” - Excommunication, Authority
26.) “…the only sound he would later remember…a voice, slow and soft, tape-looping in his head.” - Excommunication, The Prophet
27.) “Global apocalypse is right around the corner. Government is the enemy…” - Authority, Seclusion from the outside world
28.) “…outsiders are to be ignored if not chased off UEP land.” - Seclusion
29.) “Even high ranking state officials have encountered the collective allergy to the presence of outsiders.” - Seclusion
30.) “…there are disturbing customs associated with polygamy.” - Crime
31.) “We know it…that young people are taught to accept a lifestyle which in the past has absolutely been the marrying of young girls - not upon their choosing - to whomever the prophet decides is worthy.” - Crime, The Prophet, Authority
32.) “Warren Jeffs aparrently found a solution: shear off some of the boys.” - Excommunication, The Prophet
33.) “Some, like Tom, felt the cold, severing blade of instant expulsion.” - Excommunication
34.) “Among the banished…who had sidestepped the prophet’s rules against consorting with girls by hitting on a creative solution: They experimented with each other.” - Excommuncation, The Prophet
35.) “…tired of being treated like a ghost, you ran away..” - Excommunication, Seclusion
36.) “…others had been born within the perimeter of the compound and had rarely, if ever, ventured more than a few miles away.” - Seclusion
37.) “They couldn’t name the president of the United States, didn’t know how to spend or save money…” - Excommunication, Seclusion
38.) “A lot of them, Tom noticed, didn’t know a thing about how the world worked.” - Seclusion
39.) “Richard thought: Your knowledge is what gives you your power. He decided to go to school…and as a result he got kicked out of church.” - Excommunication, Crime
40.) “Each kid tasted freedom differently.” - Excommunication
41.) “For Raymond Hardy…breaking away meant an all-access pass to the Elysian Fields of technology.” - Excommunication, Freedom
42.) “For other kids, it was beer and drugs. Pot, coke, crystal meth, X, ’shrooms.” - Freedom, Excommunication
43.) “Richard saw boys experimenting and going off the deep end; they had no common sense when it came to sex and drugs.” - Seclusion, Freedom
44.) “(Besides, they were already going to hell)” - Discipline, The Prophet
45.) “Alone, over time, ex-Crickers felt a throb of desolation and futility.” - Seclusion, Freedom
46.) “One time…a kid had a six-cylinder pistol. He was drinking a lot, telling people good-bye, saying weird shit. Finally he put the pistol to his head and snapped the trigger…” - Freedom, Excommunication
47.) “..Lost Boys are claiming that the prophet and his inner circle systematically conspired to lock them out of jobs, school, and family relationships.” - Crime, The Prophet
48.) “…pretty much everything a free society would allow.” - Freedom
49.) “…since nobody here (The Crick) will speak to him.” - Seclusion
50.) “Isolation, blind trust in the authority of a lone commander…” - The Prophet, Authority

The story The Lost Boys tells to us the tale of a Mormon polygamist sect located on the border between the states of Utah and Arizona. Inside of this isolated sect there are a group of young men who have been ex-communicated for performing various “sins”, such as watching movies, or experimenting with homosexuality. The boys who have been ex-communicated become the “lost boys”, due to the fact that they were driven out of the sect and forced to abandon their families in turn for the supposed destination of hell (or so the prophet of this religious cult claims). A peculiar thing happens when these young men are expelled and shunned from the only thing they ever knew; they begin to have the feelings of guilt, regardless of the fact that they have been brutalized into thinking that they will rot in hell for the rest of eternity for doing petty non-criminal activities.

One of the characters in the story, named Tom Sam Seed, goes through a similiar process of internal complicity. Upon being banished from the town for seeing Charlie’s Angels, he is told that he “won’t have a chance of salvation in this lifetime” (150). Due to the diabolical leadership of the commune prophet, he is forced into feelings of guilt over something that ordinary people would find no shame whatsoever in doing. The author, Jeff Gordinier, employs a style of writing that borders on reluctancy to submit to the prophet’s one-man regime of terror. He creates the atmosphere of simply accepting what the prophet says, and also accepting the fact that he will not be easily taken down. This creates an interesting situation for the reader of the story (which would be myself); a feeling of wonderment, and sympathy. Upon finishing this novel, I was, first and foremost, amazed that these polygamist sects exist in today’s world. I was, also, amazed that the officer of the law in the story was not able to take down the prophet, regardless of the fact that there was certain concrete evidence that the prophet was a pedophile. This led to the notion of feeling sympathy, as if the people who were involved in this travesty did not choose to be. The characters, such as Tom Steed and Richard Gilbert, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, however they still feel as if they have done something wrong.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, the topics for the reading responses and the inventions are now posted to their respective pages. Either click on the links to the right, or use the links in this post.

I’ve also updated the Course Calendar to accurately reflect the rest of the semester, so check that out, too.

For Monday, read Kate Krautkramer’s “Road Kill” and Jeff Gordinier’s “The Lost Boys.”

For your reading response, discuss the ethics involved in either piece, the author’s complicity (or not) in these issues, and what position that puts you, the reader.

Post your response by Tuesday at 5pm.

The rest of the response topics, invention topics, and the revised reading schedule will be posted to the blog by Monday afternoon. I’ll also post a mini-lecture on authorial voice and positionality.

There are many types of relationships that exist in the world today; some may be based on a quality called “attractiveness”, while others seem to be born out of necessity or practicality. The story “Five Forgotten Instincts” displays the function (or non-function) of attractiveness through the medium of a man who is horribly disfigured, and therefore physically un-attractive. This, however, does not halt his ability to pick up women and men. In this invention, I will be examining the function of attractiveness in human relationships, and what Dan Chaon (the author of “Five Forgotten Instincts”) says the function of attractiveness is.

Before there can be any analysis of the role of attractiveness, a definition must be set in place to clarify what this word means. Attractiveness is the quality of arousing interest, whether it be physical, mental, or otherwise. Attractiveness can be found everywhere in the world, and people often find it in the most unexpected places.

The role of attractiveness in human relationships is very unprecise. Surely there have been times when you have wondered what exactly your friend saw in his new girlfriend or boyfriend. For this reason, attractiveness is a slippery concept and it will vary greatly from person to person. However, attractiveness is very important in the relationships that humans have. For people to engage in relationships involving sexual and matriomonial aspects, there must be some initiative. This initiative often comes in the form of attractiveness. It may be safe to say that attraction between two people is the main catalyst for a relationship, however, there are certainly different situations where a relationship is born out of necessity or practicality. Examples of this include relationships in countries where a person’s parents might chose their mate, or in other countries where people may marry to either escape their current financial situation or further advantage it. When this is not the case, attractiveness is the reason that people engage in relationships. A mutual attraction is very emotionally rewarding for people engaged in these types of relationships.

The function of attractiveness in a relationship should be very different than what is usually portrayed in today’s world. I belief that a relationship should not even be considered if there are no aspects to which you become attracted to in another person. Attraction should be the prelude to an intense emotional bond that can be formed in relationships, making the relationship stronger and (possibly) longer-lasting. Since there are different examples of attractiveness, including both physically and mentally, the relationship will take on a different style depending on which one is being deployed. When two people become physically attracted, the emotional bond might be delayed (or never appear). Attractiveness should be more than merely a physical appeal. The emotional attraction that forms between two people provides something that a physical attraction cannot.

Attractiveness functions in “Five Forgotten Instincts”, written by Dan Chaon, in a very peculiar way. There does not seem to be any emotional attraction between Chaon’s narrator and his different “subjects”. The people (both men and women) that Chaon’s narrator takes home and ends up having sexual relations with might be described as “desperate”. Desperate enough to find attraction in the man who has been disfigured by his grandfather’s Doberman. Also, the people in “Five Forgotten Instincts” tend to mistake attraction for amazement or wonder. In this respect, it can be said that attractiveness does not have a place or a function in the story.

In conclusion, the role and function of attractiveness is very unprecise. The quality of being attractive will change the relationship depending on if the appeal is physical, emotional, or both. The story “Five Forgotten Instincts” shows that attraction can go beyond physical and emotional aspects, and can possibly be mistaken for wonderment, or even pity.

Invention 1: Dan Chaon’s “Five Forgotten Instincts”

Pick one of the following topics to compose a 4-page invention. If you have an idea for an invention that isn’t in this list, zing me an e-mail with as much detail as possible and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Topic 1 — The first time you read this story, you were almost certainly reading to figure out what’s going on. When you re-read it as a writer, however, what do you notice that you didn’t before? What aspects of the piece seem most important to you as a writer? What is most impressive in the writing? What are its shortcomings? Finally, how can you combine your two readings to get a deeper understanding of the piece and how it functions as a piece of writing?

Topic 2 — What is the role of attractiveness in human relationships? What should it be? How does attractiveness function in the relationships shown and mentioned in “Five Forgotten Instincts”? What is the effect on relationships of attractiveness?

Topic 3 — What are the “five forgotten instincts” and by whom have they been forgotten? How were they forgotten? Why? What is an instinct, and why should it be the title of this reading?

Your invention should be posted to the blog by 5pm on Tuesday.

Out of the many activities that had kept me busy and entertained, reading never ceases to be the most fascinating. Throughout my many years of pleasure reading, I have developed a unqiue reading strategy. This strategy proves to be the most effective for me, generally allowing even the deepest hidden themes and symbols to shine brightly.

First and foremost, I find reading most enjoyable when it is done at a relatively quick pace. This allows me to understand everything and not spend too much time on one concept. The pace, in turn, aids me in the process of linking the sentences together. Another useful advantage that this creates is the ability to get a better feel for how something is pieced together. Deciphering and understanding the style of a particular author is a very important part of reading.

Once there is a general idea of the sytle in my head, I can allow myself to visualize the events in the literature vividly. Visualizing what is written down is a big part of reading for me, and it has helped me to understand and mediate on characters, symbols, and even themes. There will inevitably be certain times while I’m reading when I will have a varying amount of difficulty understanding a certain concept or passage. It is during times such as the aforementioned (as well as when I find a particular passage interesting or peculiar) when I will return to the spot and re-read it. Due to the visualization of most aspects of the novel, it is these visuals that stay with me after I have finished the book.

Lastly, one of the most important things that I look for while reading is word choice. The words that a particular author uses, or refrains from using, can indeed shape a piece of literature. I pay especially close attention to the verbs and nouns (as well as punctuation) that the author uses. A good deal of information can be ascertained through the interpretation of the language used by a writer. Using verbs and nouns that are more powerful and driving will create a different effect than using less forceful language.

The story “Five Forgotten Instincts”, written by Dan Chaon, tells to us the story of a man who becomes horribly disfigured when a dog attacks him. Digging deeper into the underlying themes and motifs of the story, one quickly becomes aware of the explanation of the quality of “being attractive” or “attractiveness”. The scars on the body and face of the main character could potentially prove to us that the being attractive, or having attractive features, does not come from the outermost layer of the human experience (the physical layer). This response will attempt to define “attractive”, and how this relates to the “Five Forgotten Instincts”.

The term “attractive” can and will mean something different to each and every person, however, the basic principle of someone or something being “attractive” to you will remain generally the same. The term attractive can mean, on the most basic level, a physical feature of someone/something that draws you closer. How many times have you seen a shirt, pair of pants, or anything else while shopping that you had a strong desire to purchase? Without doubt you have seen a person during your day-to-day life that you had a secret (or not so secret) attraction to. These are all examples of what “attractive” consists of, on merely a physical level. However, there certainly other levels and definitions for being “attractive”. On a more spiritual plane, physical features and what you see are of no importance. A person with a personality, however peculiar or not, that draws you to them is mererly another example of being “attractive”. It is a great thing that human beings have the ability to understand, interpret, and express emotions. This is a great virtue, and because of this the defintion of “attractive” is not limited simply to the physical plane of the human experience. “Attractive” is not limited to what you see, and it includes what you feel (and sometimes hear).

The term “attractiveness”, differing from the term “attractive”, is the collective sum of the attraction between two (or more) people. “Attractiveness” is the result of two people having qualities that are respectively “attractive” to eachother (remember, this can include both the physical and more “spiritual” stratums). “Atrractiveness” often comes at seemingly strange times. Think about all the times you’ve seen an unlikely couple together. This fact, however, only satisfys the notion that the definiton of “attractive” will vary from person to person.

Dan Chaon, the author of the story “Five Forgotten Instincts”, would most likely view my defintion of attractive and attractiveness as excessively optimistic. He suggests that the reason why people are attracted to him is not because of someone perceiving him beautiful regardless of his physical taints, but because of wonderment. The main character states that even though he was ugly afterward, there was something about him “that people are attracted to nevertheless” (Chaon, 69). He goes on to suggest that there are certain people who enjoy his physical deformities in a more sexual manner. “Playing nurse makes them horny”, he notes, and that there have been many times when a lover has touched his chest and “drawn in that little intake of breath” (Chaon, 69). “And these aren’t just the homely ones, not just the desperate, or the twisted”.

While it would appear that Chaon’s definition of what it is in him that proves to be attractive to the rest of the world differs greatly from mine, that is not the case. In fact, I would agree that in some cases wonderment and amazement can prove to influence the feeling of attractive greatly.

I’ll be continuing the thoughts and ideas in this post throughout the semester, but this will get us started.

Reading as a Writer, part 1

We’re trained to read in certain ways and for certain things by the schooling we have received, by the tests we have been given, and by the questions we have been asked about the materials we were to have read. All of these things create in our minds an image of what reading should be, what it should produce, and what it is for.

At the same time, those of us who somehow manage to develop or retain a sense that reading is, and can be, fun, sometimes find ourselves developing reading styles and strategies that differ from the more institutional model of reading we have received from our education.

What do we do when we read? What is happening in our minds when our eyes scan over letters on a page, on a cereal box, on a billboard? And what is the best way to read? What is it that we should be noticing, contemplating, and understanding while we read?

When I was in grade school, I was taught to read for three things:

• Details
• Symbols
• Themes

Details are, probably, self-explanatory. They’re the little things that make up the work being read. However, when do details cease being “little things” and start to function as symbols or themes? In other words, when do they become important things?

Symbols are details that stand in for larger, more abstract (usually) concepts. Nathaniel Hawthorne has a great short story called “The Minister’s Black Veil.” It’s about a village minister who decides one day to wear a black veil that covers his face. All day. Every day. For the rest of his life. The village decides that this act must be symbolic, that the veil must mean something (and that the meaning of the veil must be something important). Does it mean that the minister is ashamed of something he has done? Is he ashamed of something the village or the villagers have done? Is it a constant reminder of the (sinful) vanity of mankind? Who knows? The minister never says.

Themes, I was taught, are recurring details or images, or words, that act as signals to good readers that Something Is Going On Here (SIGOH). Themes are important. They show what the author is trying to express, or at least what the good reader should get out of the work being read. In the TV show Smallville, for instance, young Clark Kent (he’s really the alien Kal-El from the planet Krypton, and he’ll grow up to be Superman) has problems with his love life because he can’t tell his girlfriend that he’s a space alien with superhuman powers. (All of this is revealed, practically in each episode, by many, many details we’re shown about Clark and his girlfriend Lana.) We could say that Clark’s alien heritage symbolizes the alienation many teenagers feel, that his being from another planet is a dramatic way to show the feeling that many teens have that no one is like them, no one understands them, and that no one could ever like them if they knew how the teen really was. We could then say that a theme of the show is the struggle between alienation and the need to be liked and accepted.

Symbols and Themes are, of course, built out of details, and I’m not going to tell you that they’re bad things to look for in your reading. (And yes, I’m aware that I referred to a TV show in a discussion of reading — I’ll have more to say about this in a later post.)

However, there’s more to reading and to literature (and to all narrative art, for that matter) than picking out the Symbols and Themes.

We could, in fact, read for different things entirely. Noticing the tone of a piece, or the order in which its details are revealed to us, or the way the piece is structured, or the words the author uses (and the words the author refrains from using), can all signal to readers that Something Is Going On Here (SIGOH), but the SIGOH indicated by these signals would be different from the ones indicated by reading for symbols and themes.

When we’re reading for an English class, we’re frequently reading to find out what important world or life topics are being addressed, and then we’re reading to find out what the positions of that work are, with regard to the important world or life topics. (It is also, of course, easy to craft exams that test for these things.)

But if we want to improve our own writing skills, and our own awareness of other authors’ writing skills, then it might be less important to know that J.K. Rowling seems to be deeply conflicted about the heroic possibilities of girls (yes, Hermione Granger is the smartest witch of her generation, but that doesn’t help her to out-hero Harry Potter, for instance; from this we can see that intelligence is good, but luck and good breeding — and being male — seem to trump even the smartest young magic-user), and more important to note that Rowling creates her breathlessly fast pacing through the frequent use of run-on sentences. By joining different sentences into single, long sentences, she prevents the reader from taking a mental breath at the period, and thus slowing down.

Is it a good thing to use (some would say abuse) run-on sentences? No. But does it produce the desired effect? Heck yeah. We race through those books, even when they’re nine trillion pages long. Paying attention to the way the work is crafted is part of what I call “reading as a writer.”

But before we can get to that point, we need to take a few minutes to assess our current reading strategies and habits.

For this first installment of Reading As A Writer, I want you to think about how you read, and what it is that you’re trying to do when you read. Compose one page describing, in general, what it is that you do while reading. You may want to consider the following:

• Do you read quickly or slowly?
• Do you read for fun? If so, what do you read for fun?
• What do you focus on while reading?
• Do you find yourself going back and doing much re-reading? At what points?
• What do you remember most after reading?
• Do you visualize the events vividly?
• What have you been trained to do as a reader? By whom?
• What would you like to do as a reader? Why?
• What is the most important thing to get from a work you’re reading? Why?

If you’re having trouble answering these questions, pick one of the readings from The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 that’s not on our reading list (and that you haven’t read before) and sit down and read it. Take notes as you read. And jot down your impressions of your own reading as soon as you finish.

Post this to the course blog by 5pm on Thursday.