From "Lucky" by Gabrielle Bell

     This was undoubtedly my favorite comic we have read thus far in the class. Bell's ideas flowed smoothly, and the combination of the art and her writing created an enjoyable, quirky, easy to read piece. I easily related to her feelings of imprisonment at her mundane job, because spending extreme amounts of time doing anything that isn't your lifelong passion, such as assembling trinkets, can easily begin to feel like jail. Bell's simple way or writing and illustrating were delightful to read, and contained enough subtly humor and relate able awkwardness to make me really believe everything she said. The way she viewed France is very similar to the I view it, as a sophisticated city where people drink wine and smell flowers all day long. I really loved this piece.

Pickle Juice?

     Although the majority of my family is very eccentric, my mother's sister is a tad more extravagant than the rest. And not in the sense of fashion or wealth, but more so in the odd and very detailed memories she always shares with our family. So she was, of course, my first choice to interview.
     My Aunt Jeanie is fifty one years old, and clinically diagnosed bi polar. But while she is a little out there the majority of the time, if you catch her at a good moment, or just happen to be her favorite niece, you can find very valuable and interesting information from the array of words that spew out of her mouth.
   When interviewing Aunt Jeanie, I asked her to recall one of her favorite past times. And that she did. She answered me with a thorough and lengthy story about where she spent her weekend nights as a kid during the winter in Chicago. It began normal enough, her meeting up with her friends at the local frozen over pond to go ice skating. But she did not specify any of her friends, which boys she thought were cute at the time, or even an incident when someone fell through the ice. What she told me was about the concession stand right down the path from the pond, where her and her friends could buy the refreshing beverage of pickle juice, served in the exquisite outer skin of a tomato. You heard me right, pickle juice drunken out of a tomato. People actually payed money for this!
     So while the majority of the interview was based on this unusual phenomenon, I learned from my Aunt Jeanie how easily it is to remember one aspect of an event or past time extremely vividly, and the rest can easily be just a huge blur.

Excerpt from "Candyfreak" by Steve Almond

     I really took a liking to this excerpt from Almond's book Candyfreak. The plot is very quirky and different, but very pleasurable to read; I can feel Almond's nostalgia as he visits the different Candy Factories. Although I myself know little to nothing about real life candy factories, how they operate, etc., I couldn't help but relating every scene Almond described the something I've seen from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I imagine all of the workers as Oompa Loompa's, and each factory as a magnificent castle with large metal gates, filled with magic. So maybe my perception of Candy factories is a little tainted, but who's isn't?
     Either way, I was really fond of Almond's writing style, and how although he, like Ozick in the previous article, was telling not of himself, he did a great job of showing us just how much candy factories mean to him. He also took something as small as a factory, and the workers who occupied it, and made inferences and formed questions about the ever changing world. This essay really made me want to go to South Dakota and buy a whole bunch of Twin Bings.

Chapter Nine "Interviewing"

     This chapter on interviewing explains to the reader what exactly they should be looking for when interviewing someone, and the gestures and body language, along with the composition of the questions, must be formatted intelligently and keenly to bring about the intended effect. Though I am extremely interested in writing and literature, I'm not a journalist at all. I feel uncomfortable asking people intimate questions and chancing their rage and anger when they feel I've portrayed them negatively in an article. No thanks.
     But either way, I liked that this book had a chapter about interviewing, because if used correctly the interviewer can create an atmosphere sufficient for the interviewee to feel comfortable enough to talk truthfully. So while I myself never volunteer myself to be in situations like these, I admire the way this book sets the guidelines.

"What Helen Keller Saw" by Cynthia Ozick

     This essay was very telling. As a child who learned about the set backs and accomplishments of Helen Keller, I was surprised to now read that many critics looked harshly upon her, viewing her as a phony and a falsifier. But aside from the sad nature of the essay, I did enjoy the way in which it was written. This piece of nonfiction had basically nothing to do with the writer, which is not what we have been reading recently, and therefore this piece stood out profoundly. Though the reader is given no reason to believe that Keller and Ozick knew each other personally, I truly felt that Ozick embodied the raw emotions of both Keller and her mentor Annie, as if she was right there with them every moment.
     This piece was quite long, and didn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat, which made the process of actually reading it very long and drawn out. But it was interesting to see a different perspective on the life of Helen Keller than what I had previously been exposed to.

"Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace

     This piece by Wallace starts out very unemotional, just a description of the lobster festival in Maine. But as you keep reading, it becomes more and more noticeable the Wallace is commenting on the cruelty of boiling the lobsters alive. And then on eating any animal in general. I found the way Wallace went about the topic very clever and interesting, it definitely wasn't what I expected. I also thought it was smart of him to remain somewhat unbiased on the topic. He did not criticize the torment of lobsters, but more so questioned it, and wondered how even he could legitimize eating a lobster, knowing that it was just recently boiled alive. This piece was somewhat disturbing, yet the writing was brilliant. I truly enjoyed the author's voice and style of writing.

Chapter 8 "Written Sources"

     This chapters explains how written sources are a large part of creative nonfiction, even though it doesn't seem so. When you think of writing a memoir, or a nonfiction essay, the last thought that come to mind is doing research on the topic. But as this chapter points out, many celebrated pieces of creative nonfiction use multiple written sources, whether a grandmother's old diary or history books. The chapter also explains how written sources are incorporated into nonfiction writing, which even with direct quotations, requires no parenthetical citation or footnote.