A recent quest for an obscure book title brought me back to my own late-college writing samples. Which, naturally, led me to ponder, have I become older and wiser? Or have my skills only atrophied in the mind-numbing corporate world? Get it on!
The original - the introduction to a nine-pager for English 166c: The Novel Since World War II, vintage December 2004:
Although the events they describe are only set in times deceivingly close together, Philip Roth’s The Counterlife and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart represent opposite poles of the development of human storytelling. Achebe’s novel adheres to his adaptation of the antiquated oral traditions of the Ibo, while Roth writes in the personage of Nathan Zuckerman, a popular, blockbuster writer only a measure of exaggeration from Roth himself. The contrasts of style mirror the differences in the cultures and conflicts dealt with in the novels, but many striking parallels and similarities emerge, leading to deeper questions of the nature of the story itself on all its levels. The commonalities even across the vast cultural separation underlie the needs and functions of stories in human conflicts on social and personal levels. Overlooking initial stark separations and moving through the thematic elements that occupy both novels, issues of religion and culture highlight the function of stories in defining the sides of a conflict, shedding new light on the motivations of the characters and the writers themselves in the trying times depicted and serving as context for many forms of writing and storytelling portrayed.
Heh. Well. Not the worst thing that has come across my Sr. Analyst's desk. Definitely long, at times convoluted, though. Here's a different take, with five-plus years of real-world writing and editing experience (and no need to satisfy page number/word count requirements):
Although the events they describe are set deceivingly close together - just a century apart - Philip Roth’s The Counterlife and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart represent opposite poles in the development of human storytelling. Achebe adapts the oral traditions of the Ibo, while Roth writes as Nathan Zuckerman, a blockbuster writer only a slight exaggeration from Roth himself. The contrasting styles mirror the different cultures portrayed in the two novels. However, the striking parallels between traditional African and modern American stories reveal storytellers' shared cultural and religious concerns as they mediate conflicts across human history.Not all that different to start - a pat on the back for ya, young Dan. But what were you even trying to say to start that first sentence? Is that really how you wanted to lead off? Old Dan takes some pride in ruthlessly lopping words from sentence two. Previous sentence three should obviously be sentence 3A and 3B, and from there, old Dan started sadly shaking his head a bit at his younger self. You foolish blowhard, with your run-on sentences packed with jargon! I do remember the pressure to compete with English majors, but I doubt I was fooling anyone (my transcript would probably be harder to dig up than the class's syllabus).
A few other notes... For formal writing today, I wouldn't use em-dash clauses, much less in the first sentence. And I maintain that "However, ..." is a legitimate way to start a sentence, but seeing as many disagree, I'd try to avoid it for any writing that might come under scrutiny. However (heh), both of those elements are characteristic of my current writing style, so I left them in for fairness' sake.
Finally, style aside, what do I now think of the ideas in the paper? Partly, I'm impressed - I can barely focus enough for Twitter-style reactions to what I read today. Still, "storytellers have more in common than not" isn't really groundbreaking from a literary or anthropological perspective. I definitely still enjoy the reading aspects of academic literature, but maybe never really had the deep analysis in me.
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| Made it! Nice work young man. |
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