Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Memoir and the Memoirist (Introduction)
Now this is the kind of school reading I was expecting(boring). This book is defiantly not as intriguing as the liars club. The book started off vary slow and kind of picked up a little towards the end of the introduction. This books just seems like its going to be one of those boring books full of big words and descriptions that just aren't that fun to think about. Now I hope this book proves me wrong and starts to get a lot more interesting and more fun to read, but by judging by the first ten pages I found myself thinking about other things. I did find some interesting things like when he describes the difference between a autobiography and memoir. To write a memoir you have to be selective; to write one's autobiography is to be indiscriminate(Pg.2) You can tell right of the bat that Larson is an intelligent teacher by the way he answers the students questions and his ideas that he feeds them. It shows that his methods of teaching are very effective because when it is time for the students to leave they come back and insist on him teaching them further. The demanding of his students show that he is a great teacher and he knows what he is doing. Hopefully this book will open my eyes to new things and will prove me wrong and turn out to be a very good book.
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I like what you said about the Memoirist. The book is boring and I appreciate the honesty. I also agree that it has some good information. When you spoke about his methods of teaching it reminded me of when the narrator said that during his classes "One reads, the rest comment. I speak last, hoping to help each writer balance, where possible, self-exploration and her self-selected theme. (10) I like that the narrator takes a non- controlling approach o helping his students. I wish that you would have talked more about The Liars' Club, because I also agree that it is much more interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't say the book will get any more interesting. But, it does give good information on teaching and learning as a memoirist. I do agree that Larson seems like a great teacher. He seems to challenge his students. He even mentions students dropping the class and others complaining of it's difficulty. But, this is good for this situation because he's just trying to get the best material out of his students.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, Todd. There's a lot of good advice, I think, and even some interesting philosophy about memory as we read on. Stick with it.
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