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09/19/2005 Archived Entry: "On the Essay"
On the Essay
Richard Miller in the latest CCC Interchanges section writes that the essay serves as a space for one's own thoughts, opens up the "landscape" for exploring ideas, is full of "balderdash" at times, asks impertinent questions which are considered, reconsidered, and sometimes rejected, and is a space for the pent up imagination, allows us to work with political, social, environmental, and economic issues. The essay, Miller writes, is often wrong. It makes errors. It corrects itself at times.
Sounds like a weblog.
Replies: 3 comments
Well, desire is true for any writing, blog or not.
That Miller left this genre as open-ended, as wrong at times, as not truth, as political, social, etc. was what interested me more.
In other words, if there isn't such a difference between what an essay does or what a blog does, why favor one over the other?
So I'm more interested in the fetish of the essay as "convention."
Posted by jeff @ 09/21/2005 03:48 PM EST
It sounds like a blog to me too, Jeff, and it has me wondering if we can really "make" students write essays/blogs in the way that Miller is suggesting. Don't get me wrong-- I like what he's writing and talking about in terms of this particular definition of essay. I guess what I'm wondering is this: isn't the desire to write these kinds of essays personal and thus not really something that can be forced by education per se? It's kind of like blogs (and we'll see how you and your students do with blogs this term): can you really "make" someone keep a a blog, or is that something they have to "want" to do for their own reasons/desires to express themselves?
Of course, I could be wrong....
Posted by Steve Krause @ 09/21/2005 02:15 PM EST
It does sound like a weblog! I'm a lapsed subscriber and so haven't seen this--thanks for the reference.
Posted by Donna @ 09/19/2005 10:31 PM EST