Review Of Jonathan Franzen's 'The Corrections'

In Death of an Innocent, Chris McCandless goes on a memorable and tragic journey into Alaska, but for most of his expedition he was known, not as Chris McCandless, but as Alexander Supertramp. The reason that he changed his name for his journey was because he is running away from his past and wanted to become the person he believed he really was.

In the article, "Why Writing Matters" by Dana Gioia, Gioia makes a contention asserting that the levels of intrigue youthful Americans have appeared in workmanship as of late have declined and that this pattern is an extreme issue with expansive outcomes. Methodologies Gioia utilizes to help his contention incorporate reference of convincing surveys, reports made by unmistakable associations that have issued contemplates, and a citation from a conspicuous creator. Gioia's general reason in composing this article has all the earmarks of being to draw consideration towards inadequacies in American interest in expressions of the human experience. His essential gathering of people would be the American open all in all with a huge concentrate on

After he got down from the Devils Thumb, the author, Jon Krakauer, had to decide what to do after he camped out. He smoked a supply of cigarettes and then his only supply of marijuana. While cooking a meal of oatmeal, he burnt down part of his tent. The tent he brought was borrowed from his own father, and his father was a a stubborn, volatile person. His father was a mountaineer and had encouraged his son to climb by teaching him how to scale a mountain and buying him an ice ax. He was an ambitious man and wanted his children to succeed and be the best in most things. He wanted Jon to either get a job in medicine or law, because he believed that going to a successful college and having a solid career is the key to happiness. Due to this,

The movie the Shawshank Redemption, based on the book by Steven King, I believe is one of the best movies ever made. The portrayal of prison life in the movie is the best I have seen and a star-studded cast including Morgan Freeman supports the characters and brings to life the everyday struggles of life behind bars. In this paper I will relate topics from class to the movie and discuss information we have learned through out the semester.

Jon Krakauer is an author whose work primarily focuses on the wilderness and his experiences. His novel, Into the Wild, divulges into the life of Chris McCandless and his adventures into the wild Alaskan frontier. Chris seeks isolationism from his family and society and goes as far as to change his name to Alex Supertramp so he is not discovered or recognized by anyone. With mere long term survival experience, Chris makes several minor mistakes and dies; unbeknownst to anyone. After discovery, Krakauer devoted several years to Chris’ life story, going as far to use his journalism background to interview any family, friends and coworkers Chris encountered to synthesize a final overview of his life. Krakauer’s relationship with his own father

Often heralded as the world’s greatest nation, the United States is also considered home to the world’s greatest authors. Reputable authors such as Fitzgerald, Twain, and Steinbeck remain relevant even through the washing waves of time. One such timeless author, Ray Bradbury, ventured the hazardous path of taboo to write of change. Through his novels of innocent youths evolving into children enlightened beyond their years, Bradbury utilizes the motif of time, innocence, and the philosophical movements of existentialism, transcendentalism, and romanticism to describe catastrophic events the American culture could face if existing destitute judgments continue to prevail. Ray Bradbury dared to reveal his voice.

On Chris’s journey across the western United States, he met a special friend named Franz. Franz took Chris under his wing;treated him like his own son. He did this by feeding him, sheltering him, and giving him rides for a particular time. Franz gave Chris rides from Salton City, California to Grand Junction, Colorado. Franz was a generous man for having such a terrible past time. The book concludes in the text Franz did not have a cheerful past. The novel states Franz’s only child and wife died in an automobile accident. The loss of his loved ones really discouraged his present state of mind.

During the course of a person’s life, a decision is made as to which direction their life should follow. Most people are encouraged by their loved ones to make this choice for themselves. When Kelly Cherry was twelve, she announced to her musically devoted, string quartet violinist parents that she was going to quit piano lessons and become a writer, in response, “[her] mother said that she would rather kill [her] than have [her] turn out like [her] big brother, a beatnik. She ran to the kitchen to get [a] butcher knife” (“Kelly Cherry”). Needless to say, she was not supported in this career path. Throughout the course of her early writing career, she would hear that she “had no talent for writing” (“Kelly Cherry”). Still, she continued to write, occasionally quitting again and again, like a smoker, only to pick it up again (“Kelly Cherry”). Continually she told herself, “You are not a writer” until one day she revised this to, “If you don’t write your books, no one else will” (“Kelly Cherry”).

In literary education, from childhood to maturity, individuals are taught how to write not to improve themselves as critical thinkers, but to fulfill the requirements given to them in a prompt. Whether to analyze or argue, this form of writing has led to a cease of literary improvement in students today, making many question the effectiveness of writing classes. Mike Bunns, in his article “To Read like a Writer”, explores this topic and stresses the necessity for young readers to critically examine the author’s choices in order to improve their own pieces of work. Bunns effectively argues to his audience of college students that improved comprehension comes from focusing on the rhetorical choices authors decide to make in their compositions by tying personal narratives with repetitive questioning throughout his article.

John was an American with a dream and plenty of drive and his work shows this. John’s father was a high school math teacher and his mother had dreams of being an author. He attended Harvard university and majored in English which gives a incite of what his writing style is. While attending Harvard his junior year he met his wife in 1953 (3). The year after he majored John went on to further his education at Ruskin School of Drawling and Fine Arts in Oxford London. His writing career started in 1954 when he published “Friends from Philadelphia”. Four years later john started his career as a poet when he published his first poetry book titled “The carpentry hen” (1). John has won two national book awards and has been nominated for six others. (2) It is said that “his work is worth reading for no reason other than to enjoy the piquant phrase, the lyric vision, the fluent rhetoric” that his style of writing has. (2)

Stephen King is perhaps the most widely known American writer of his generation, yet his distinctions include publishing as two authors at once: Beginning in 1966, he wrote novels that were published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. When twelve, he began submitting stories for sale. At first ignored and then scorned by mainstream critics, by the late 1980’s his novels were reviewed regularly in The New York Times Book Review, with increasing favor. Beginning in 1987, most of his novels were main selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which in 1989 created the Stephen King Library, committed to keeping King’s novels “in print in hardcover.” King published more than one hundred short stories (including the collections Night Shift,

The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer discusses a story about a young man hitchhiking around the country trying to discover a humans true potential and what is possible to achieve during a human life. During this trip he meets many people that he left a strong impression that consist of Jan Burres, Ronald Franz, and Wayne Westerberg. Many people wondered the kind of person Chris McCandless was and what he was trying to accomplish. Some thought he was just crazy and ignorant, but in the end Krakauer brings to light a new idea that he was just trying to accomplish what any man wants to achieve...surviving the wild.

The “Lost Generation” is essentially a term that is used to describe the young adults of the 1920’s who were changing with the times and rebelling against what America had become after the war. They populated areas like Paris and London where they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life. The “Lost Generation" of American writers and poets left America, seeking refuge from the broken culture and devastation that had come from the war, and ended up in Paris, a city that had a thriving art culture where they could write freely and lavish in the Bohemian lifestyle without rules. They drank, traveled, had love affairs, and wrote. They were influenced by the paintings of artists like Dada and Picasso and collected their works, as well as socialized with them. They critiqued each other’s writing and often met in bookstores, cafés, and bars to talk about their works and life in general. They had mostly upper-middle-class upbringings and were sustained in hard times by their parents' fortunes. They chose to come to Paris to seek artistic fulfillment and ended up writing what is possibly considered some of the best fiction of the 20th century. It was the time when writers, painters, musicians, and composers went to Paris to work and

Through critical analysis, historical research, and textual evidence, a study on Kurt Vonnegut’s background will be conducted in order to display the effects that the era in which he lived had on his writing.

Dr. Mark Lasser’s book “Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction” gives insight to those who suffer from sexual addiction and to the families, friends and other people in their lives. Dr. Mark Lasser has chosen to write this book, to share with others his personal struggle and victory with sexual addiction. Dr. Lasser has written this book from a Christian view, to give other individuals hope in a difficult and growing disease, which is taking control and destroying our families. Lasser defines sexual addiction as “a sickness involving any type of uncontrollable sexual activity, and because the addict cannot