Table of Contents:
Target Audience: Electric Lit Pitch; Publication Venue: Electric Lit; Word Count: 443
Target Audience: Education; Publication Venue: Quartz, (qz.com); Word Count 998
Target Audience: Aspiring reviewers; Publication Venue; NY Times; Word Count 685
Target Audience: Aspiring readers; Publication Venue: Electric Lit; Word Count 1,673
Target Audience: Film lovers; Publication Venue: Roger Ebert.com; Word Count: 1,021
1. Pitch
Dear Electric Lit
Reading is something that is not only great fun, is an art that has changed the world, and an art that we want the next generation to take part. And there are so many good books out there. But we all know that most people no longer read. They would rather be on their phones and TVs, or anything other than picking up a book and reading. And when confronted with this, and told they should read, these people roll their eyes and then ask what book they should read. Here comes the distinct challenge, of not only choosing a book, but choosing the right book from the right author. Most people, when picking out a book for themselves or for others, will of course gravitate to popular novelists and it is very often there that they will hit a brick wall. They will put a book down in disgust with a shake of the head and maybe will give up even trying to read. But why do they hit this wall? I posit that the reason is because they often choose an author’s most popular book instead of choosing the book that will be best to start with. And I want to lend a hand.
There have been many great authors throughout history. Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Leo Tolstoy, Stephen King. It is these ten authors whose works I would be looking at. Each of these authors have a very distinct style that may be off putting to first time readers if they do not properly acclimate themselves into that style. Therefore, I will be going through each author individually, and give the best book with which to start if you want to understand and acclimate yourself into their body of work. This book is often not their best or most famous, but is a good book nonetheless and one that gets to the heart of their style. I will explain their style as best I can to supplement the choice of this one book before moving on to the next author. This is a sort of how to guide, or a recommended reading, as in how to start with this author and why. It is an opinion piece to be sure, and does not require much research other than my own personal opinions, having read, or know a lot, about each of these authors and their work, which I hope will guide people in their reading journey.
Thank you for the opportunity, and I hope to hear back from you soon.
Sincerely Keegan Malan
Electric Literature Submission Manager (submittable.com)
How to Cultivate Readership.
It’s readily apparent that we have become a society that is more concerned with scrolling through social media, or binge watching overrated television shows, than we are about reading. The facts are that the number of readers in the past decade has fallen dramatically, as shown in the article Why We Don’t Read, Revisited, and it is not hard to see why whenever you’re sitting somewhere and you hear the annoying clicking of a smartphone or the glazed eyes of one who has been scrolling mindlessly for hours. And yet people have the audacity to say that they don’t have time to read. Not too long ago there was an article, How to read 200 books a year. It sounds crazy until you see the data that the average person spends 608 hours on social media and on average the time it takes to read two hundred books is 417 hours. In my opinion, the greatest reason for this decline in readers is the fact that we aren’t taught to like reading. Educational institutions seem to have instilled a dislike for the written work in every successive generation. What I am attempting to do is to point out these errors on their part and how we can best become a society that is again in love with reading.
Problems:
School makes you hate reading, plain and simple. This is a generalization, but one that most people would hold true. Schools are insistent on the importance and fun of reading without giving us any reasons for it. You are assigned a book to read and instead of being allowed to read it, you are bombarded with analysis and questions so that the act of reading is a book is an act of stopping and starting, wondering if this is going to be on the test tomorrow or not. Reading is not supposed to be a chore to get through, but because there is this insistence on specifics in reading, mostly at the high school level, the act of reading is treated like any other school assignment, rending the joy and discovery of a good book null to the student.
There is also the problem of the books themselves. You go from middle school reading to Shakespeare and are expected to understand and comprehend him. The jump from one reading level to the next is almost as large as that of the Grand Canyon. And along these same lines, many of the books that are chosen for high schoolers to read are ones that are picked solely for literary merit rather than easy readability. High schoolers by large are not going to understand and appreciate Faulkner or Hemingway because their prose is so dense. This again goes back to the vast jump of reading levels. Schools have made the transition so drastic and steep that most kids simply give up on reading.
Solutions:
So how do we get kids to love reading? The answer is simple I think. The overemphasis on specifics analysis that has sucked the joy out of reading can be fixed if we focus on it a little less or at least we focus less on the specifics. In quizzes and tests there are many more questions related to specific events rather than thoughtful analysis, and I know that may sound contradictory to what I just said but bear with me. The problem is not analysis itself, but it is the fact that the analysis takes place parallel with required reading, which produces the stop and go affect of reading that is found in school.
One of the causes of this is that schools seem to want to cram as many books into the curriculum as possible so that you often find children speeding from one book to the next, not having enough time to fully appreciate the book. Schools could simply read fewer books so that they have more time to focus on a select few. That way lessons could be taught rather like this: Background on the book and its author and any other historical things of relevance, let kids read the book in class without interruptions for analysis, when books is finished then do a dive into the analysis itself so that the kids can then appreciate the book and what is being said while also not being bogged down by that same analysis.
As for the problem of the books themselves. There needs to be a bridge between the books that you read in middle and high school. Shakespeare is certainly not the person for that, he is for later. And by and large, people don’t read books for literary merit, they read because they like a good story. The best books to bridge this gap are books that are subtle in their themes and maturity while also retaining a readable prose style that may take some getting used to but that does not present a brick wall to the reader. Charles Dickens is a great author for such a task. His prose is not difficult, his language is easy to follow, he is entertaining, and he is deep. Maybe also read suck books as Dracula which are famous worldwide and are intriguing just by reputation. Then you can ease into other works of denser fiction like Shakespeare and Faulkner or the like.
The importance of this all is to simply get kids reading again. The positive effects of reading are well known, Benefits of Reading Books. Despite this well known fact though, schools have, however unwittingly, placed a barrier between people and books that must be broken down. Reading is important in so many ways and we need to show this great joy to others so that they in turn can show it to others as well.
How to read 200 books a year (qz.com)
How to Be a Better Reader - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Benefits of Reading Books: For Your Physical and Mental Health (healthline.com)
Ethical Standards
The type of writing that I would like to do in the future, is literary and film reviews. When comparing this type of writing to regular reporting, the ethical standards differ. Film reviews are after all, opinioned based and so I do not need to interview anyone and hide their identity or the like and I do not really need to cite many sources since it really is my own opinion. That being said there are certainly ethics that are necessary in this particular line of online publication.
My specific priority in doing a film or literary review is to be able to meaningfully articulate why I think a particular film or literature is or is not good, or somewhere in between, and be able to back that up with evidence. Because one needs evidence in such publishing, it is prudent that the reviewer watches the film or read the literature in-depth. You have probably asked someone at one point in time in your life whether or not a film, tv show, or book was or was not good and they’ll say that they didn’t even finish it they were so bored. This cannot happen. To not be able to articulate and give evidence is to be a false reporter on the said work. Even if a work is boring as all hell you cannot let your mind wander because it is your duty, in this line of work, to tell us what happened, why, and why it did or did not work. If you cannot articulate then this line of work is certainly not for you.
Another thing that is necessary is an unbiasedness. We all know that we often shape events around our biases so that what actually happens is quite different in our minds. When it comes to film and literary reviews, it is tempting to bring the past into play. If we have seen a series of film or read a series of books by a particular artist and we do or do not like them and we bring those feelings into our viewing/reading, then we predispose ourselves to give the work an unhonest review. A piece of art should be viewed on its own unless it is intrinsically connected with something else that warrants bringing the past into play; otherwise we should review without being predisposed one way or the other so that what we publish is what actually is and not what we make it to be.
A third thing that is necessary when reviewing films and literature is to be well educated on these subjects. If you have not ever read much or seen many films, or if you do not know the history of literature or films, then I am not going to hold your opinion in high regard. It is a brutal truth. Some people’s opinions matter more in this sense. It is not a pretentious view point but it is a view point that puts things into perspective. In the same way that filmmakers have to study the “old masters,” as Martin Scorsese put it, so must a reviewer. It brings a lived experience into your reviews, it brings a knowledge that you otherwise would not have and that benefits an assessment of said film or literature. It is the credentials for a reviewer that gives it weight.
There may be more ethics to be explored in this particular vein of online publication, but these are the three main points that I feel I must abide by and that I think most people engaged in such writing should be. It give power to the reviewer and honest assessment so that maybe they can give a different perspective on the film so that those who read the review can begin to think about what happened in the film or literature different and then pass their knowledge to the next so that a dialogue can be created that otherwise would not be for simple bland boring reviews that are written by reviewers that, frankly, don’t know what they are talking about and contribute nothing to a conversation.
Literary Starter Pack
Dickens, Tolstoy, King, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Bradbury, Hemingway, McCarthy; we all know their names. Or do we? Well, at least readers do, as for the rest of the population…maybe not. But if you wish to get into reading, these names will inevitably pop out at you like flashing neon lights at a cheap motel. These names are synonymous with great literature, and as a result their books will get picked up more often by first time readers…and inevitably be tossed away in disgust with “dying” declarations to never read this author’s work again. They’ll say that they simply couldn’t abide these authors style, that is positively choked them. But the truth of the matter is, mostly, that they simply picked the wrong book. “Wait a minute,” they’ll say, “I read the ones everyone talks about.” And to that I would say, Bingo that’s where you went wrong.
It’s a surprising fact that the most popular books from authors are not always the best starting places. The popular ones, equivalated with their best ones for the sake of this argument-and for these authors this is true-inevitably set you down in a strange literary landscape like Matt Damon in The Martian and you take a punch you won’t get up from. The popular/best works are often latter works by these authors after they have had years of experience and so have at last come to a solid foundation for their style. Those who have followed along in their literary exposes will be used to it by default but first timers will not. Because this often causes people to not pick up another book from this author, or in more horrifying circumstances a book altogether, I will endeavor here to help you pick the right book to start with each author according to their distinct styles, and hopefully will start you on your literary journey.
1. Charles Dickens
Best/Most popular: A Tale of Two Cities
Best Starting Point: A Christmas Carol
Dickens’s style is known best for his witty humor even in the face of dark times-for example in A Tale of Two Cities a man beats his wife because she prays for him and in Oliver Twist a young orphan boy at a working house asks for more food because he is starving and almost immediately a sign is hung up saying that that boy is now for sale; his bombastic larger than life characters-In Great Expectations a clerk has converted his house into a makeshift castle complete with a drawbridge and a mini cannon; his examination and critique of the state of London- as seen in Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and Hard Times; and his sentimentality-meaning that there is an almost overwhelming cloud of feelings that descends on the reader for characters and groups of people.
Though A Tale of Two Cities is perhaps Dickens’s best work, it is a rather difficult read for the unacquainted. For one, it is a deeply political book, meaning that there are many historical references and a wide array of characters that may be too much for first time readers. And the book is rather unique in the Dicken’s canon, being one of his darkest works that, though brilliant, doesn’t quite capture the full breadth of his style as the seriousness of the situation muffles what Dicken’s would normally apply to the story.
A Christmas Carol on the other hand best fully captures the Dickensian style. It is a short novel, rather a novella, under a hundred pages in any edition. It is a story that we know, having at one point in time either seen a film or tv adaptation. It is at times both incredibly humorous and painfully sad, with an examination of what the Christmas season is about. It was, at the time of publication, a spark for how Christmas is currently celebrated in the west. Indeed, it is no stretch to say that Christmas would not be celebrated as it is currently, had it not been for Dickens’s novella, and it still has the power to change the way we perceive the holiday season. To be read anytime, but especially on a cold cloudy December before the fire with a cup of cocoa at your side, this is the perfect place to start your Dicken’s journey.
2. Shakespeare
Best/Most popular: Hamlet
Best starting point: Romeo and Juliet
Considered by many to be the greatest writer in all of literature, and famously hated by everyone else, William Shakespeare is a genius. His plays have transcended time and have seeped into the culture influencing films such as Disney’s The Lion King, and being retold in modern setting such as in West Side Story. Shakespeare was a writer who understood the human condition and our propensity both for laughter and for bloody violence. His plays were cinematic in their scope and in their ability to get at the viewer in an entertaining way that sent people into reeling laughter and caused tears to gush forth. His style transcends time and will continue to do so.
Shakespeare was a stylist, but that is not what turns people off from continuing to delve deep into his works; rather it is the old language that his works were written in. Doth, thou, -ist, -est, and so on. Think stereotypical older English and that is what most people associate Shakespeare with. And it really is a shame that people don’t return to his works in spite of his brilliance, but there is a way to read Shakespeare and love him.
Hamlet is a clear choice for Shakespeare’s greatest work. It’s understanding of what makes up man and it’s ability to challenge the reader and make him question himself still sets it above the rest of his works. But it is a very long play, Shakespeare’s longest in fact, and it is a very dense play. We have heard the story of Hamlet before but it is a story clouded in mystery and will certainly fog the readers perception of what is going on and so I would not recommend starting with it.
What I would recommend starting with is another of his plays that we know the story of almost before we even realize it, that of Romeo and Juliet. It is a play that has seeped so much into culture that we can recite it by heart and has been retold more times than any Shakespeare play. Yet beneath what we “know” there is more to be discovered by reading the play. There are things in it that make us think and feel, things that are just as true when it was written as now. And aided with our basic knowledge of the story, it makes it a much easier read than any other Shakespeare play. But read it slowly, pay attention to what is being said and try to imagine the scenes in your head as if you were actually at a play or watching a film. In fact, maybe watch a stage play production of the story, since plays are supposed to be seen on the stage and I am certain that you will understand and appreciate it for what it is and does.
3. Faulkner
Best/Most popular: As I lay Dying
Best starting point: The short stories
William Faulkner was perhaps the greatest American writer of the 20th century and his works have influenced a generation of authors. Faulkner is known for being a pioneer of the stream of consciousness technique, meaning that he gets inside a characters head and like a real individual that characters thoughts are primed to change on a dime, one thought leading to the next or one related to that one; his interest was in the post-civil war south and the stagnant pool that it was as it tried to claw its way out of that pool while also trying to stay submerged in the old ways; his characters were loose canons with the propensity to explode in rage violence and sorrow; his prose was dense and clustered and mysterious.
As I lay Dying, which tells the story of a family trying to travel to a distant town in order to bury their mother, is impossible to read for the uninitiated. In fact, every Faulkner novel is. There is no single one of his novels that are easy to read or should be used as a starting point. Faulkner is known as one of the most difficult writers to read ever and even for the initiated reader there are many things that they do not understand or are confused on and this was intentional on his part. As I lay Dying contains many trademark Faulkner themes and techniques; the family falling apart, southern guilt, stream of consciousness, black comedy, all of which stew together to form a very exotic soup that is only palatable from built up reading and life experience.
Since there is no Faulkner novel that best initiates the reader, we must look to the many short stories he wrote. Think of them as bite sized bits of his style. They are digestible, less stylized, and yet incredibly engrossing with those great Faulknerian themes. Try A Rose for Emily, which tells of an old southern woman who cannot seem to let go of the past or Barn Burning, which tells of a son’s desire to tell the truth and change the family ways in the face of his father who is consumed with vengeance against people he himself has wronged. These two short stories are packed to the brim with theme that resonated then and resonate deeply in the world today. They are a joy to unpack and see how this is so His shorts are to be read one at a time and then thought over before moving on to the next. In fact it may be best to sandwich a few of his shorts between other books you are reading so that you slowly acclimate until you are finally ready to move on to his novels.
Rear Window Review
In 1954 Alfred Hitchcock released his greatest film which fully illustrated his subtle directorial abilities, Rear Window. The film tells the story of L.B Jefferies, played by James Stewart, a photographer laid up with a broken leg on the hottest week in New York. Being a professional photographer and having nothing else to do, he takes up looking through his window into the other open rear windows of his apartment complex where across the way he suspects foul play.
Much like the novelist Charles Dickens, for a long time Hitchcock’s work was not as well received by critics as it was by his audience, mostly for the sensationalist and rather genre-based storytelling that was his forte. But like Dickens, Hitchcock’s work is both high art and great entertainment. The themes of Hitchcock, like Dickens, are hard to see because they are masked beneath the sensationalism, making for an enriching viewing experience on every subsequent rewatch.
Joining Stewart on the screen are Grace Kelly, Stewarts characters’ girlfriend, and Thelma Ritter, Stewart’s nurse, who help him in his endeavor to find out whether he is just seeing things through the lens of his own boredom, or the terrible truth. All acting is excellent in the film, Grace Kelly being as lovely and mesmerizing in her second Hitchcock film as ever she was in her career, Thelma Ritter as snappy and witty and tough. Of course, the standout performance is Stewart, who has the difficulty of having to act while never taking a single step in the film. Everything he gives he gives with his face and his eyes, which show his paranoia and fear wonderfully.
I mustn’t be remiss and fail to talk about the extras that fill in the world of the apartment complex that Stewart lives in. Stewart doesn’t only look at the one apartment that may or may not be the scene of a crime, he looks at all the surrounding ones as well, which play their own distinct parts in creating the subtext of the film. There is “Miss lonely heart,” as Stewart’s character calls her, a middle-aged single woman who lives alone and is desperate for a love connection. There is the pianist, who scores the film throughout as he attempts to create the next great piece. The newlyweds who have just moved in. “Miss Torso,” a dancer whom Stewart ogles. And finally, there is the middle-aged couple who own a dog with the propensity to dig in the flower bed. What these background characters provide other than filling in space, is pointing out the dangers of voyeurism. Stewart observes these characters from a distance and only from a distance, yet he draws conclusions based on his observations never giving a second thought to whether or not he is right or wrong.
Like Stewart in his chair, never taking a step, the camera almost never leaves his apartment. We see through Stewart’s rear window into the other windows. In this way, Hitchcock seems to be almost meta in the way, the frame of the window being the frame of our own TV screen or theatre. This film was released in the fifties, during the time of the red scare that was plaguing America where anyone could be a communist and one was encouraged to keep an eye out for any suspicious signs. Reading it through that lens the film makes sense as Stewart literally keeps both eyes wide open. But it can also be viewed in a universal sense. We are all, in our own way, voyeurs. We listen in on conversations we shouldn’t, peer through key holes, read other people’s text messages. And even if we don’t do these things, there is a deep part of us that wants to. We all have that desire to see what everyone else are keeping private in their lives. It’s almost a peeping tom complex. Maybe Hitchcock is suggesting that we go to the movies for the same reason. We want to do it, but it is socially reprehensible, so we go to the movies where we are safe to do so because everyone on screen is not actually there.
The film is also notable for having a completely diegetic score, meaning that the music you hear in the film is something that exists within the world as well that the characters hear alongside you. And despite the fact that the music isn’t intentionally suspenseful in the way Bernhard Herman’s scores in Hitchcock’s other films are, the way the score works alongside with the characters actions give it all the appearance of suspense.
Speaking of suspense, this film has got to be the blueprint for suspense in film. Everything flows smoothly, building up tension. It may surprise people, but for the majority of the film there is a distinct lack of suspense. Nothing happens to get the audience’s heartrate up or palms sweating…that is not until the last half hour of the film where all the buildup comes to its head. Hitchcock has never been better than here; not in Notorious, not in Psycho, not in Vertigo, here is where the master of suspense earns his title. Here is what is missing from most modern films, patience. Hitchcock holds the attention of the audience so much that even though not much “action” is going on you don’t feel it, you’re mesmerized and so it almost takes you by surprise when all hell breaks loose. The last half hour of the film can be equivalated to a high speed car chase if you were stuck in the back seat of the one being pursued. you aren’t in control, you are stuck, a deadly air hangs over you.
This film is an all-time classic not just in the suspense genre but in film as a whole. It is well known as a “directors movie” due to influence on how suspense in shown in film and the variety of techniques that inspired filmmakers such as Brian DePalma and Martin Scorsese. It’s a film subtle in its implications, and incredible entertaining so that all audiences can watch and enjoy in more ways than one.
Revision Narrative
Beginning with the sample pitch, the revision for this piece was very easy as the only thing that my classmates said was really wrong with it was it’s length. This being so, all I had to do was prune it until there was just enough that remained to my satisfaction. There were some sentences that were repeated which I deleted, a few spelling errors that were corrected, and overall I am pleased with the result.
Now, as for my short writing task “How to Cultivate Readership”, the main edits in this piece were the addition of hyperlinks to supplement some of the concerns and facts that I laid out. I also edited the first sentence which you said was a little off for you. Other than this, there wasn’t much to edit. I am satisfied in its brevity of examining these problems, and if I did end up expanding it I believe that I would simply rewrite it in full.
For my Ethical standards piece, there wasn’t much to edit other than some grammatical errors. Besides this though, I did attempt to clear up the first paragraph where I explain briefly why the standards for reviewing are different than straight reporting. The revised version is much clearer I believe so that it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest. Thus, this is the most changed paragraph of them all in this piece.
About the Literary Starter Pack longform article I wrote, the most revised portion is the Faulkner one. The criticism I received was that this was the most undeveloped of the three authors works I examined and that I needed to illuminate more the two stories that I selected which readers should start with. This being so, I did a brief summary of each and also added to the basic plot details of his most popular work As I Lay Dying. This I believe has made my moral for choosing the short stories a little bit clearer, I think.
And finally, there is my review of Rear Window. Everyone thought this was a pretty good piece already and so the main revisions, which I am sorry to say were not infrequent, was grammatical. There were misspellings here and there that I quickly found and cleared up, including a name in the very last paragraph. Other than this, the review remains much the same but cleaner of course, without those pesky misspellings that drive me mad and would distract me if I were reading it for the first time.