Read and Responses

Read and Responses

Week 4

This is a portion of Imre Kertesz interview:

INTERVIEWER: It seems to me that your novel is akin to something like this end of history. It’s written from the vantage point of the early 2000s, yet it captures the moment at the fall of Communism in 1990, a moment at which various currents merge and collide, forming a point of crystallization, and possibly liquidation, for twentieth century history.

KERTÉSZ: Actually, you’re completely right. It’s exactly like that. We’ve got the man who was born in Auschwitz, and then Judit, the woman who experiences Auschwitz through him and who attempts to find a conclusion to her own history. But then she escapes that world and marries a man who is untouched by totalitarianism. She decides to have children, and thus commits herself to life. That was the secret, the gesture—bearing children is the gesture that creates the possibility of continued life. Faced with choosing between life and death, she opts for life. All right, that’s enough. That was my last interview.

I wrote about the interview of Imre Kertesz in 2013. The interview consists of Kertesz talking about his writing and life. He came from a family of non-writers and he had to teach himself how. Although I skimmed over this essay, I got to the end and something caught my attention. Kertesz and the interviewer were  talking about one of his books 'Liquidation'. The interviewer tells Kertesz his opinion of the book and Kertesz then gives his opinion. It is about a man who was born in Auschwitz and a woman who learned about it through him. But then the woman leaves for another man and then marries a man that was untouched by totalitarianism. She has children with the man and commits herself to "life". The secret gesture was bearing children was the idea of continued life. She opted for life over death. I can determine from this that the man from Auschwitz was death and the other man gave her the life. I thought this was a powerful message. An even more powerful message was that this was his last interview. Ever. Like that is how he ended the interview. Badass.

Week 6

After going over the 20 most common errors, I saw a few major mistakes that I had made in my introduction. The most prominent errors were wrong tense or verb form, comma splice, and fused sentence. Another major mistake I made but was not on the list was overuse of semicolons. I used a lot of different tenses that did not always agree with the verb. This caused many of my sentences to sound weird or be grammatically incorrect. This is something simple that can be solved by proofreading or re-reading my work. The comma splice errors are caused by me trying to make two sentences that are of the same idea into one sentence. It would be easier just to have the two sentences as separate ideas instead of one long, drawn out sentence. Relating to the last error is fused sentences where two sentences that could stand-alone are put together. I, again, do not know why I do this but it is a fairly simple mistake to fix. The final error I saw most of was overuse of semicolons. Only about one semicolon is supposed to be used per sentence but I used more than 3 in some paragraphs. Most of my mistakes were related to sentence structures and how I was writing and trying to combine two sentences into one.

Week 7

The main similarity between Orwell's and Didion's essays are that they both are on the subject of why each writer writes. Orwell describes his background and then goes onto to say how these experiences shaped his writing. Didion talks about how individual things effected her writing and how she kept these things with her through her life. Orwell wrote his piece like a journalist but Didion wrote her piece like a narrative. Didion also wrote her piece as a response to Orwell.