I am writing this letter in the hope of working for Farrar Straus & Giroux as an editorial assistant. I have been well aware of FSG’s excellence in publishing books that have shaped the landscape of American literature, in connection to marginal yet transformative memory of writers in and outside America. And I believe that my education, skills, experience and character displayed in this application would suffice to join FSG’s continuing projects of doing justice to the liveliest works emerging at the crossroad of literary legacy, conflicting cultural reflections and writerly inventions in this liberating era of literature and its spirit of reconfiguring literary canons.
First of all, thanks to my advanced education and personal commitment
Almost twenty years later, contemplating the contemporary American publishing scene, I feel a Bealean rage coming on (and with it a vague longing for one of his fits).While three percent of the American population in 1976 would have been a little over six million readers, recent surveys suggest that the consistent buyers of books in this country now total no more than half that number, and may even be as few as one million.[1]
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature Craft and Voice. Ed. Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw, 2013. 141-145. Print.
3.Walle, Alf H.: Hack writing vs. belle letters: the strategic implications of literary achievement, Journal of Popular Culture, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996
Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine (Graham’s) is a monthly published literary periodical although it allots other fields including engravings, fashion, and music to a small portion. This magazine deals with variety of literary fields from short stories, poetry, and essays handle various tastes from belles-lettres to sentimental literature. During those periods, the contributors to the magazine, in addition to numerous writers who exist only in tarnishing paper, are included such canonical writers as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, among others. Through its inclusiveness in genres and wide range of literary works, Graham’s gained a broad readership, and simultaneously the magazine contributed to forging white American idealism by keeping silence on political or social issues at that time and reinforcing the already establish social system.
3. I felt that The Age of The Literary Memoir Is Now by James Atlas has had an impact on me as a writer because the introducti...
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
As this semester comes to a quick close I have learned about the lives of many authors, the works of many authors and the variety of impact that they had on the nation. American Literature has had many different impacts on America. The literature has shaped the lives of the American people from generation to generation. The literature has shared the lives of those long before and created traditions to be passed on from family to family. From learning of a woman who changed the idea of women in literature to reading about the life of a man who shaped the nation as president, American Literature has increased my knowledge of the nation that I call home. There were authors I had no knowledge of such as Walt Whitman, authors that widely influenced
Max Perkins once wrote to Thomas Wolfe that "[t]here could be nothing so important as a book can be." Perkins lived and died believing this, as A. Scott Berg attests with his book, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Berg's book begins by describing a rainy evening in mid-Manhattan where a class of budding editors and publishers awaits the infamous Maxwell Perkins for a discussion on editing. Here Berg reveals Perkins as "unlikely for his profession: he was a terrible speller, his punctuation was idiosyncratic," and he was an awfully slow reader by his own admission (4). But none came near Perkins's "record for finding gifted authors and getting them into print"(4). Perkins defines editing to the enthusiastic class, not as being a great speller or grammarian, but as knowing "what to publish, how to get it, and what to do to help it achieve the largest readership"(4). This introduction leads the reader into a long flashback of Perkins's life as an editor, the risks he took with books by new talents and the undying support he gave artists, proving Perkins to be "America's greatest editor."
Research My first research experience took place from the Fall 2012 – Summer 2013 in a neurobiology laboratory (Dr. Daniel Plas) focused on Parkinson’s Disease. In this project an undergrad student and I were tasked with optimizing a cellular medium for neural growth of the model organism Lymnaea stagnalis. This was comprised of following established protocols and altering certain variables within the formulas (differing concentrations of ions, pH, et al.) to observe growth pattern differences in vitro.
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Schilb, John, and John Clifford, eds. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
According to Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a memorandum is meant to protect the writer instead of being issued to inform the reader. I believe that the quote by Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson is not accurate. This statement creates ambiguity because the primary purpose why the writer issues a memorandum is to inform the reader. If the purpose is just to protect the writer and not to inform the reader, just for the sake of issuance, then such memo is of no use. However, this paper seeks to discuss the relevance of both—a memorandum is intended to inform the reader and it is also used to protect the writer.
Henderson, Gloria Mason, Bill Day, and Sandra Stevenson Waller, Eds. Literature and Ourselves. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.