In 1966, Truman Capote stated that the “first essential of a nonfiction novel” is that “there is a timeless quality about the cause and events.” This statement does not hold true. Nonfiction writing has a purpose of capturing the truth. It records the past and the present. Being timeless is not the first essential of nonfiction. Opposers of this viewpoint would argue that being timeless is very important. They would say that constructing timeless writing makes it interesting. It would make it more relevant to people in the future. Making a piece timeless should be the focus while writing. Despite this argument, the purpose of a nonfiction work should be to capture the truth. By trying to make a piece timeless, it limits the ability to fully portray the past and present. In the nonfiction work Fast Food Nation, the fast food industry is discussed in depth. The book tells of the poor working condition in slaughterhouses and the meat industry. If this book had focused on being timeless, it would have missed the opportunity to improve the present. Being timeless would have taken away from the strength of the …show more content…
The world survives by learning from the past. How can one learn from the past if it is not clearly documented. If a book about World War II had focused on being timeless instead of capturing the event, people would not know what it was really like in the 1940s. Focusing on being timeless takes away from the efficiency of the work. In conclusion, a nonfiction work should not have being timeless as its first essential. The book would not achieve its full purpose if it was timeless. A nonfiction work should focus on capturing all of its subject. If the book’s subject becomes something learned about in a history class, the book should be from the era of the book. It should not sound like it was written after that time. Truman Capote’s statement that being timeless should be the first essential does not hold
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
Today there are countless authers who attempt to create great literary works, however none come close to Abraham Lincoln and his powerful “The Gettysburg Address”. His 272 word speech is arguably the most-quoted, most-memorized piece of oratory in American history. Lincoln managed to author the greatest work of literature in American Literature by crafting a terse speech with persuasive literary devices, along with a moving and an enduring message. Great literature does not just happen, nor is it great by default by the mere fact that it was authored by a famous individual. No, great literature is timeless and placeless. The themes and the messages conveyed by the story, poem, or speech are important, no matter what era or place the reader
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
Growing up in a bilingual household, I have struggled with many things especially reading and writing. Reading and writing have never been my strongest points. The first struggle that I can recall, is when I was about six or seven years old. I was beginning my education at Edu-Prize Charter School. I was a cute little kid, in the first grade, just like everybody else. But in the middle of the school year, my mom told me that my great, great aunt, who lived in China, was getting really sick and old. So if I wanted to meet her, it had to be now. Being a little kid, I didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t just go see the doctor, take some medication, or let time heal her. Unfortunately, now I know it was my mom’s way of saying that she was dying. My parents made the decision that it was probably the best way for me to understand my Chinese culture, along with meeting my relatives on my mother’s side of the family. So for a month, I had to leave my dad, my brother, my school, and all my
“Quiet is no certain pledge of permanence and safety. Trees may flourish and flowers may bloom upon the quiet mountain side, while silently the trickling rain-drops are filling the deep cavern behind its rocky barriers, which, by and by, in a single moment, shall hurl to wild ruin its treacherous peace.” (33)- James A. Garfield. Having the ability to write about interesting but not major historical figures can be a pretty hard challenge for even the most gifted authors. To exemplify this, it would take a talented writer to draw a reader into a book and to keep the readers attention still drawn toward a book; especially in the event that it is a Narrative nonfiction, “a genre of nonfiction in which factual matter is presented in a narrative style using literary techniques.
Ultimately, if a work possesses excellent formal coherence and asserts universal truths, these qualities alone may be sufficient to render the work meaningful to those who exist beyond the time period and cultural context that the work addresses. The work may still prove unable to be deemed a classic, a term reserved for the few works that achieve coherence and the expression of universal themes to a high degree, but that outcome is a possibility. On the other hand, a work that breaks from convention in a unique way and shows proper coherence cannot be readily accessible or significant to readers if its content is significantly confined to one subject.
Growing up in working class family, my mom worked all the time for the living of a big family with five kids, and my dad was in re-education camp because of his association with U.S. government before 1975. My grandma was my primary guardian. “Go to study, go to read your books, read anything you like to read if you want to have a better life,” my grandma kept bouncing that phrase in my childhood. It becomes the sole rule for me to have better future. I become curious and wonder what the inside of reading and write can make my life difference. In my old days, there was no computer, no laptop, no phone…etc, to play or to spend time with, other than books. I had no other choice than read, and read and tended to dig deep in science books, math books, and chemistry books. I tended to interest in how the problem was solved. I even used my saving money to buy my own math books to read more problems and how to solve the problem. I remembered that I ended up reading the same math book as my seventh grade teacher. She used to throw the challenge questions on every quiz to pick out the brighter student. There was few students know how to solve those challenge questions. I was the one who fortunately nailed it every single time. My passion and my logic for reading and writing came to me through that experience, and also through my grandma and my mom who plant the seed in me, who want their kids to have happy and better life than they were. In my own dictionary, literacy is not just the ability to read and write, it is a strong foundation to build up the knowledge to have better life, to become who I am today.
To fully understand Fast Food Nation, the reader must recognize the audience the novel is directed towards, and also the purpose of it. Eric Schlosser’s intention in writing this piece of literature was to inform America of how large the fast food industry truly is, larger than most people can fathom. Schlosser explains that he has “written this book out of a belief that people should know what lies behind the s...
In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.
“What should we have for dinner?” (Pollan 1). Michael Pollan, in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals shows how omnivores, humans, are faced with a wide variety of food choices, therefore resulting in a dilemma. Pollan shows how with new technology and food advancement the choice has become harder because all these foods are available at all times of the year. Pollan portrays to his audience this problem by following food from the food chain, to industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal and, lastly he critiques the American way of eating. Non-fiction books should meet certain criterions in order to be successful. In his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan is able to craft an ineffective piece of non-argumentative non-fiction due to a lack of a clear purpose stated at the outset of the book, as well as an inability to engage the reader in the book due to the over-excessive use of technical jargon as well as bombarding the reader with facts.
“In my estimation a good book first must contain little or no trace of the author unless the author himself is a character. That is, when I read the book I should not feel that someone is telling me the story but t...
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, was published in the year of 1852 to great success. In fact, in the United States, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was only outsold by the Holy Bible. But, does that success alone warrant an acceptance of the novel as a masterpiece, and a classic work of American fiction? Of course not. But, on the other hand, does its success justify writing off this novel as unworthy because, as the writer and professor Jane Tompkins puts it in her essay "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom 's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History", “as everybody knew, the classics of American fiction were, with a few exceptions, all succes d 'estime (a success through critical appreciation)” (122). To expect and
Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) has been considered the essential prose of the Lost Generation. Its theme of alienation and detachment reflected the attitudes of its time.
a. While we can appreciate writers of the past, we should not limit ourselves to