He stood there on the beach waiting impatiently while a camera crew readied their photography equipment to begin filming a news broadcast. Todd was a strange fellow to say the least. A Caucasian man of 32 years with jet black hair, spray on tan that highlighted his pale raccoon eyes, and staggering stumpy build of 5’6”. Todd let off an exhausted sigh and looked behind him at the coming sun set. Suddenly, the famous news reporter, Dorian Axel, made his way across the beach as a short make-up artist tried to keep up applying blush to his cheeks. With a high pitched chipper voice Dorian greets Todd and reaches for a handshake. Todd grimaces and nods and the two exchange small talk with long pauses of silence before the camera man points to …show more content…
Todd has become one of the cities richest men by writing, publishing, and selling his book over the internet by himself in less than a year. Tell us Todd, how did you do it and what were your motivations?” says the overly excited reporter as he gives the camera a wink. “We… well I got ma.. ma… my inspire… ation from pu… public s.. s.. speaking, Dorain.” Stuttered Todd as he struggled with almost every word. Todd was never an outgoing man, and was the social outcast in school. In fact, he and Dorian were in the same grade at the same school growing up. Dorian was the popular football player, while Todd was the chubby teenager who couldn’t even talk to female teachers. There was even a time when Dorian pulled Todd’s pants down in the cafeteria showing everyone his ninja turtles underwear, scaring him with humiliation. Sadly, Todd’s situation only worsened into adulthood. He’d barely made eye contact with anyone and cut of ties to every relationship he ever had including family. Now over 15 years later, here stood two high school rivals in almost the same situation standing in front of the eyes of Chicago as Todd’s nerves scrambles for words to say on live
Devin Friedman is a creative storyteller who incorporates observant details in his writings, which makes the readers feel like as if they are part of the adventure. Devin attended the University of Michigan, and he was awarded as the winner of the Hopwood Contest. This contest was hosted by the university committee who appoints experienced judges and the Ann Arbor community to select winners in different writing divisions. In his recent years, Devin wrote for numerous publications such as The Best American Crime Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, People's Stories, and GQ. Out of the many articles Friedman has written in the past, “The Best Night $500,000 Can Buy,” “Famous People: James Franco,” and “The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being” are the ones I have chosen to read because of the interesting subject matters and the different writing styles.
The book itself is an on-going dialogue between Kozol and the neighborhoods residents, interjected every so often with thoughts from Kozol. He covers a spectrum of topics from AIDS, drug addiction, prostitution, crime, poorly run and funded schools, white flight from schools to over-crowded hospitals and the amazing faith in religion and God that many of these people have.
Tobias Wolff’s “The Rich Brother” is a story of two brothers, Donald and Pete. These brothers have very contrasting lifestyles; Pete is a successful businessman with a wife and kids. Donald, on the other hand, is an outcast. He’s unemployed and irresponsible. He lives his life as a vagabond. Despite these facts, the successful brother, Pete, still lacks the self-esteem he desperately craves. Therefore he tries to make his brother, Donald, feel foolish with every chance he gets.
Baldwin’s story presents the heart breaking portrayal of two brothers who have become disconnected through respective life choices. The narrator is the older brother who has grown past the depravity of his childhood poverty. The narrator’s profession as an algebra teacher reflects his need for a “black” and “white,” orderly outlook on life. The narrator believes he has escaped life’s sufferings until the death of his daughter and the troubling news about his brother being taken in for drug possession broadside him to the reality of life’s inevitable suffering. In contrast, his brother, Sonny has been unable to escape his childhood hardships and has ended up on the wrong side of the law. While their lives have taken ...
The first detail the authors selected is the fact that drug dealers still live with their mothers at home. Drug dealing has been painted by the media as “one of the most profitable jobs in America” (Levitt 83). However, that is not the case. Drug dealing works much like a business in America, namely crack dealing in Chicago. In the novel, there is the example of the Black Disciples, a crack gang in Chicago. Their group is organized into a multitude of franchises that report back to the board of directors, providing the board with a large cut of the profits made on the streets. The leader of each gang made a large sum of up to $100,000, but “the foot soldiers earned just about $3.30 an hour, less than the minimum wage” (Levitt 93). This detail of the drug dealers was selected to appear in the novel to show how “conventional wisdoms” are false and misleading. The media at the time was stating that drug dealers made large sums of money participating in the illicit drug trade, but that was not the case. Drug dealers did not even make enough money to move out of their mother’s home. Foot soldiers worked for less than the federal minimum wage at the time, but the “conventional wisdom” was that the foot soldiers were making large sums of money. This detail causes the reader to question what they see in the media, and readers see that there exists a complexity behind
Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the priorities of Americans shifted from a patriotic concern for the country’s welfare to a concern for self-advancement. “A 1980 study by UCLA and American Council on Education indicated that college freshmen were more interested in status, power, and money than at any time during the past 15 years. Business Management was the most popular major” (Whitley). Similarly, in the graphic novel, Sin City written by Frank Miller, wealth, power and status play an important role in the outcome of and setting of the book. The main character, Marv, is a strong, lonely man who has a personal vendetta against the most powerful man of Sin City, Cardinal Roark. Miller shines light on the culturally prevalent desire for power, status and wealth, which ocurred in the late 1970s. The purpose of this book is to show his readers, the adults of the 1990s, what kinds of mistakes and corruption occurred in the generation before them. He does this by portraying wealthy figures as all-powerful, exposing the environment that unequal distribution of wealth breeds, and he uses Marv as a figure for the audience to identify with.
Chris a sixteen year old African male enter into therapy seeking professional help. Chris grew up in an urban neighborhood in New York, together with his mother and father. Chris develop problems due to longing attention. He begins to act out, hang around with the incorrect crowd, and get into fights.
Wolff, Tobias. “The Rich Brother.” Making Literature Matter. Ed. John Clifford and John Schilb. 2nd Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 391 – 403.
The late Steve Jobs in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University eloquently traced the imprint of a calligraphy class he had taken at Reed College years before to the creation of today’s worldwide standard in computer typography. Esteemed architect Frank Gehry can trace the imprint of his college job working in a museum to his current success, and moreover can trace the imprint of a different piece of art to each one of the buildings he has created. President Bill Clinton can trace the imprint of witnessing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I have a Dream” speech to his decision to devote his life to politics. However, in regards to the novelist and tracing the imprint of their work, it appears the dominate voice echoing through the pages of their novel is life experience. Two such novels that trace their imprint from life experience are Sister Carrie by former newspaper reporter Theodore Dreiser, and The Day of the Locust by screenwriter Nathanael West.
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
George Saunders, a writer with a particular inclination in modern America, carefully depicts the newly-emerged working class of America and its poor living condition in his literary works. By blending fact with fiction, Saunders intentionally chooses to expose the working class’s hardship, which greatly caused by poverty and illiteracy, through a satirical approach to criticize realistic contemporary situations. In his short story “Sea Oak,” the narrator Thomas who works at a strip club and his elder aunt Bernie who works at Drugtown for minimum are the only two contributors to their impoverished family. Thus, this family of six, including two babies, is only capable to afford a ragged house at Sea Oak,
The Chicago World Fair brought about through the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in America has posed significant value and worth to the city of Chicago. Over a six-month period, more than 26 million visitors from all over the world would flock to the fairgrounds to experience the rebuilt and vibrant city of Chicago. The 600-acre fairground would have housed 200 buildings that showcased new food, art, technology, and entertainment. Chicago became known as the White City, a place of freedom, grandeur, and security. But unbeknownst to fairgoers, there was a serial killer among them. While Dr. H.H. Holmes lured his innocent victims to his “Castle”, just blocks away architect Daniel Burnham built up the dream city of Chicago. Both these men operated at the same time in history, simply blocks apart, both creating legacies that carry to this day. Burnham and Holmes are two side of the coin of human nature. In “The Devil in White City” Erik Larson’s juxtaposition of Burnham and Holmes, and the Black City and the White City, contributes to the understanding of human nature, that one cannot be good without having done evil, and that good and evil are viewed as complementary in their mutual dependence.
His career in journalism began after he was rejected from every advertising agency he applied for. He finally ... ... middle of paper ... ... ssed with such skills to be successful, there is always time to improve both business and designing skills to become a successful fashion designer. Other than how this book personally encouraged me and discouraged me, it was eye opening to see such a coincidence of birthdates among all-star hockey players and how Bill Gates just happened to be born in the wake of computer technology.
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.
We see the shadow of lavishness and opulence trying to blanket itself over the presence of poverty during the 1920’s through the eyes of fallible narrator Nick Carraway, who works as an only moderately successful broker at Wall Street during its more prosperous times. Nick is thrown into a whirlwind of affairs and secrets ...