Blog 6 - "Specimen Days" and "Dispatches"

Walt Whitman – from “Specimen Days”

Walt Whitman is a master at crafting sentences to create his intended effect. “Specimen Days” is no exception. Throughout the excerpt provided in “Art of Fact,” Whitman douses us with ultra-descriptive adjectives and verbs, such as, “the red-life blood oozing out from our heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew cool grass.” His poetic sentences, such as, “entering us like a wedge,” or “the tug of a Saturday evening,” carry weight beyond a simple statement. With his use of alliteration and onomatopoeias, Whitman’s second-hand account of the Battle at Chancellorsville reads like a poem, such as, “flashes of fire” and “determined as demons,” and “cheer,” “crash,” and “roar.” Interjected into Whitman’s mostly staccado-sounding style of writing are personal thoughts, such as “Oh heavens, what scene is this? – Is this indeed humanity?” This device takes the reader away from simply reading the description and into the mind of the writer, in this case, his shock and despair at "witnessing" such a scene. Finally, Whitman’s stark comparisons toward the end of “Specimen Days,” set up a rather stunning juxtaposition between nature and the evils of man, such as, “the odor of blood mixed with the fresh scent of the night.” The author also continuously uses the “radiant” moon (and sky) as a sort of omnipotent source of innocence with statements such as, “such is the camp of the wounded – such a fragment, a reflection afar off of the bloody scene – while over all the clear, large moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining.” His decision to name the moon “large moon” instead of “the moon” or “a large moon,” adds a kind of poetic anthropomorphization of nature, watching over this bloody scene – and its effect is truly haunting.

Note: “Art of Fact” points out that Whitman, as much as John Hersey in “Hiroshima” was practicing the art of re-creation and should be noted as a pioneer of the practice. The unsettling part, for me, in this case, is that Whitman uses a first-person point of view in a way that creates an aura of “pretending” to be a soldier witnessing this scene. I do recognize, however, the power in this first-person point of view choice as well as the year in which “Specimen Days” was written.

Michael Herr – from “Dispatches”

In “Dispatches,” Herr’s almost unsettling honesty as he consistently reveals his own fear of war and his inner battle between curiosity and safety, manages to put the reader immediately at ease. Straightaway, we learn that, upon hearing a noise at night, the author would “practically flip out, hoping to God [he] wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it.” Perhaps it is his unabashed fear of war that allows for such a wide-eyed, clear picture of it. Herr’s fragmented and short, succinct sentences manage to speak grandly, such as, “All I ever managed was one quick look in [to the Lurp's eyes], and that was like looking at the floor of the ocean.” And his dialogue is consistently somehow both riveting and pithy. Two great examples of this are the following:

“Didn’t you ever meet a reporter before?” I asked him.

“Tits on a bull,” he said. “Nothing personal.”

or

“Vietnam, man. Bomb ‘em and feed ‘em, bomb ‘em and feed ‘em.”

Herr jumps around in his timeline, going from getting ready to board a helicopter for home to describing the months after returning to returning to the middle of the jungle, a method that leaves the reader with a rather jumbled feeling. However, his fascinating, short bursts of stories are completely satisfying in both their content and style. And he appears to have succeeded in his effort to “explore the collective mind of the soldiers,” as noted in “Art of Fact,” as he describes universal feelings such as watching the helicopter he arrived in fly away and wondering whether “[he]’d made a terrible mistake this time.”

Similarities

Herr’s style in “Dispatches” is similar to Whitman’s in that it is fragmented and nondirectional. Perhaps he is writing in this fashion, at least partly, as a comment on the lack of a “linear ‘front’” in war, as noted in “Art of Fact.” This idea that war is messy and omnipresent is well represented in the style and manner in which Herr writes. However, I feel that Whitman is more chronological in “Specimen Days,” albeit loosely, as the day turns from one to the next, in order. Both authors are gifted in their ability to capture “war” in a grand way, summing up a subject so complex and emotional, in some cases, in just a few sentences. Both, too, utilize a version of shock effect when describing the violence of war, such as Whitman’s “one man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg – both are amputated – there lie the rejected members.” Similarly, Herr writes, “… the total impersonality of group death, making them lie anywhere and any way it left them, hanging over barbed wire or thrown promiscuously on the top of other dead, or up into the trees like terminal acrobats, Look what I can do.” However, the point of both examples, in my opinion, is not so much shock value, but the ability to adequately describe the truths of war.

[Note: I rather enjoyed the stark difference in Herr’s reference to the moon compared to Whitman’s. Herr writes, “The moon came up nasty and full, a fat moist piece of decadent fruit. It was soft and saffron-misted when you looked up at it, but its light over the sandbags and into the jungle was harsh and bright.”]

Organic form

The notion of organic form, “works whose formal characteristics are not rigidly predetermined but follow the movement of thought or emotion being expressed,” certainly exists in “Dispatches.” It’s almost like Herr is sitting in front of us, telling us the stories as he thinks of them, remembering details and getting more excited as he goes along. At times, it almost seems to be “stream of thought” writing, as he jumps in with a popular country song lyric or a random, but enthralling, quotation. I’m not convinced that Whitman’s “Specimen Days,” is of the same variety, as his writing reads, to me, like carefully planned poetry, even if the subject jumps around a bit in describing the battle. I would be interested, however, to hear an alternate argument on the question. In terms of covering an event, I can see how organic form might create an element of truth, or immediacy, in words, as writers tend to go back and edit and then re-edit their work. Creating a kind of writing "as it comes," especially in an action-packed event such as war, in its most raw form has a kind of power that flows from the pages, much like Herr’s “Dispatches.” 

Discussion question:


What literary journalism technique(s) are Herr and Whitman utilizing when they describe natural scenes (moon, sky; jungle) amid the interjections of violence and chaos? Why do they do this?  

Blog 5

I would define the traditional notion of ‘objectivity’ as the ability to report a story in the most thorough and unbiased way possible without letting personal or professional hindrances interfere with the process. However, as I mentioned in class last week, it is my belief that journalists, at best, can only produce an illusion of objectivity. Journalists are human, too, and they have thoughts and feelings about the subjects, events and people they cover. Readers and management understand this, yet it is of the utmost importance that journalists strive to maintain this goal of “complete” objectivity in an effort to live up to the highest journalistic standards possible. For example, when I was a reporter, I refrained from putting political bumper stickers on my car, because I didn’t want anyone to think that I would intentionally sway any story in a bias manner.  The illusion of objectivity is absolutely key to creating trust and continued communication with readers and sources.

As noted in Art of Fact’s excerpt on James Boswell, “theorists of journalism have long noted parallels to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics: by reporting on something, one subtly but irrevocably changes it.” The mere act of interviewing a source changes the way that person acts, causing them to think carefully about what they say and how they say it. A tape recorder or a video camera, for example, can make the interviewee nervous or unlikely to say what he or she might have said off-tape.

In the Michael Powell interview, Powell discusses the immediacy of current media and how politicians these days would rather play it safe than risk saying something that might hurt their career.

Powell says, “It puts a real premium on being more careful and judicious about your words and your thinking, which I think is good. But sometimes I think it's bad because I think that's why you get political speak out of a lot of politicians -- rather look like you're talking and say nothing than to be candid and maybe regret it. That bothers me because I'm a believer in candor and I like to be pretty straight about what I think about things, but at your peril you have to be sensitive to what you're saying. … This is the new reality.”

This begs the question: if these officials are constantly editing and fixing their words, how objective can a story be? At some point, these interviews just become PR. However, this is an old problem of political/government journalism.

I wanted to point out, too, that the level of emotion involved in covering a story might call into question the notion of objectivity. For example, I was a reporter in Chapel Hill when Eve Carson, UNC-Chapel Hill’s beloved student body president, was brutally murdered in the spring of 2008. I knew her personally from covering various events and I was moved by the literal halting of movement on campus as students sank down in the middle of the quads to sob after hearing the news. I’ll admit, during some interviews, the tears were streaming down my face as I asked the questions. I’d like to think that this emotion on my part contributed positively to my stories on the tragedy; however, I can’t be sure that my own tears didn’t affect someone (or everyone) I spoke with.

Question for the class:

If literary journalists use their skills to cover important topics not necessarily addressed in mainstream media (as Dr. Rodgers alluded to during last week’s class), can they really be objective? Doesn’t the very act of selecting a “worthwhile” subject, say, the dumping of nuclear waste’s harmful effects, contribute to a subjectivity on the part of the reporter’s understanding of what *should* be covered? 

Blog 4

Considering the issue of “truth”:

In examining riveting, sublime literary journalism, readers cannot help but wonder: if the journalist wasn’t actually there, how on earth did they capture such a level of detail and feeling? (In other words, it would seem that no interviewer is so talented that they could possibly obtain the absolute accurate stream of inner thoughts, feelings, actions of their subject. Enter: doubt.) 

Unfortunately for many journalists, after one commits plagiarism or fabrication (ie: Million Little Pieces), the author is, more or less, branded with reader mistrust of his or her truthfulness in future pieces. It is truly astonishing to me the level of detail that John Hersey uses in Hiroshima, and, believably, it appears, he put the series together over the course of a year. [Note: I would be interested to find out how Hersey chose these particular survivors on which to focus and whether it might have made a difference in the overall effect.] Perhaps, for some readers, John Hersey’s creation of a composite character in “Joe is Home Now” creates room for mistrust in his other works, such as Hiroshima. Some critics, however, such as the authors of Art of Fact, claim that Hiroshima meets the level of authenticity and reliability required of literary journalists and that the book’s “clinical detail” is made possible by the “strength of extensive interviews.”

In other works for this week, such as “The Ultimate Literary Portrait,” the question of truthfulness becomes a little less ambiguous. James Boswell in “The Life of Samuel Johnson” was, according to the Art of Fact excerpt, “eager to express his opinions; he thrust himself into the narrative spotlight; and on occasion he blatantly stage-managed the action.” The “Ultimate Literary” article begs the question: can someone who is friends with (or, perhaps, obsessed with) a subject expect to produce a “true” and “accurate” product? The power of omitting and selectivity suggests subjectivity and Boswell’s claim that an “action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person’s real character” makes this reader wonder who is to say *what* makes a person’s “real character”? In this sense, Henrik Bering gets the point across, stating, “Not only is it vital to get the facts straight, but the emphasis also needs to be right.”

Early days of journalism

The line of fact and fiction in the early days of journalism was very loosely drawn. For example, in the “yellow journalism” days, reporters were encouraged to sensationalize their stories, or play up the blood and gore in order to sell more papers and excite public opinion. Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst often competed in this arena. Politics also caused issue for the aims of truth in early newspapers, as many were bias to one side or another in a wide range of issues and, at times, took liberties about the opposition in editorials and stories, such as playing up an editor’s or opposing politician’s “drunkenness.” This taking liberty with the truth goes back all the way back to U.S. frontier press days, when articles touted the wonders of the "wild west" and used its columns to encourage migration and promote local economies. 

Elements of literary journalism

There are many notable elements in Hiroshima (and other readings this week) that raise this journalism to something literary. For example, as the entry in Art of Fact points out, Hersey “reconstructs scenes and explores the survivors’ thoughts and feelings in novelistic fashion,” restricting “the story to the characters’ sphere of knowledge …” Hersey’s sheer attention to detail and the (on any other day, boring) minutia of these six protagonists’ lives creates a fascinating play-by-play effect on the day of the bombing and the days following.

In honor of Hersey, I determined another literary journalism to be: a humanistic approach. In other words, authors of literary journalism should strive to represent his/her subjects in a humanistic manner through the subjects’ own recounted true thoughts and feelings in a way that is both accurate and descriptive of how events actually transpired.

Another element might be, as mentioned in the Daniel Defoe excerpt in Art of Fact, is: thoroughness of reporting.

Question for the class:

How important do you deem it for literary journalists (and/or all journalists) to create works, such as John Hersey’s Hiroshima, to battle the concept of “otherness” in times of war? As The Art of Fact entry on Hiroshima points out, Hersey “offers American readers a series of sympathetic portraits” and allowed those who felt hatred for the Japanese to realize “that Mr. Hersey’s six protagonists were fellow human beings.” Can you think of any parallel works of literary journalism that capture the horrors and empathy of Iraqi War victims like Hersey does in Hiroshima? 

Blog No. 3 – Up in the Old Hotel

My own experience of the essay

     While reading Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel, I was reminded of a graduate-level literature course I took at UNC-Chapel Hill on Russian short stories, many of which delved into St. Petersburg city life in a flowing, yet succinct manner. Mitchell’s story comes across to me as Chekov-ian in the descriptive manner in which he describes his surroundings. Such can be found in the following statement: “Louie likes to gather the figs around dusk, when they are still warm from the heat of the day.” This seemingly simple statement gives way to a talented descriptive process that is extremely resonant of a fictional short story, particularly the captivating and vivid detail of the figs “still warm from the heart of the day.”

     Throughout the story, I found myself relating and sympathizing with Louie’s desire to know more about the history of the building and the people who used to own it. I am a granddaughter who forces her grandparents to regale me with tales of their past whenever given the opportunity. Who wouldn’t want to hear how her grandparents met or what it was like to serve in World War II or what her father was like as a young boy? Like Louie, I would want to know what was in the desk drawers and who put them there. I, too, feel that that “I’ve took all kinds of pains tracking things down, but there’s a lot about it [the past] I don’t know.”

Reaction to how Louie reacted to the third floor

I must admit that, at first, I was rather disappointed by the ending of Up in the Old Hotel, having first witnessed Dr. Rodgers’ indiscernible excitement over “what was on the top floors.” I was expecting, perhaps, like many readers (and, no doubt, Louie), a grandiose, fabulous array of treasures hidden in the castaway floors of the restaurant, only tainted by a thin layer of dust and time.

The mystery of what’s upstairs, it seems, was more enchanting than the reality. Much like the “Burnt Norton” poem, Louie has trouble dealing with the present and is always looking toward the “time past,” putting too much stock in traditions or what could be instead of what is. In that sense, it is not odd that Louie doesn’t want to go any further into the past (upstairs), as he does not want to be further disappointed. Better to leave the top floors a (now-tainted) secret than to prove its everyday worthlessness. His utter disappointment is rather warranted after the story’s build-up and Louie is aggrieved to discover that he “didn’t learn much that [he] didn’t know before.” The old empty rooms, and the old empty bureau drawers only reminded him that the old way of life is gone. For Louie, the upstairs floors are a literal reminder that the city’s “past” and his fondness for old tradition is no more. The third floor essentially invalidated Louie and Louie’s past, and proved that he, like the rest of old New York, are simply waiting to fade away like the “dead” liquor resting in dusty bottles.

The notions of nostalgia and the brush strokes used

Throughout this story, Mitchell descriptive lists and slurs of adjectives to create elements of nostalgia. For example, the following descriptive list both sets the opening scene and creates a sense of belonging/nostalgia: 

“The smoky riverbank dawn, the racket the fishmongers make, the seaweedy smell, and the sight of this plentifulness always give me a feeling of well-being, and sometimes they elate me.” 

Mitchell consistently divides the old and new New York with these literary brush strokes, creating a sense of rift, such as in the following sentence marking the infiltration of the new:

“The last few years, a good many people in the districts up above the market have taken to walking down here occasionally for lunch – people from the insurance district, the financial district, and the coffee-roasting district. Some days, from noon to three, they outnumber the fishmongers.”

Mitchell uses not only description, but “way of life” descriptions like that seen of the most talented fiction writers, such as seen in the following excerpt:

“There’s a boss fishmonger down here, a spry old hardheaded Italian man who’s got a million dollars in the bank and dresses like he’s on relief and walks up and down the fish pier snatching fish out of barrels by their tails and weighing them in his hands and figuring out in his mind to a fraction of a fraction how much they’re worth and showing and singing and enjoying life …"

Mitchell's use of literary journalism is both captivating and humanistic as he seems to have a almost too-true-to-be-believable understanding of the life of people and structures at the “bottom of the harbor” at this point in time.

---------

The two Alabama tornado stories, which attempt to get a close look at the heartbreak and faith-shaking natural disaster in a small town, both found suitable quotes from citizens and adequately get across the amount of sheer devastation. However, The New York Times story uses literary journalism to tug at the heartstrings of readers and more deeply examines the loss of faith in Piedmont, Ala. For example, Bragg uses the heartbreaking description of “tiny patent-leather children’s [Easter] shoes scattered in the rain” that clearly speaks to the reader in a visual way.  

The New York Times piece elevates the idea of intersubjectivity, the sharing of subjective states by two or more individuals, in this small town’s collective experience. Bragg’s continued theme of holding on to faith (though somewhat shaken) is reinforced with quotes such as this:

“This might shake people’s faith for a long time,” said Mrs. Clem, who led a congregation of 140 on the day of the storm. “I think that’s normal. But having your faith shaken is not the same as losing it.”

The Watson piece appears to use subjectivity, meaning private, independent, isolated experiences, to describe the devastation. [Note: One red flag that the Watson story was not as adequate at telling the people of Piedmont’s story is the fact that one if his first quotes is from a meteorologist.] The awkward and jarring “other towns” quotes at the end of his story take away from the initial point: telling the of the heartbreak of Piedmont, Ala.

         The New York Times writer appears to be much more comfortable with using elements of literary journalism, as is evident from examples such as the following:

“The blooming dogwood trees stand out like lace in the dark pine barrens in the hills around Piedmont. The landscape is pastoral, mountain ridges and rolling hills divided by pastures of fat cows and red-clay fields that will soon be high cotton and sweet corn.”

The above paragraph, like most good literary journalism, is so clear that it almost feels like fiction and seems to be the work of someone who is completely comfortable with the place and speaks of it as if were his or her own home.

Blog No. 2 – The life and work of Calvin Trillin

It is perhaps fitting that literary journalist Calvin Trillin’s most frequented subjects on which to write are as followed: murder, politics and food. I say this not because the favored topics are so – almost humorously – dissonant, but because Trillin is somewhat of a catch-all kind of writer. The son of an Ukranian Jewish immigrant who later attended Yale, Trillin appears to be a jack-of-all-trades, having at one time or another acted as an essayist, a novelist, a humorist, a poet, and a live performer.

Calvin Trillin

Trillin doesn’t think of himself as a “New Journalist” per se, arguing that the term refers to “someone who feels he doesn’t have to tell the truth, or as someone who believes he can get inside people’s heads and know their thoughts” (Boyton, 2005, p. 401). He admires Joseph Mitchell, but claims admiration only – no influential ties. It must be pointed out, however, that Trillin appears to inhabit some of the classic symptoms of a literary journalist: he’s “informal, frank, human, and ironic” (Kramer, p. 3). Most importantly, perhaps, he has “perfected the art of turning merely ‘interesting’ events into vivid, suspenseful stories” (Boyton, p. 379). Using humor as faithful guide throughout most of his “lighter” pieces, Trillin has a way of gaining the reader’s trust. His self-deprecating, dry wit comes across as both disarming and welcoming. For example, the following excerpt exemplifies this literary technique:

“There was a discussion at my house recently about whether or not I am an uncultured oaf. This is not the first time the subject has come up.

The form these discussions take isn’t what you might assume. It’s not that somebody — one of my daughters, say, or a friend who has dropped by for a drink, or maybe the U.P.S. deliveryman — accuses me of being an uncultured oaf and I defend myself by talking at length about some movie with subtitles that I’ve recently seen. That’s not the way it happens at all — and I don’t just mean that I’d have a different defense, because I haven’t seen a subtitled movie in a long time and had trouble following the plot of the last one I did see. These discussions are not accusatory; they’re more like dispassionate inquiries. Everyone present seems genuinely curious about whether I can be accurately categorized as an uncultured oaf, and no one is more curious about it than I am.” (Trillin, 2009, para. 1-2)

Trillin also leans on humor for his ongoing satirical political poetry for The Nation such as this excerpt from “The Bush Administration in Rhyme”:

         Imprisonment and torture are the sort,

         of things that might just drive a person daft.

         so just in case that happened to McCain,

         let’s stick with candidates who dodged the draft. (Trillin, 2004, p. 17)

In addition to humor, Trillin’s writing style is informal and open, peppered with anecdotes about him, his wife, and his two daughters (Boyton, 2005). The author places a lot of weight on the introductory sentence, noting that the first sentence sets the tone for the rest of the piece. In his more serious pieces, such as murder cases, Trillin tends to focus on the narrative, removing himself from the scene and painting a picture of events that read like a fiction novel.

His profound interest in the ordinary and his ability to dice life up into humorous and engaging tidbits is what, perhaps, elevated Trillin to his current status. Aspiring literary journalists could do much worse than to examine the literary career of Calvin Trillin and his witty ways of writing.

Boyton, R. (2005). The new new journalism: Conversations on craft with America’s best nonfiction writers. New York: Vintage Books.

Kramer, M. (1995). Breakable rules for literary journalists. Niemen Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Found Aug. 28, 2010 at: http://niemanstoryboard.us/1995/01/01/breakable-rules-for-literary-journalists/

Trillin, C. (2009) Half an oaf. Found Aug. 28, 2010, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12trillin.html?_r=1&em

Trillin, C. (2004). Obliviously on he sails: The Bush administration in rhyme. New York: Random House.

Blog 1 - Who I am.

My name is Ginny Hoyle Lawrimore.

You can reach me at my UF email (ghoyle@ufl.edu) or via my personal email (ginnylawrimore@gmail.com).


I am a second-year master's student in journalism at the University of Florida. 

I am from the small town of Glendale Springs, North Carolina. However, my "hometown" really needs to be thought of as an entire county, Ashe County, NC, as the towns intermesh to form one high school, one "downtown", etc. Situated along the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is a stunningly gorgeous area, the beauty of which I did not appreciate until I was long gone. 

No lie, it really is this beautiful. 

I came to the University of Florida from Hillsborough, NC, after my now-husband was accepted for a full ride in the English Department. His going back to school seemed to align with my own desires to go back for a master's in journalism and, luckily, the lovely folks in charge of admissions at the j-school decided to let me in. My husband, Dave, is one year ahead of me in his studies - a first-year doctoral student in literature, specializing in 19th- and 20-century literature (and cultural ties to Marxism). 

Me and Albert - BFF

I came to UF with three years of newspaper experience - two as a copy-editor for The Herald-Sun in Durham, NC, and one as a reporter for The Chapel Hill Herald in Chapel Hill, NC. After getting my master's (assuming, of course, that I make it through the gauntlet that is the thesis process - haha), I plan to go back out into the field, hopefully landing another newspaper job - either as a copy-editor, reporter, or editor. Unfortunately, my job-seeking only extends to this area, as my husband will be in his PhD program for a minimum of four more years. Depending on job availability, I may apply to become an instructor at the community college level or go after something in PR at the university. 


A list of things I love: Spending time with my husband; my adorable beagle-australian shepherd mix, Baxter (who is completely bratty, but we only have ourselves to blame); biking (three miles to campus and back); reading for fun (mostly fiction); cooking(!) - I love to try new recipes and am a bit of a type-A hostess (I blame my mother for that one); taking photographs; watching films (of all types, but favorite genre is horror); reading the newspaper before bed (it creates a bit of a delay for the local news cycle and makes for interesting dreams, but is a unalterable habit); going out for my weekly girls' night (rain or shine, on Friday nights).

This is my dog, Baxter, aka, BooHoo. 

My writing experience mostly stems from my reporting days, where I covered Orange County government, the Town of Hillsborough, city and county schools, and whatever else needed covering. My editing experience is the two years I spent on the night shift copy-desk at The Herald-Sun. (Note: Some people couldn't fathom the idea of working 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., but it was actually pretty outstanding.) Also, I spent six (awful) months serving as an editor of training manuals for GRU here in town. 


In the last few months, I have read: Black Like Me, The Catcher in the Rye (for the zillionth time), Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, Franny and Zoey, Nine Stories (I read everything by JD Salinger as a tribute to his death), The Power of Now, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and I am currently reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (to see what the fuss is all about). Next, I plan to read the new Anna Quindlen. 


Some interesting tidbits about me: When I was a but a wee fetus, I detached from my mom's uterine wall and, somehow, managed to re-attach days later. For a few years growing up, I lived without electricity or running water (outhouse included). When I was four, I survived a pit bull mauling that left me with more than 200 stitches inside and out (mostly on my back legs). I was working at The Herald-Sun during the Duke-Lacrosse case (talk about a perfect storm of race, class and sex.) Oh, and I got married this summer.

Notice the "bride and groom" cows behind us!

Also, I tend to hear lyrics completely incorrectly. For example, just this week I discovered that in "Oh, Yoko," the line is "in the middle of a cloud," when I thought it was "in the middle of a crowd." Also fell for "there's a bathroom on the right" instead of "bad moon on the rise." The title of my blog comes from my mishearing a line from Toto's "Africa," that goes "there's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do." I was busted by a college girlfriend after belting out "there's nothing that a hundred men on mars could ever dooo." 


I regularly read the Gainesville Sun, Newsweek, the New Yorker (on occasion, and only the fiction section and "Talk of the Town", npr.com (and daily newscast), nytimes.com, and cnn.com. 


This semester, I am also taking Intro to Statistics (oh the humanity) and Social Movements and Sexualization. 


For my thesis, I plan to examine the role that class plays in user preference of social networking sites (MySpace and Facebook). 


In this class, I hope to learn the techniques of literary journalism by looking at famous examples and by attempting the art myself. (I am also very excited to read some of the more noted authors, such as Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas Wolfe.)