"My Father's Suitcase" Orhan Pamuk

I truly wanted to start this post off with a quote. However, I had a difficult time trying to pick which one to use. Orhan Pamuk's usage of words and the meanings that he conveys in each sentence creates powerful ideas. His essay makes me want to become this extravagant writer and one day give a speech as powerful as his to an audience as important and royal as the one he had. Reading the beginning of the essay, I made notes after notes in the margins, underlining and putting stars among the things I found so profound. I looked at my page and realized I was like one of the those kindergarteners who scribbled across any piece of paper I could grab my hands on. However, by the time I got to the middle of the essay, when I found myself agreeing with everything statement he made, I found one. I found a statement that disagreed with the award-winning author.
Pamuk writes, "The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books." Of course, I think the statement is true, but I think there is much more that is involved with the starting point of "true literature" than reading great books. I think that there may need to be another essential key that helps create wonderful writing. Perhaps I am taking what we wrote too literally, but I do think "true literature" also needs to be founded by life experience. I could shut myself in a room and read all the books possible, but I myself would have not felt half of the emotions or had to face any of the adversity that the authors that are so highly praised discuss about in their novels. I think Pamuk fails to write that it is also important to live life. Just as sometimes the best person to counsel someone when facing a dilemma is an individual who has been through it, I think the same can be said about great or "true" literature. "True literature" means conveying true feelings. How can one write such a vivid response if the author had not experienced even a fraction of what he or she is trying to write about?
Indeed, good literature is evolved from years of reading, but there is more. An author needs depth. A kind of depth that can only be experienced when faced with it directly.

"The Library Card" Richard Wright

There are so many different ways to tackle the theme of prejudicism. Some authors make the point so valid and in-your-face that the reader just wants to shut the book and scream, "I get your point! Can we just talk about something else?!" Others, however, including Richard Wright, are able to gracefully make discrimination a main concern while still creating a interesting piece of writing.
Here is a black man who hears the name of an author, H.L. Mencken, and lets his curiousity explore the wonderful world of reading while sneaking books under an employer's name. Genius. Pure genius, Richard Wright. Not only is the main character able to explore bits of wisdom from well-known authors, but he is also able to open his mind to new thoughts and ideas. Books become the character's key to freedom. "But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger" (43). He seemed to fall out of complaceny when he was able to pick up a book and read.
I cannot help but wonder about how I have never had to sneak a book out of a library because my skin color or ethnicity. Wright has an entire essay (at the very least three hours of writing and editing) of an essay where a man sneaks books. It's odd how our society can change. I could see young adolescents sneak to the movie theaters to see a rated "R" movie, but for a book?! Books are what we have to read in school, analyze and write the most boring three-page essays on. I commend Wright for not only tackling the issue of discrimination, but for showing the ostracism through the what sometimes seems like a dying media. This essay is a perfect example of how books and the ideas that they present can change a man's way of thinking.
The black man in this essay was able to find a new sense of freedom through reading. Others have found Christianity, love, forgiveness, value, and purpose.
Maybe I am being a little too harsh on our society today, but it would be refreshing to see a kid steal a library book.

First Day

Kayla Peck walked into her Writing and Rhetoric class not knowing what to expect. With a grumbling stomach (the class was during her favorite Lane meal; dinner), her hopes were quite small that the time would go by quickly. However, the minutes flew by while she learned more about what to expect and the possibility of getting out early. The first class involved getting to know each other, which didn't seem so bad. Kayla announced that she was from New York (and no, not the city). She said she lived an hour away from Montreal and enjoys to hike and ski in the mountains she grew up in. She also mentioned that she was an undecided freshman just trying to get by her first year at Gordon.