blog post 3

Personally I would not think of this essay as a college essay, more along the lines of a story telling out of a book. which is what it is. But analyzing it against the book the Nuts and Bolts Of College Writing by Harvey, Sedaris seems to be a pretty good writer.

The book starts out talking about how all of these college kids think that they need to sound smart so they adopt this very pompous style of writing. I would not call his writing style Pompous in fact I might call it a little humble because he talks about how he is forty-one and returning to college (David Sedaris) Later in the book he talks about how he "took to spending four hours a night on my home work" because he wanted to create an identity for himself. He wanted the teacher to notice him, but in a good way. Harvey also talks about how people who need to be good writers use big words to make themselves seem smarter while good writers know the importance of the smaller words. I would categorize Sedaris as the writer who knows the importance of the small words, because he never uses gigantic words to pump up his vocabulary.

Another section Sedaris follows very well is chapter three: Flow. Harvey talks about keeping the same subject and not straying because its extremely confusing to keep up with. Sedaris keeps the same subject the whole time, French class. He never strays from the topic whether to talk about his French teacher or his French homework or speaking French.  Another part of the flow section was keeping consistent characters which Sedaris does very well. Instead of introducing us to a bunch of the kids from the class he stays consistent with just the Teacher of the French class. Harvey also talks about "the logical turns and links" which he uses quite frequently. One of the most frequently used is the cause links like when he says "The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I'd be expected to perform" (David Sedaris). This is an example of a cause link because of the word because, it shows the reason or cause for the action.

My favorite thing that Harvey mentions in his book is Gracefulness. he talks about a specific idea called rhetoric, which in the writing world is more specific to mean the "the science or art of persuasion by means of stylistic or structural techniques" (Michael Harvey). Sedaris uses this very well when it comes to his teacher. He tells us constantly about how his teacher is harsh, unpleasant, and very hard to please. one great example of how he uses words to make his teacher unlikeable is this quote " She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman’s desk, and leaned close, saying, 'Oh yeah? And do you love your little war?'" (David Sedaris) with this quote he characterizes her in a way that makes he seem extremely scary and unlikeable.

Overall i think that Sedaris did a very good job with his essay. It flowed very well there did not seem to be any grammatical errors he did not use the pompous style that so many writers do and gracefulness.

~Emily Mackson