Michael Asmutis

“about two years ago ellie and i decided we needed a new mattress   or maybe ellie decided it    because i didnt pay much attention to the problem”

I love this opening sentence the most out of the essays we’ve read. It sets up beautifully the short, disconnected thought process seen through the style of essay. Antin immediately doubles back his thoughts on who decided to do what and admits he doesnt pat attention to it. Similarly, the text is riddled with language like”maybe” “think” and “i guess”Its this passivity, near negligence, we see in the opening sentence that is reminiscent throughout.

The following paragraphs detail the need for a new mattress, its age and the wear and tear the effect of time has on everyday objects. Even his need for a new mattress or his ignorance of the effects of age, is questioned in the opening, speaking to the narrative as a whole, when he is in the mattress shop.

“It had been like dying, that sliding down the mountain pass. It had been like the death of someone, irrational, that sliding down the mountain pass and into the region of dread. It was like slipping into fever, or falling down that hole in sleep from which you wake yourself whimpering. We had crossed the mountains that day, and now we were in a strange place – a hotel in central Washington, in a town near Yakima. The eclipse we had traveled here to see would occur early in the next morning.”

In this opening passage, we see many reused metaphors that appear throughout the text. The opening paragraph holds a lot of the themes that play throughout. The hotel, the aspect of death, the emphasis on travel. The opening has a overall feeling of despair, but comes and goes as the event continues and her feeling on “It had been like dying” are extrapolated.

This opening is effective because, not only does it set a mood, but and be referenced through the text, such like an abstract in a research paper. Stylistically, The sentences switch from grand and descriptive to informative, keeping a stark contrast when reading. Unlike, Anton, who hides the description in favor of only informative thought bubbles.

The visuals in Dust Off pair well with both the words and the mood of the narration. At the opening and closing , we see the 3 swings empty, an easy metaphor for the children that died. The remaining visuals were very simple, but mysterious enough to connect with the heavily descriptive way the narration was getting carried out. The planes flying, the snow storm, the jelly fish were pretty simple, but visually stimulating so that the two could be pieced together easily, but not let the viewer look away.

Such with text, the reader can only work with what you give them. One misplaced adjective can turn a whole mental image around. That is where heavy description and creative wordplay come in.This is where Autopsy Report comes in strong. The language being used super descriptive and chock-full of metaphor and simile. Like comparing the opening of the rib cages to unfolding the Torah. Its these big worded liberties that text can make to draw a clear line to their descriptions.

When someone reads/hears something, they already have a mental image in their head. They nor you can stop that. When visuals come into play, the mental image will still be there, but now they will be exposed to a new image, one provided by the author. The two should complement each other. Such as the first story with huffing the propellant, the visuals summed up the mood of the words; images and details of someone dying, words like “dark room” and “displaced oxygen” coupled with visuals of being in the middle of a snowstorm. I was thinking literally being in a closet, huffing propellant, and the good accompanying visuals were given to set the viewer in a mood to better absorb the material. This is a big distinction between visual and text. The two can play nicely when done correctly.

When watching these essays, I suppose the “essayic” qualities come out in the same way as a written essay. If we are leaving the form of the script aside, then the heart of the essay is to ask questions and challenge , if not only your own, thought process. In Mangoes, the narrator is struggling with the concept of wearing the papoose, among other new father related things. This literally (cause the land-lord asked) asks question about manliness, fatherly roles, and we can both see and the resolution in tandem with the script so as to get a perfect understanding.

In mangoes, the author of the essay uses the video medium as a tool to help illustrate  point. When his land -lord is talking, you could get a good sense for who he is through his language and his voice, but with the video, you not only see the way he looks, but all the carefully placed objects around him, helping the viewer get a better sense of who this guy really is. Further in the essay, but, different from the rest of the essay, there is some home clip of him saying “Banana Republic” and having his kid laugh every time. Just having that clip in there is something no other form could accomplish. Seeing the kids face light up is something words or audio couldn’t do and leaves you with a different feel having seen t.

Something similar comes up in Grandpa, where such as in writing you would have to make clear the lines of the past and the present. In audio, some key changes can be made to the music or pace of diction. In video, the process is streamlined, and we can see clearly these little changes. This can allow the narrator to flow more evenly in his words.

Freeman talks about the video essay as the “the brainy, bratty, mixed breed love child of poetry, creative nonfiction, art house indies, documentary, and experimental media art.” This is pretty true. In mangoes, the narrator uses traditional audio essay styles, careful word choice, poetic diction, rhetorical voice, and then will switch to a conversational tone. Its not lost in the traditional sense, but there’s definitely the points of tension between the elements that video can explore.

The tone of Wheeler essay took many shifts. At first descriptive, where longer sentences and lots of adjectives were used. He spoke in a flowing, almost rushed pattern. Intermediately breaking up the flow with strategic pauses between the many lists he uses.

The tone shifts dramatically with the introduction of his sister. Much blander, serious diction is used here. Some shorter sentences are thrown in with the very descriptive sentences and the many lists.

Later, the speaking style moves to a more honest tone. When he goes through the story of how his sister “got sick,” or how he was convincing his mother is was suicide, he is not describing. Rather, he tries to match the tone or situation with his delivery. He uses a far more honest tone. The inflections are far and few in-between. The pauses feel a lot more dramatic and the tone shifts by sentence from “somber reality,” to a “trying to convince.” Now he is portraying emotion, almost like it’s (the character’s) first time working through the story.

By the last few sentences he has dropped all inflection and only pauses when necessary. The music, adding much needed space, was taking a backseat the whole time. Yet by the end, has risen to the front and now guides the emotional responses.

I would like to write like he does in the beginning. Very easy to read. Lists like “rips and sticks and stains and cuts and missing chunks.”(2:24) Its really cool to hear that being read vs. reading it. While, my piece does not have the gravity that this one does, the same tone shifts are applicable. The introduction is more light, then the heavier material come barreling after it. I’d like to get the same personal descriptive tone out of mine, like someone just asked me to “describe it all” without order.

Antins’s Essay is written in very short and choppy sentences. This reflects dialogue and the writing style that Kern describes in his “writing for broadcast” piece. ” They’re also aren’t many gimmicks or flowery, descriptive language. All I get from the Antins essay is Antins is buying a mattress with his unbearably indecisive wife. This opens the room, not only for dialogue, but for short, precise sentences and many pauses.

The physical spaces create these pauses that help create an air of dialogue. This helps this piece read aloud like a radio broadcast. Its as if you can hear the narrator taking breaths every couple of sentences. The constant use of “I” and rarely using passive description, save a few “I don’t remember”s or “mattress brand” instead of a actual brand, coincide with most of Kern’s essay to a point.  Only mentioning the essentials like names and background make the  style  extraordinarily colloquial and easy to follow at any point.

The majority of the Antins essay was either dialogue of internal description. Both of these lend themselves beautifully to the “writing for the ear style. I found, at times, Antins really borrowed from Kerns in the”communicate with one person at a time” advice he gives. When its dialogue, is like he wants you to be in the mattress store with them, and when he is thinking, it like he’s talking to you.

Only a few times I found myself running out of breath while reading. The paragraph where he explains the mattress salesman’s history and how he came into a lot of money feels very “essay-ic”and like paper writing instead of writing for the ear. “and its through the inheritance from this dignitary that our friend lives in a comfortable house in encinitas where he spends a lot of time when hes not selling mattresses puttering around his garden.”(119) Yes, it starts with “and” and it is not typical sentence structure, it clashes with the rest of the short, dialogue-y feel of the rest of the essay. Otherwise, good job.

When thinking about the somebody ive met for The Empathy Essays,  I believe that Jamison has already covered most of that. She seems to be painfully honest with herself. Her insecurities are laid out for everyone to see, usually negatively.  She paints herself as fickle, emotional, irrational, etc. Jamison mentions shes “mostly grateful but sometimes surly, sometimes full of self-pity“(24) This is not to her discredit. Above all else she seems reasonable. I don’t understand and dont think I could have much comprehension of what brought her to the state she was/is in.

The whole piece just felt like a confession. Like some great outside force was bearing down on her, forcing this introspection out. I feel as though I met someone who had no other option but to look deep into herself and get out what she needed to.

Jamison gives us a clear picture of who she is fairly cleverly, using the initial story of “patient character scripts” as a narrative device for her own story. This is why she can be as blunt as she is, rarely hiding behind metaphors or flowery language.  The introduction is what catches my eye the most, though. She goes on about the job and her experiences, then shifts into the personal, almost as if she didn’t plan it. She uses the experience of Medical Acting as a  soapbox for much larger problems, constantly tying parallels between the doctors calculated empathy and Davids own, less gentle brand.

“Question 31” makes its appearances throughout the text as well. The whole obligation of empathy rather than, as Jamison puts it “feeling my pain”. This, with the indecisive, quietly dying inside (or outside) nature between Jamison and the fake Stephanie Phillips.Even when she is Jamison in the story, there’s something all too honest about being able to “leave the self” and discuss your mental hangups in the third person. Not as if it stays for long, but to set it up in that manner makes me think that some of the hang ups must still exist.

Keeping in mind the Benson reading, with his emphasis on the essayist meaning to “interpret” a lived life, instead of recounting events simply as they happened. This is ever present in the section where she describes seeing a rather odd piece of painting, a clown constructed of vegetables. She goes on to mention how “I have forgotten, I assume, a great many things I’ve wanted to remember-But I have not forgotten that clown painting or its lunatic setting in the old hotel”(97). Normally its mention would not raise any flags, but when thinking about Benson we can see Dillard exercising a more experienced part of her life than, as she admits, other more immediately important aspects. As an essayist this is very import to keep in mind. Putting forth a feeling rather than a recount and drumming up a loose connection between “fiction” and “non-fiction”.

Benson goes on to say an essayist is not a romantic. Rather, an essayist is to give their honest and personified account of their life as they lived it. Dillard could have just talked about the near super-natural astrological event that her text revolves, yet the very appearance of this painting, puts those two experiences on par with one another. In fact, the mention of the painting in the beginning sets the tone for the whole piece. In this way, the painting is a reflection of the eclipse, a surreal astronomical event. One that she intended to see. But instead was imprinted with the image of the clown that has stuck with her.

As far as my essay is concerned, I would like to adopt, not only the honesty that Dillard displays, but the attention to striking details as well. The reader is there for an experience, not to learn. Dillard (and hopefully myself) realizes that if you wanted to know about eclipses you’d read a text book. She paint a eerie and distorted  version of the event because it IS her version of the event. The language is exuberant and colorful because that was her experience, not the experience.  I wish to reflect that same honesty.

The writing styles used in Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” can be seen described in Klaus’s “Toward a Collective Poetics of the Essay”. Early on, Klaus describes the inevitability of comparing essays with other, “more conventional” works of rhetoric or scholastic. Unlike these works, essay have a “openness or looseness”, going on to quote William Cornwallis, who defined the essay as “a manner of writing well befitting undigested motions” This is seen in the Didion text, as even she can sometimes not recall the immediate importance of her notebook writing.

That seems a nice enough line, and I even recall who said it, but is it not really a better line in life than it could ever be in fiction? But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it.(15)

This passage hits home with what Klaus and any others find so attractive about the genre. It sheds the rigorous and calculated analysis of other works and gives a more impressionistic, and above all non-argumentative stance on the everyday thoughts. Certainly Didion captures the “poetics” of the essay with “On Keeping a Notebook”.

For my project Four, I had a very interesting time trying to get it right.

While the core information was the same, I had a almost drastic change in audience. The main point of the website was to educate the common person who most likely, doesn’t know anything about My information had to be tailored to a newer, more broad audience. My first choice was to simplify the language, using less technical terms and explaining the ones that I had to use. I then took steps to streamline and the main points and wrap it up in a nice and linear package to make the information more accessible. The website medium is the perfect tool to make that happen.

I enjoyed the experience and challenge it presented. I particularity like my “pick your own adventure” style of information providing. While not new, it is a very effective and interesting way o help the reader get the most vital information to them. I think you will like that too. That, and the professional, and modern look that the website has.

If I had all the time and resources? I think I would make the website SIGNIFICANTLY more interactive. I would use charts that you could move to see the “real-time” effects on the market. I would also implement some sort of user friendly database so they can see first hand the spending histories and facts over the years.

I face the pretty common challenge of having to get used to the Wix platform and having to tailor my information. These problems are pretty unique to this project. I have had to tailor information before, but not medium to medium like this project.

All in All, I really like this project, I just wish I had a better understanding of website building. But hey, practice makes perfect!

MA