William Faulkner is rather well-known in the American literary sphere for his speech at the 1950 Nobel Banquet, where, after accepting his award, he begins to address an issue that he feels is plaguing young new writers of that generation: writing with the notion of the apocalypse, unyielding pessimism, and selfishness. To Faulkner, writing about human emotion, empathy, and hope are the only things worth writing about, and this is something that he feels new writers don’t include because of the time period they live in - the early 1950s, nestled right between WWII and the Cold War. Thus, these people feel it’s only logical to worry about being “blown up”, as Faulkner puts it, above anything else. He then spends the rest of the speech refuting
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Essentially, he asserts that the duty of the writer is, in it’s basest form, to lift up it’s reader and tell them there’s still hope, no matter how dire their living situation may be, or how dire the situation they just described may be. A speech given in the mid-20th century, it’s curious to see how Faulkner’s writing standards could connect to pieces written in 1988, 1995, and 2009, by various different authors writing about what means the most to them.
The first aspect of Faulkner’s writing standards - optimism in a dire living situation - is a gauge best to be used against Freakonomics, a book authored by economists Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Tackling a wide variety subjects, Levitt & Dubner proclaim that they apply their principles of observing economical trends to social trends, and try to hypothesize what these trends could reveal could reveal …show more content…
Iyer’s essay focuses on the importance of commas and other forms in punctuation, and just how important their existence is to literature - a concept he convinces his audience of by providing them with various examples of certain sentence sections with and without the addition of commas. Meanwhile, Sagan’s essay gives a plethora of examples to view through the lens of what the title refers to - the art of ‘baloney detection’, or being able to tell when one is lying. The reader views these essays, and is likely able to be convinced that these are well-evidenced points that are rather important to the conditions of human expression & psyche - but also realizes that these are points they hadn’t previously considered. However, what makes both of these essays important examples in rhetoric - and thus convincing the audience that their issue is important & can be fixed - is how they both provide examples of the issue in real, observable events, and then inform the audience how to not make the same mistake. By encouraging his reader to really be able to feel & understand how an addition of comma makes all the difference in a sentence,
Essentially, he asserts that the duty of the writer is, in it’s basest form, to lift up it’s reader and tell them there’s still hope, no matter how dire their living situation may be, or how dire the situation they just described may be. A speech given in the mid-20th century, it’s curious to see how Faulkner’s writing standards could connect to pieces written in 1988, 1995, and 2009, by various different authors writing about what means the most to them.
The first aspect of Faulkner’s writing standards - optimism in a dire living situation - is a gauge best to be used against Freakonomics, a book authored by economists Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Tackling a wide variety subjects, Levitt & Dubner proclaim that they apply their principles of observing economical trends to social trends, and try to hypothesize what these trends could reveal could reveal …show more content…
Iyer’s essay focuses on the importance of commas and other forms in punctuation, and just how important their existence is to literature - a concept he convinces his audience of by providing them with various examples of certain sentence sections with and without the addition of commas. Meanwhile, Sagan’s essay gives a plethora of examples to view through the lens of what the title refers to - the art of ‘baloney detection’, or being able to tell when one is lying. The reader views these essays, and is likely able to be convinced that these are well-evidenced points that are rather important to the conditions of human expression & psyche - but also realizes that these are points they hadn’t previously considered. However, what makes both of these essays important examples in rhetoric - and thus convincing the audience that their issue is important & can be fixed - is how they both provide examples of the issue in real, observable events, and then inform the audience how to not make the same mistake. By encouraging his reader to really be able to feel & understand how an addition of comma makes all the difference in a sentence,