I cannot say definitively what marks the works we've read up to this point as contemporary other than the fact that they were written more recently but I can say for sure that the essay I just read by Montaigne is certainly antiquated. I found it to be utterly incomprehensible. I'm still not sure if what I just read is a story or just a long pretentious display of run on sentences separated by entirely too many comas. It read like a bombastic list of archaic places, names and big words that I honestly was able to take nothing away from. It is because of works like this that I am glad we have blogs so I can express my feelings about them since I feel like I could never say this to a teachers face for they would call me ignorant or dumb, which I am not. I just cannot enjoy that which I cannot understand.
On the other hand, Orwell's story Shooting an Elephant was a tremendously enjoyable reading experience for me. It was written in plain, simple English. It delt with a real, tangible situations and human emotions that I can relate to. Not only was it an interesting story ostensibly but it dealt with much deeper issues; such as serving as a satire for oppressive tyrannical empires. It was also cathartic of real personal issues and emotions we all deal with everyday such as peer pressure, anger, fear, guilt and shame. The details were vivid. I felt like I was right there in the protagonist's shoes as he felt pressured into shooting the elegant beast and I shared in the terrible pity he felt after shooting the poor creature. It captured my attention from start to finish and moved me deeply which is something I wish I could say for the previous work.

thurs sept 10th

If anything, Kincaid's essay Biography of a Dress, took away from what I thought of creative non fiction. At first I thought at it was supposed to be interesting but i found this reading to be utterly drawl and uninteresting. The story was uneventful, boring and seemed almost entirely pointless. Not to mention it seemed like it was written by a child and not just a reflection upon her childhood. I found all the parenthetical insertions to be disruptive and hackneyed, and not to mention the repetition of a certain phrase "though I am now, or I know that now" was painstakingly redundant. I hope in the future that the works we read are better written and a bit more interesting.
On the other hand I found Lott's essay useful and interesting. I liked alot of the things he says about creative non fiction such as how its sort of like a diary or a way of not letting your life slip by undocumented and how he has its like taking what we have done and who we have known and putting it in a story. I found this work provided me with a better understanding of CNF and a definition that I really liked.

Creative non fiction- my defintion

Based upon what we read for homework, I think that creative non fiction is essentially writing about real life events but trying to make them as interesting as possible. For example the story "Superman & Me" was about a young Native American Boy who taught himself to read with a superman comic book. It was a true story but it was capturing and intriguing at the same time and I think that is what creative non fiction is supposed to be.

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