A Native Hill: Berry

In the excerpt from A Native Hill, author Wendell Berry explains how everything he knows about himself is related to the place in which he grew up, and that much of who he is has been mostly determined by his ancestors who once lived there.  Now that Berry has had the opportunity to go back to Kentucky and reconnect with his home land, he has come to realize that the history behind the land is slowly being erased as each new generation continues to destroy the once untouched land.

Although I have always had a great respect for the environment and I try to do what I can to reduce my carbon footprint, I still find it difficult to fully understand the affect that some of my actions can have on the earth.  As I was reading this excerpt, I came to a part that really made me understand that even something as simple as soil has a history and a past life long before I ever existed. Berry describes the topsoil as “Christ-like” and explains that “It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it…It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it…Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future”(25).  This line shows just how connected Berry is with his surroundings and that he sees the life and history in something that most of us see as dirt.  His passion for nature is certainly reflected in his writing.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Michael Ondaatje

After reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, I was left with many questions. What was most unclear to me was who exactly the narrator was.  I was really confused about who was telling the story because the narrator talks about Sallie Chisum as if he were someone who was very close with her. There was a part after the paragraph about Sallie’s clothesless body curled up under the sheets that made me question who exactly the narrator was and what his relationship was with the Chisum family.  “Once last year seeing her wrapped I said, Sallie, know what a madman’s skin is? And I showed her, filling the automatic indoor bath…and lifting her and dropping her slow in to bath” (Ondaatje 31). In order for the narrator to do this I would imagine he would have had to have seen her naked.

 There were a lot of other parts that were very confusing to me as well, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone on this.  Perhaps it is because this is only a small piece from the story, or perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with the story itself.  The only thing I am sure about is that even though I didn’t really understand much of it, I enjoyed reading it and hope to have a better understanding of it soon.

Living the Narrative Life:Gian Pagnucci

 In Living the Narrative Life, author Gian Pagnucci discusses how “living the narrative life is about embracing the stories that make us who we are” (68).   Pagnucci believes that it is our past experiences that are what shape us into the person we are today, and that it is our own stories that “help us make sense of the world”(78).

While reading this piece, I was reminded of an exercise I had to do in my Creative Writing II class, which was called “I Don’t Know Why I Remember…”  At the beginning of the semester we were instructed to create a list of ten, completely random memories from our past.  The point of the exercise was to recall any events from our lives that stood out in our minds for no particular reason.  Once we created our list, we were to then write any questions or comments we had concerning each memory, which was intended to trigger ideas for a fiction story we were to write.  At first, I thought the whole thing was completely pointless, but I soon discovered just how helpful it really was.  In fact, I found it to be so helpful that I referred back to that same list for almost every story I wrote that semester.   Although Living the Narrative Life mostly focused on the importance of telling our personal stories, it also reminded me that our memories and stories can contribute to our writing in so many other ways.

Paris to the Moon: Gopnik

In Paris to the Moon, Gopnik tells about the transition from his old life in New York to his new life in Paris.  I found that I could easily relate to a lot of what Gopnik had to say when he talked about the differences between America and France because I have experienced some of the same issues that he encountered while in Paris.  Although I haven’t been lucky enough to visit France just yet, I have traveled through other parts of Europe and have found myself in similar situations, such as needing a different converter for each different country, confusing product labels, and all of the other usual issues most Americans run into when traveling overseas.

One thing that I found to be funny was Gopniks reference to the difference between Americans and Parisians when it comes to telephones and Walkmans.  Clearly much has changed since Gopnik wrote this.  Americans have gone from walking the streets with their clunky Walkmans, to walking the streets with their clunky Smart Phones attached to their heads.

Overall, I enjoyed Gopnik’s humor in this piece, but I also felt that I was left somewhat confused at certain times because of it.  I am not sure if it was because of his sarcastic tone and dry sense of humor, or if it was because he seemed to jump around a lot.  I just felt that his writing seemed a bit disorganized at times, which made it a bit difficult to read.