tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9104678730176687014.post1720585039622745569..comments2014-12-12T18:07:42.274-05:00Comments on Seminar in Composition : Revision 1Adamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9104678730176687014.post-74603351736579412192014-10-11T11:46:40.998-04:002014-10-11T11:46:40.998-04:00I have mixed feelings about your opening paragraph...I have mixed feelings about your opening paragraphs. On the one hand, I think you’re moving in a compelling direction: “Abbey wants to preserve nature so that it may remain a place for escape from society, but he fails in creating this atmosphere due to his failure to disconnect himself from prior knowledge.” On the other hand, your organization is a little awkward. If the above quote is your thesis, you could have articulated it more quickly.<br /><br />“Due to the ideas that he has been exposed to, Abbey cannot see nature and form his own opinions about it through an unspotted lens.” -- If you were to revise this again, I’d urge you to use some of the philosophical references (a priori knowledge - a structure to knowledge which we can’t escape - is key in Immanuel Kant!) and/or some of Abbey’s persistent symbols (the juniper tree and how it frustrates him seems to be very on-topic for you) to develop your argument.<br /><br />Your discussion of the Maze was good. “ Abbey does condemn society for its greed, but the larger issue is him being angry with himself for falling into the same trap. His misanthropy in this situation is completely aimed at himself for his failure to drop his human characteristics of greed and possessiveness.” -- So do you think that Abbey is strictly chronicling his own failures and limitations, or is the book concerned with them in some more argumentative way. In other words, is about how we deal with, struggle with, or move beyond our failures and limitations, or is it simply about failure as such? You are doing interesting work; the question of where it all leads to is the most prominent one in my mind at this point.<br /><br />I’m not crazy about the three paragraphs before the conclusion. Their material is fine, but I question your organization. It feels repetitive (other than the researched part, which I’ll get to in a moment) - you’re finding the same themes and issues in different parts of the book. That has a purpose, up to a point, but what I want is not just an endless accumulation of evidence - what I’d like to see is more forward movement, to articulate either what Abbey is up to or (maybe even better) what you’re up to with the exposure of his frustrations with himself.<br /><br />The research seems highly relevant, but if you want to *do* something with his position in the bureaucracy and his ambivalence about it, this probably should have come earlier and been developed in greater depth.<br /><br />Your conclusion is clever. I like this line especially: “Ultimately, Abbey returns to society, unable to find his native self that can disconnect from other humans completely.” However, also feel like you’ve left some pretty big threads hanging. If this book is ultimately a chronicle of Abbey’s failure to separate and discover/enter into an authentic wilderness (one way to put this is that it is a memoir of failed mysticism), I want very badly to understand what you (ideally) or Abbey (at least) want us to learn from failure. It’s a good and interesting but also incomplete and mildly disorganized reading.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.com