Chapter 3:

Summary

What's There and What's Missing: Texts can be broken down into their minute details looking at the words used, number of words used, punctuation used, everything. Doing this can help identify "missing" words and the impact that those words have on the text. A Joan Didion reading of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms points out that at one point, the simple elimination of the word "the" prior to the word "leaves" leaves a chilling effect on the reader that wouldn't have been created otherwise.

Empty Spaces, Full of Meaning: Using the same line, the deletion of the word "the" actually creates meaning by putting emphasis on those specific leaves. The absence forces the reader to think about what more could be meant by the leaves and, given the context of the piece, much more can be meant by the leaves. It is the job of the reader to make those connections, but it is the job of the writer to help the reader get there. Leavign emptiness in a text is just one way of doing so.

Repetition, Not Redundancy: Redundancy makes a texts seem dull, like the writer cannot think of what else to say, but purposeful repetition contains power. The more often a word appears, the more significant that word becomes to the reader. In the opening to Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, the word "leaves" appears four times in a single paragraph. This stands out to the reader as important and raises the question of "Why is this word constantly used? What can it mean?" and drives the reader to read on.

Writing Lessons

1. As important as what to put in is what to leave out. This is easy to say but hard to do. After you've written a draft, read it aloud, but only to yourself. If you read it to someone else, that person may ask questions, which will lead to a longer draft. That can make things clearer. But if your goal is spare prose, it helps to listen for the useless or distracting word or phrase. It may look right on the page. But when you hear it, it may sound like that extra note in a trumpet solo.
2. Repetition is different from redundancy. Don't strain yourself looking for synonyms. I'll point this lesson out several times in this book. Think of repetition as a drumbeat. Somehow, a marching drummer can repeat a rhythm countless times without making it sound tedious. After a while, the rhythm becomes unnoticeable, almost like a heartbeat. But it must be done for effect and with a purpose. Beware of those times when you unintentionally repeat a word or image. Readers will judge you as inattentive.
3. The big words count, but so do the little ones. I'll demonstrate this by revising my last sentence: Big words count, but so do little ones. I like that better, I think. It feels plainer, somehow, and more direct. Yet the definite article the expands the effect of the words it modifies, perhaps by emphasizing the parallel distinction between "the big words" and "the little ones."
4. Hemingway's dusty landscape should remind us that a setting can be symbolic. In the summer of 2014, I began to notice how many news stories involved violence, or attempted violence in elevators. I realized that an elevator--even with its compression of time and space--is an affective setting for certain kinds of stories.It is a box of fears: of heights, of enclosed spaces, of crowds. It reminded me how often authors choose certain kinds of spaces--the garden, the dungeon, the tower chamber, the cave--to pressurize human action. These enclosed spaces are often balanced against much broader symbolic landscapes, such as oceans, mountains, deserts, or swamps. As I think of the television series Breaking Bad, I remember the tension created when the protagonists, Walter and Jesse, built a meth lab in the confines of a trailer, then drove it out for privacy and security into the barrenness of the desert.

Critique

Ernest Hemingway is an author that is commonly covered in some way, shape, or form in high school settings. The elements that Clark discusses can definitely be covered through the teaching of one of his pieces, not necessarily A Farewell to Arms. The writing advice comes from Hemingway as an overall writer, not from one specific text, meaning that a teacher could teach The Old Man and the Sea and uses these strategies in having students write in the ways of Hemingway.

This chapter brings to mind the "knowledge of conventions" (1) experience from the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing." You have to know what you're doing with words and punctuations to effectively write in the ways that this chapter advocates for. The suggestion of reading your draft out loud calls to mind Nancy Sommers' "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experience Adult Writers." Specifically, this chapter advocates for the deletion revision strategy in that the writer is looking to make their prose as simplistic as possible.

The great aspect of this chapter is that because it covers fiction and non-fiction texts, it's broad and not too focused on one form. There is some lean towards fiction, as the whole book does, but this chapter presents everything in a broad manner, allowing for readers to interpret strategies in an unfocused way.