The line I'd like to draw between all three essays we read for this week--Murray, Doyle, and Atleework--is genre and what it means to us a readers, but most of all what it means to us as writers. Murray observes that one thing writers recognize is a "signal" to write is genre. "The writer sees experience as a plot or a lyric poem or a news story or a chronicle. The writer uses such literary traditions to see and understand life" (33). But then he adds a warning: "Genre is a powerful but dangerous lens. It both clarifies and limits" (34). Then Doyle throws open the door on the personal essay, a genre he describes as the "widest fattest most generous open glorious honest endless expanding form of committing prose" (11), one that is " not only closest to the speaking voice but the maundering shambling shuffling nutty salty singing voices in our heads." Before Doyle exits, h concludes, "As a general rule the essay is a clap on the back, a hand outstretched to be grasped, a blunt voice in your ear" (17). Then we have the essay itself, "Charade," one that presumably embodies the exuberant qualities that Doyle celebrates in the genre--its digressiveness, its throbbing speed, its flexibility, its brevity and voiceyness. How do these two things match up--Doyle's description of the essay and Atleework's execution of the form? Also, as you reflect on your experience writing essays and/or Doyle's description of the form, what do you sense the genre is inviting you to do? What does it invite you to write about? How does it invite you to write? In what ways is it a "dangerous lens" that both "clarifies and limits?"
Let the conversation begin!
