Stephen King -On Writing-
“I know,” I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good-okay anyway, serviceable-and yes, he had only taken out the bad parts, “I won’t do it again.” He laughed. “If that’s true, you will never have to work for a living. You can do this instead. Do I have to explain any of these marks?”
The author explained how he learned the meaning of writing a story. During high school, he created his own high school news paper, called ‘The Village Vomit’. This later lead the author to the most useful writing lesson he had ever got. He made fun of the teacher’s name on it and showed it to students in the school. Most of the teachers didn’t take it serious except for one. She sent the author to detention and noticed front office of the school including the principal of his act. After this incident, the author was recommended as a sports reporter. The school thought it would be better to use the author’s writing ability to somewhere else. A guy named “Gould” revised his writing, and told him about the meaning of the rewrite. The author offer us a lesson here, quoting Gould’s saying “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story, write with the doors closed, rewrite with the door open”. The author’s sense of humor made the “Village Vomit” and this eventually led him to realize the meaning of writing.
Sherman Alexie -Superman and Me-
“The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me.”
The author describes the moment when he first caught the meaning of “paragraph”. He was influenced by his father who brought a lot of books. While reading, he suddenly realized what ‘paragraph’ was. This explains how the author learned to read by himself. He regarded a part of Superman comic book as a three dimensional paragraph, and made up a sentence depicting the character’s movement. He pretended to read even if he could not. This was the beginning of his self learning how to read.
“A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike”
At this part he mention how abnormal it is to be a smart person in the Indian society. Smart Indians are disrespected from other Indians and they are expected to fail in the Non-Indian world. The author refused to fail, and read books at everywhere he could. He was not a normal illiterate Indian.
“They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant wonder. They are trying to save their lives. ”
The author is emphasizing his position in front of the Indian students who are learning from him. He was never taught to write before, all the achievement he made is self taught. The lesson he is trying to convey is to live one’s life, reading and writing is inevitable. I think his achievement contributes to the Indian society. As people like him who could spread the importance of reading throughout the Indian society increases, young students will be eager to learn themselves. People who disrespect smart person will disappear, and this will eventually lead Indians save their lives.
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