Becoming a writer russell baker summary

The idea is to react to how these artists, creators, thinkers talk about their work. How do they present themselves? Is there something you noticed or learned from them? Just 2-3 paragraphs is fine. The writing will be a short reaction piece, not essay or argument style.

Becoming a'Writer t RussellBaker Russell Baker has bad a long and distinguished career as a news- paper reporter and columnist. He uas born in Morrisonuille, Virginia, in 1925 and graduated from lohns Hopkins Uniuersity in 1947. He got his first newspaper iob uith lEe Baltimore Sun and moued to tbe New York Times in 1954, tuhere he urote tbe to 1998. His columns baue been in numerous books ouer tbe years. In 1.979, be u.,as "Obseruer" column from L962 collected ldl awarded the Pwlitzer Prize, journalism's highest atuard, as uell as the George Polk Atuard for commentary. Baker's memoir, Growing Up (1983), also receiued a Pulitzer. His autobiographical follout-up, The Good Times, appeared in 1989. His otber works include Russell Baker's Book of American Humor (1993); Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (1998, witb William Zinsser and Jill Ker Conuay); and Looking Back #e New York Review of Books. From 1992 to 2004. he hosted tbe PBS teleuision (2002), a collection of Baker's essays for series Exxon-Mobil Masterpiece Theater. The following selection is from Growing Up. As you read Baker's account of bow be discouered bis abilities as a uriter, note hou effectiuely he uses repetition of hey tuords and ideas to achieue coherence and to emphasize his emotional responses to the euents he describes. Reflecting on What You Know Life is full of moments that change us, for better or worse, in major and minor ways. We decide what hobbies we like and dislike, whom we want to date and perhaps eventually marry, what we want to study in school, what career we eventually pursue. Identify an event that changed your life or helped you make an important decision. How did it clarify your situation? How might your life be different if the event had never happened? Baker / Becoming a'Writer I 2O3 Th. notion of becoming a writer had flickered off and on in my I head . . . but it wasn't until my third year in high school that the possibility took hold. Until then I'd been bored by everything associated with English courses. I found English grammar dull and baffling. I hated the assignments to turn out "compositions," and went at them like healy labor, turning out laden, lackluster paragraphs that were agonies for teachers to read and for me ro write. The classics thrust on me to read seemed as deadening as chloroform.l 'S7hen our class was assigned to Mr. Fleagle for third-year English I anticipated another grim year in that dreariest of subjects. Mr. Fleagle was notorious among City students for dullness and inabiliry to inspire. He was said to be stuffy, dull, and hopelessly out of date. To me he looked to be sixty or seventy and prim to a fault. He wore primly severe eyeglasses, his wavy hair was primly cut and primly combed. He wore prim vested suits with neckties blocked primly against the collar buttons of his primly starched white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speakrng that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique. I anticipated a listless, unfruitful year with Mr. Fleagle and for a long time was not disappointed. !7e read Macbeth. Mr. Fleagle loved Macbeth and wanted us to love it too, but he lacked the gift of infecting others with his own passion. He tried to convey the murderous ferociry of Lady Macbeth one day by reading aloud the passage that concludes . . . I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums . . . The idea of prim Mr. Fleagle plucking his nipple from boneless gums was too much for the class. \7e burst into gasps of irrepressible2 snickering. Mr. Fleagle stopped. "There is nothing funny, boys, about giving suck to a babe. It is the-the very essence of motherhood, don't you see." He constantly sprinkled his sentences with "don't you see." It wasn't a question but an exclamation of mild surprise at our ignorance. "Your pronoun needs an antecedent, don't you seer" he would say, rcbloroform: a chemical that puts one to sleep. zirrepressible: unable to be restrained or controlled. 4 5 2O4 TRANsrrtoNs very primly. "The purpose of the Porter's scene, boys, is to provide comic relief from the horror, don't you see."