HEMINGWAYz

This is the first Hemingway piece I actually enjoyed. I think it's because it was mostly his dialogue, which I'm sure everybody in the planet has already commented on. Also, I enjoy mystery. I'm pretty sure the piece was about abortion. My only issue with it is once again Hemingway has a weak female character. W/e, it was still entertaining.

"Low":
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

"High":

Floating towards the other side of the station where fervid fields of grain swayed, and lush foliage sustained itself against the freely flowing banks of the Ebro, the youth the youth gazed upon countryside treasures. Colossal collections of land had formed a mountainous terrain. A cloud observed her from above, she in turn observed it's silhouette darkening the crops. She could see a river running amidst the huging branches of trees.

suspense

Being that the condition, state of being, and overall sense of the patient had slipped into a worse state, the father of the girl grew depressed. Varying back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness, the girl effected the mental state of all those close to her with every recovery and relapse she made. Her pale skin, the bag of urine hanging off her bed, the balding of her youthful scalp - were all too, caused too much emotion. And as she floated in the dream world, unknowing of her own agony and the agony of those around her, she grew restless in her subconscious. Dreams of escape and falling, helpless embodied and manifesting in her visions overtook her.

Balwin

This piece has many finely tuned observations and anecdotes. Balwin is a writer who clearly conveys his feelings, which are continuously on the surface.

The part were he writes about making black people an abstraction reminds me of Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York. In this book, his poem entitled "blacks" observes how amazing black culture was in America, but it simultaneously objectifies black people, viewing them almost as a thing or phenomena rather than individual people.

Anyway, I did find his writing style to be a bit tedious. His sentences were pretty much all long, and many had too many layers. It made the reading slow. He used to many semi-colons. He also tends to re use words within his sentences. For example, the ninth paragraph uses the word rage about 3 or 4 times.

Goodbye to all that

In my opinion Didion's piece is an enjoyable read. Easy to get through and well written. I relate to much of what she said, and I'm sure I'll feel like her when I get older if I stay in the city. I think she made good use of sentence variation, not everything was simple nor complex. To me it strikes a perfect middle. Also, good use of imagery and senses. I like the way she directly talks to the reader and her simple use of vocabulary. This read almost as if it were a letter from a friend. I also liked the way she broke up sentences with semi-colons. I enjoyed reading this far more than Robert Grave's lethargic account of Wold War 1. And I much appreciated her anecdotes.

Bell Jar

This was an interesting read, although I was semi-annoyed with all the metaphors. Especially because they were all formulated the same way. "Like a colossal junkyard..." "...like a bad picture" etc. I HATE IT when people use the word like too much.
But I did appreciate the how easy the text read. There were a lot of simple sentences. The mood of the text is depressing as hell, the character just felt indifferent and worthless and irritated.