Once More to the Lake
Intensive close reading guidance
Some useful and interesting resources. Only the first is required reading.
Various drafts of the essay—a fascinating view of the evolution of a personal essay:
http://grammar.about.com/od/writersonwriting/a/ebwlakedrafts.htm
One of many letter-stories about White on Letters of Note (itself a wonderful work of writing):
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/she-doesnt-answer-phone.html
William Strunk’s original writing pamphlet, “The Rules of Style,” which White built upon:
http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html
A bitter denunciation of “The Elements of Style” (shades of Epsteinian bitterness?)
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497
1. Remember this adage about personal essay writing: Your story, your rules.
Just set them consciously, show them early, and stick to them exactly. White
observes a rule (or maybe more than one) to determines which ‘telling details’
fit in the first paragraph. Can you determine what that rule is? The rule
intersects and influences major decisions throughout the essay, and serves as a
main theme.
2. Do not spend overmuch energy or time
Helgramite, larval form of the
chasing particular diction and references, such as
Dobsonfly (Corydalinae)
‘Pond’s Extract’ or ‘helgramites’. In narrative,
‘telling detail’ will usually be telling even if you don’t understand it precisely. If
you know that a hellgrammite is a kind of water bug and that Pond’s Extract is a
cream medicine, that’s sufficient. This also means that I don’t have a basis for
asking highly detailed quiz questions.
3. How does the author explain his decision to go to the lake? Consider the term
‘understatement.’ Choose a code—maybe ‘U’—and mark use of understatement
throughout. Consider the rhetorical effect of these uses of understatement. Are there different types? How does the
device influence ethos? Tone? Pathos?
4. This is a personal or narrative essay but it relies heavily on description. Focus your reading on the descriptive
passages. How does the author convey the place, the events? What are the key tools that work for description?
What rules does he set?
5. The fourth paragraph—it begins “I was right about the tar”—opens a new phase in the essay. Use your newly
acquired compin’ skills to decide things about this paragraph’s purpose.
6. Watch for and consider shifts, all shifts. Each of these is an opening for analysis and a style outbreak. Since the
argument or structure of a personal essay is highly variable, these shifts are your only clue or hint of the
organization or phases in the writer’s larger purpose. Remember Rule #2: The harder it gets, the more attention you
must pay.
7. Become almost obsessively alert to commentary. This word refers to a large class of statements (and inferences,
hints, suggestions, etc.) that accompany more decisive or form-specific writing. In this essay, we see a pattern of
substantive statements—in this case, narrative (words, sentences, or even paragraphs that advance the story)
followed by commentary (ideas about, reflections upon, or reactions to the substance.) It is in commentary that we
have the distinction between a story and an essay; much of the art of revision in personal writing serves the goal of
making the two parts blend seamlessly together.