No Place Like Home
English 102 Essay #2 (Comparison) Begin by reading
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“Not Buying It” by Steven Kurutz ( AOC pg. 482)
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” by Peter Lovenheim ( AOC pg. 494)
“Faux Friendship” by William Deresiewicz ( Acting Out Culture pg. 470)
“There’s No Place Like Home” by Joel Kotkin ( AOC pg. 490)
“In Times Square, One Last Homeless Holdout” by Julie Bosman (AOC pg. 507)
Choose one of these topics for your writing assignment
1. Among other things, Kurutz’s portrait of freeganism gives us a different way to think about community and and the norms that define relations among people who are neighbors. How does this portrait compare on this point to Peter Lovenheim’s essay (pg. 494)? How does Lovenheim’s focus on the changing norms around community and neighborliness compare to Kurutz’s discussion of freeganism? Does freeganism stand, in your view, as an example of the changes Lovenheim identifies? How or how not?
2. How do you think Joel Kotkin (pg. 490) would react to Bosman’s portrait of Heavy? In your estimation, does this account of Heavy’s refusal to “budge” from Times Square correspond to Kotkin’s discussion of “placeness”? How, specifically, do these two essays showcase a person’s relationship to place? What distinct contribution does each essay make?
3. In many ways, Lovenheim’s response to the crisis of neighborliness could be read as a commentary on what William Deresiewicz (pg. 470) calls “faux friendship”: the way modern communication technology has rendered us, paradoxically, more distanced from each other than ever before. Write an essay in which you identify and assess the parallels connecting Lovenheim’s examination of neighborhoods and Deresiewicz’s discussion of friendship.
Writing advice
Apparently someone somewhere publishes a book of cliché phrases you must work into any freshman paper. The “many similarities and differences” paper is easily one of the most boring and annoying you can write.
There are many similarities and differences between Kotkin’s essay and Bosman’s.
This thesis sets you up for a very unreflective list—some of the items very trivial and some meaningful, but no way to analyze or discuss them. When you have finished, you will be no closer to understanding, but you will have the incorrect feeling that you have done something profound. Don’t go there. Follow the prompt and discuss meaningful differences and how they illuminate the topics of the respective essays.
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Mechanical details
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This essay will be at least four pages long. (Aim at a minimum of 1200 words of content.)
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The final product will be typed and double-­‐spaced according to M LA format.
Due dates
1. 9:00 A M, Wednesday, February 5: Rough draft uploaded to Turnitin.
2. 9:00 A M, Friday, February 7: PeerMark editing finished on Turnitin.
3. 9:01 A M, Friday, February 7: PeerMark comments become available on Turnitin.
4. 8:00 A M, Monday, February 10: Final copy of essay #2 is D UE! Bring a paper copy to class for grading.
This essay is worth 100 points.
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