Reading Nonfiction

1
Reading Nonfiction

• Based on James Moffetts Points of Departure An
  Anthology of Nonfiction

2
Reading Nonfiction

• Content is a factor of intent (2).
• Purpose
• Method
• Audience

3
Writing Nonfiction

• Look within
• Look without

4
Looking Within

• Recollecting or reflecting
• Events of yesterday or long ago?
• Actively participated in or observed distinctly?

5
Looking Without

• Go and look
• Go and ask
• Go look up

6
Prose writer does 1 of 4 things

• RecollectsLooks back
• InvestigatesLooks into
• InventsThinks up
• CogitatesThinks over

7
Organs of Knowledge-Making

• Sensation
• Memory
• Imagination
• Reason

8
Intuition

• Holistic mode of knowing that cuts across and
  integrates organs of knowledge-making

9
All writing Idea writing

• Narrative embodies and embeds ideas (3).
• Implying Demonstrating
• Implicit Explicit
• Concrete Abstract
• Small Large (in space and time)

10
Universe of Discourse

• Relationships in Time and Space
• Physical distance among 1st person, 2nd person,
  and 3rd person
• Psychological distances among the writer, the
  written to, and the written about

11
Scaling

• Trinity of persons
• Verb Tense
• Past tense of fact
• Present tense of generalization

12
Hinge between narrative and generalization

• Mind moves
• From once-upon-a-time to the timelessness or
  recurring events
• From token to type
• From specific to general

13
Importance of Abstraction

• we should be able to abstract at a high level of
  synopsis, not that we should (3).
• Should be done according to need and wishes

14
Abstraction

• Expansion across time and space
• Grammatical persons and tenses
• Corresponds in a measure with expansion of
  consciousness

15
Abstract

• From sources
• Author/subject relation
• For a certain audience
• Author/audience relation

16
How writing gets done

• How humans make sense
• Distill experience into symbols
• Apply symbols to experience
• Cycle continues

17
Writing

• Begins when speaker and listener are separated by
  time and space
• Circular Progression Speaker ? Audience ?
  Subject ?

18
Interaction

• Threshold between oral and written discourse
• Lettersprivate audience

19
Notation

• Diaries, Journals, Logs
• Public audience
• Written within the events
• No vantage point of conclusion

20
Recollection

• Oral speech sensory registration
• I active participant
• 1st person
• Shifts focus to other

21
Investigation

• I Observer
• Secondhand knowledge
• Third personhe, she, they, it

22
Cogitation

• Shift from facts to ideas about facts and
  reflections
• Thinking over and thinking through
• I philosopher
• Emphasis on personal context ? generalization