Renee Gladman's Book To After That

So I’m not sure if this blog is about the two writing assignments and Gladman so I’m just going to write about them both.

When I first read the two writing assignments I was nervous that it was going to be really tough and I was going to fail epically. When it came right down to it I really enjoyed both of the assignments. I realized I have learned a lot from this class. I also noticed that while writing with such description I had kind of like little poems intertwined in my writing. I used to hate poetry and never wanted anything to do with it, but now I appreciate the time and effort I put into trying to create poems; it has improved my writing which is something I’m really happy about.

“I see the sentence as this thing you are moving through”, says Gladman. “You encounter words and punctuation the same way you would see a building or turn on to a street.”  Gladman’s language is changeable and has many levels of emotions; it sort of reflects the way we move through our lives and our days. She kind of creates a circle or something like that, like she’s trying to get inside or trying to re- crafting what she had saw in writing. I also liked how she kept asking is this fiction? I take that as a searching of truth type thing. Like she is trying to ask us if our everyday life is fiction, since our perception of our environment is all we know. It is hard to convince us something else when we already believe in one thing. I enjoy Gladman’s writing style.

I also really liked that the central “character” of this one is a failed novel, a manuscript whose completion is delayed before she could make it to the end. There is more suffering and sex than anything you’re likely to find in the usual lists of fiction; which I found to be pretty cool.