Reading Response #1

I found both of these essays to be extremely easy to relate to. Not only was I comfortable and interested in each story that was presented, I had fun reading both memories almost as if they were my own. I felt I could relate more with Hogg’s “I’m a Believer” simply because I’ve had my own celebrity crush or two. After reading both essays as well as Ballenger’s lesson on the form of the personal essay, I concluded that both recollections were so effortless to relate to because they were written in the form he specified.
First of all, the essays were both written in first person which was understandable considering that these memories came straight from the minds of their writers (94). Not only were the essays written from a first person stand point, but they were both also commonplace (94). It is not unlikely for a teenage girl’s heart to beat wildly over a celebrity, especially one who sings. Near the beginning of Hogg’s essay she writes, “I believed this was some kind of privileged access I had, this private and offhand exchange between Davy and someone… that this brief moment before the music was cued was put on my album deliberately,” is something that you might catch any star struck teenager saying about their favorite superstar (B1). Nor is it improbable for an individual to find beauty in a place that had always been so familiar to them that it was monotonous. Both of these writers stuck with subjects that they could really give detail about, and it made the reader feel as if they were a part of each. This narrative style of writing was another point that Ballenger made about personal essays (94). By using their own thoughts, Hogg and Black were able to trigger the reader’s mind to paint a perfect picture of that memory. Even the simple thought that Black has, “I went home and I fell in love with a place I couldn’t claim for myself. This did what nothing else could until then: it humbled me,” really conveys how hard the scenery hit her and how deeply she could feel it (B14). Perhaps the most interesting tip from Ballenger that I picked up on while reading these passages was that in both the thesis came very late in the story (94). For Hogg, the thesis occurs only two lines before the story is over. It is her realization of her crush being only a crush. She writes, “As I watch him write ‘David’ not ‘Davy’, I accept, finally, that this person I know so well I don’t really know at all, and I, the daydream believer, am just a fan” (B10). While Black’s thesis did not occur as late, it too was not near the commencement of her narrative, and it also dealt with a point of realization. Black states, “I had always prided myself on being rootless, yet here I was experiencing rootedness in the most literal sense of the word, and loving it in spite of myself” (B13). I agree with Ballenger’s statement that, “…insight is usually earned later rather than at the beginning of the telling” (94). If Black’s or Hogg’s thesis’s were near the start of their recollections, the feelings I had while reading both stories would have been completely different, and neither would have been as exciting for me to read. Not to mention, if they listed their thesis’s early on there would have been absolutely no purpose in reading the rest of their narrative. By that point I would have already known the use of their essay. The last point that Ballenger makes is that the personal essay often transfers back and forth between the past and the present, showing the author coming to terms with whatever situation is being dealt with (94). In both Hogg’s essay and Black’s essay I felt that this strategy was utilized, but in a different way. Hogg’s remembrance began when she was only six years old and then jumped straight to when she was fifteen and anxious to attend Davy Jones’ concert. The last jump she makes is to when she is twenty seven and that is when her realization about Davy Jones sets in. To me, she made shifts in time, but chronologically. Black, however, stays in that memory and only pauses to make points about how she felt connecting with that setting. I think that this too was very effective in helping the reader to understand how she feels now.
Both Black and Hogg used strategies that Ballenger discussed to write powerful, thought provoking personal essays.