Harris has what I think is an excellent view of what writing should be. I have often found myself writing summaries of texts that merely scrape the surface of the meaning that the author was attempting to get across. I feel as though some teachers have led me to believe that every text has a specific meaning or thesis behind it. Harris, on the other hand, notes that reading and writing should be more dynamic than that. The reader needs to work with the text in a sense, yet at the same time look beyond it. Using the writer’s idea, the reader can then formulate his or her own ideas or opinions of the topic. I pictured this as the reader having a mental discussion with the text. This is what I like about this perspective of reading and writing; it leaves much more room for the audience to make their own interpretation and in the end it creates better discussion
Sullivan and Harris share similar views on writing. Both authors refer to writing as a conversation that should not strictly follow one main idea. But we should also note that they both see the conversation in a different way. Sullivan explains how blogging contains raw feeling and emotion, but this type of conversation is informal and sometimes shallow. Whereas Harris explains how formal text can lead to many complex thoughts, therefore one must follow certain steps to divulge these ideas and formulate opinions of their own.
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