I Said 3,000 Words Minus Quotes!

I found Walkowitz’s piece most interesting in regards to its style, or should I say frustrating. Either way, works like this are helpful to me because they make me conscious of some of the things I’ve been (rightly)criticized for in my writing.PARAGRAPH The first thing that popped out at me reading this was the abuse of quotes. What I’ve been taught is that 1) quotes must be introduced for context to the original work, 2)quotes must be explicated for context in the work at hand, and 3)that quotes must not be made to do the work of the writing assignment for me. So right away Walkowitz gives up the ghost of Henry James in phrases supposedly in his own voice. Are they from an interview (in which case this would be a more acceptable use, but even then lacking the context of the interview itself could still be misleading)? Are they from his fiction? This kind of close, first-person introspection is common enough there, but if that’s the case then this is wholly inappropriate. It’s not to say that James didn’t fit into this perfectly embodied image of the privileged bourgeois male flaneur- Yeah, I speak some French- but, even provided that is the case, this only detracts from the argument. James’ anthology of fiction is certainly long enough to show this disposition instead of pulling his phrases out of the air as if he were writing the essay himself. Besides, it’s irksome. It feels like talking to one of those people who snarkily throw up little air-quotes with their fingers when they’re talking to you.PARAGRAPH The other style issue I found with Walkowitz’s essay was the superfluous emphasis on gender relevance in an essay that never really gets to any salient point regarding gender. I’m not saying that the privileged gaze wasn’t emblematic of a sexist paradigm that underestimated and stereotyped women. In fact, I just said it- in one sentence. Unless she wants to go the extra mile like Wilson does and actually show this idea in action, however, it’s all “just a lot of words.” Now it’s my turn with the quotes. Christopher Isherwood said that in reference to the language of the afterlife on the tongues of the living, and now he’s talking about feminism in the 19th-century. See how easy that is. Point is: Walkowitz is writing about specific men that helped to map out the imaginative social and geographic city spaces of the time. Tell me why it matters that they were men. That’s interesting. That they were men, we already know.PARAGRAPH OK, there was one more thing. It’s something professor Garett’s cautioned us about, and something I’m really trying to work out of my own writing: the abuse of jargon. I noticed as I started to sense that some of Walkowitz’s gender points were falling through why this is so dangerous, and it’s something I’ve been guilty of. Jargon, unless it economizes the argument (says the thing more directly and specifically), can become a crutch for points that aren’t there. Strange analogy coming, but: I was once talking to a racist about crime in communities, and as soon as his flawed ideas ran into my common sense he all-of-the-sudden became a sociologist, a geneticist, an evolutionary biologist- He gave himself quite the promotion.PARAGRAPH Of course, I’m not calling this author a racist, or a sexist. I’m just looking at things like quote abuse, strained themes, and jargon for how they tend to operate mechanically.