Author Study

The search for my author to study is on. The short list contains many contemporary authors, all of which I don't know. I'm not sure if I want to research them, though. I really don't think it would be worth it, for me.

I could find an author that has written many popular essays and books, or even movies. But why would I do this? Because one day, when I see a book of his on a shelf somewhere, I can say, "Hey! I know that guy...?" Firstly, I doubt I'll ever find myself in that particular situation, and even if I do, it won't make a huge impact on my life.

I think I picked my previous author study author in a good way. I said to myself, "Clifford! That's a cool name!" He ended up being one of the boringest authors on the list. He wrote one good essay, and put a bunch of bad essays with that essay into a book. He used a method of writing. I forget the name he called the method, but it is basically the "blabber on as much as you can about what you're trying to say, so that the reader can understand your point of view better" method. This made his essays very, very long, and very, very boring.

The good part about Clifford Geertz was that he wrote about a fun topic. However boring his essay was, I could still say that I did a presentation about cock-fighting. Also, I understood his method well enough to explain it to the class, and that made the presentation work well.

I doubt I could have found out how boring Geertz was, just by researching him quickly, and might have still picked him if I did research. So this author study, I will be picking my author at random, or just joining someone else who picked an author that they seem to like.