The Writing Styles of Joanna Greenfield in Picardo Book of Journeys and Joan Didion in The Run River - Essay Example

Travel Writing Background information about the Joanna Greenfield Joanna Greenfield is a well-known who is very popular mainly for her role in writing the book called The Lion’s Eye: Seeing in the Wild and her excerpt of Travel Writing in book Picardo Book of Journeys. The first book took her almost twenty three years to write because she was very obsessed by the savannas that are in existence in Africa. She went on to write more than for thousand pages of this book. Joanna Greenfield loved travelling in Africa and she wanted to stay there from the time she was just three years of age. Despite of her flawed vision she enjoyed watching world animals. From her educational background Joanna Greenfield has an MA in writing from the Columbia University where she was granted a fellowship for excellence in writing. She accomplished the first year of her doctoral program in anthropology from Emory University but she gave up on it upon her return to Africa to write about animals. Regarding her professional background, she is an experienced and professional writer who has contributed to travel luxury guides and sporting magazines. In addition, she has acted as a senior editor in more than 25 coffee table books and also assisted in the publication of the international sporting magazine. Joan Didion Joan Didion is an American author who was born in Sacramento California in December 5, 1934. She is best known for her literary journalism and novels. Her novels talk about the breakdown of American morals and cultural chaos, whereby the underlying theme is the social; and individual fragmentation. Didion spent most of her childhood living in Sacramento except during the World War II, when she was travelling throughout the country with her mother in order to meet her father who served in the army as an Air Corps. From her, the time of her childhood Didion was a very shy and bookish child. However, she tried to do away with her shyness through performing on the stage and practicing public speaking. During her final year at the University of California, she competed in essay an essay contest sponsored by the Vogue Magazine in which she won the competition. After winning this completion, she was rewarded with a job at the New York Magazine’s office. She decided to remain at the Vogue for two more years where she progressed from being a research assistant to a contributing writer. During the same period, she published articles in other magazines and came up with her first novel, titled the Run River in 1963. The novel did not sell very well, but it attracted good reviews and she was offered another contract to write a second book. She was married in 1964 to John Gregory Dunne, who was an aspiring novelist writing for the Times magazine. The couple moved to Los Angeles later on with the intention of staying on for six months, but they ended up putting up their home there for almost twenty years. The couple adopted a baby girl whom they named Quintana. In the 1960s, the atmosphere of California gave Didion and Dunne ample opportunities for writing in the personal mode that came to be called the New Journalism, which was also associated with writers Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese,. The writing styles. There are various writing styles that authors employ in writing their books. The authors that have been described above also have a preference of their own styles basing on the information that they intend to pass to the readers of their books. The writer of the book is likely to choose a style that suits him or her and will look at the intended destination of the contents in the book i.e. whether the book is intended for the young people or it targets the older ones. The books for adults and those for young people are totally different in terms of style and the message that they are likely to deliver to the audience. For example, a writer may use poetry or song in the book just for the intention of driving a given information to a targeted group. An excellent writer of fine travel books, Robyn Davidson, criticizes the genre that she describes in her introduction part as decadent. Her direct style of writing in The Picador Book of Journeys helps the reader to understand how the book flows even better. She gives room to all kind of characters that you will not think of in her story. One style of writing that is used by these authors is narrative. The goal of this style is to tell a story. In The Picador of Journeys, this style is used in the first and third person but the first person is the one which has been used dominantly. In this book, she makes the use of anecdotes in a narrative style, because she wants to make it very clear that her writing is mainly based on some personal life experiences during her travelling. Another significant aspect of the narrative style of writing is displayed when the author attempts to make a point or a vital statement by using examples and descriptive subject matter. In this regard, Robyn Davidson tries to refrain from being more direct in order to allow the story to flow. The narrative styles are seen to work best when a writer progressively builds interest resulting in a rich and elaborate ending. There is also the use of elegant prose by Joan Didion, which distills the counter-revolutionary horror of El Salvador, whereby no ground is solid, and there is no depth of field that is reliable. The perception is so definite that it might not get back to its reverse. Additionally, there is the use of summary style of writing. This style involves giving the readers the pertinent information together with a different perspective of looking at issues. The writing evolves in the direction of a logical conclusion by giving out the background and the present information that preserves the summary position. The point of view that is shown by the two texts. The first text talks about personal history about a hyena attack. The writer who is Joanna Greenfield narrates a story about going around in Africa and sees a hyena moving along the road in Kenya. In taking a course on the management of wildlife, the spotted hyenas are termed as the sharks of the savanna and the recyclers of garbage. They walk in large groups hunting. They eat chunks of flesh like owls including the parts which are indigestible such as hairs and hooves. The writer never intended to work anywhere in the world but Africa. After she had graduated from the college, the director of wildlife-reserve from Israel said he needed a person capable of setting up a breeding site that would protect the endangered animals. The writer decided to take up this position. Unfortunately, when she got there, she found that the project had been postponed and was then asked if she could take another job as a volunteer of making the enclosures clean. This is the moment the writer narrates about a hyena that had been brought up since it was a young cub at the reserve. The writer tried to comfort this, but she was attacked instead by the hyena. It bites her sinking its teeth into her bone. As a result of this incident, she was rushed to the clinic. There was a 50% chance that her leg was going to be amputated. Initially, the writer had expected the hyena bite in Africa but not in Israel. The writer went back to America but returned again to Africa after five years and narrated to everyone how the hyena almost took her life. Terror is the given name of the place. The place is El Salvador in 1982, the moment when it was at the prime of a civil war. The writer Joan Didion provides a structure of that country and its particular brand of terror, its machineries, rationales, as well as the close relation to the foreign policy of the US. As she travels from battlefields all the way to the body dumps, gives an interview to a puppet president, she provides to us a book that is relevant to any country where bloodshed is the regular tool of politics. In El Salvador by Joan Didion talks about the Salvador International Airport, which is three-year-old and is glassy and white. It is superbly isolated and conceived during the declining of the of the Molina and Romero regimes. The absence of the tourists in the hotels have left behind the ghost resorts on the Pacific beaches which are empty. The only thing that is the logic is that of acquiescence. Immigration seems to be transferred in a thicket of automatic weapons, with the authority of the police the weapons are brandished. The eye contact is avoided, and the documents are being scrutinized upside down. Relationship between the texts. The relationship that has been displayed in the two texts is quite obvious. Both writers have tried their best to bring out what the reader may want to read about. The first text of Joanna Greenfield is more of a narration of her life and how she was bitten by a hyena while she was working as a voluntary servant in a national reserve in Kenya. Literary journalism is a genre of non-creative fiction of writing that makes use of some literary styles and techniques to generate narratives which are factually accurate. In the text of Hyena by Joanna Greenfield literary journalism style is very evident throughout the text. For example Joanna Greenfield describes by using imagery how the doctor tailored her leg as if it was a large piece of cloth (384). Literary journalism is also displayed are compared to the sharks of the savanna (374). In the text, El Salvador by Joan literary journalism is evident when the shopping center is literally seen as the future for which El Salvador will be saved. The flow and tone of the texts. The text of Hyena by Joanna Greenfield flows smoothly and is very easy to understand as it is a narration by the writer. The tone of the writer is sometimes sad when she is being stitched by the doctor without being given the painkillers. At times, there is a happy tone especially when she narrates about her good adventures in Africa. On the other hand, the tone in the text of El Salvador is terrifying especially if one is taking an evaluation of it for the first time. A reader is to read ahead and know what really transpired in El Salvador. There is one key thing that makes this texts different from other pieces of journalism such as newspapers. Other pieces of journalism are usually written in a reported speech in the third person, while this text is just the first person description of the events that both Joanna Greenfield and Joan went through. In other words, journalists are meant to report of the events that have taken place. There are one or two sentences from the text that inspire me as I read through the texts. The one that interests me more is the one that says that the hyenas in the wild can be able to walk a dozen of miles in a day living their young ones in the den as they look for some flesh to feed on (374). They don’t stop until they find their flesh. This shows how determined these creatures are. We should also be determined and hardworking until we achieve our goals. Work cited Davidson, Robyn. The Picador Book of Journeys. London: Picador, 2001. Read More