Harris&Sullivan

In his book “rewriting”, Joseph Harris shows the art of rewriting, he teaches us how to quote others works in our own essay.  Harris’s aim of this book is to help readers make interesting use of the works of others, because his thinks “interest” is one of the most important things in rewriting as well as in writing.

I think Harris looks reading as a progress of “defining the project of a writer”. To define a project of a writer is far more complex than just to get the main idea in it. It includes many details. In Harris opinion, people must be targeted when they are reading. They must know exactly what they want to know and get from the front article. People should grasp some basic things about the reading materials such as the aims of the author, how the author organize his or her writing, and what specific details the author use to achieve his or her destination.

In my opinion, Harris thinks writing is a way to show the author’s own opinion. I got this idea from his opinion for quoting. He says the purpose of quoting is to do reexplain of others’ works. It is to help an author to point out his or her new views about it or show readers a different way to read the old text. Even quoting is acting such a role, so I think the most appropriate defining for writing is to show the author’s opinion.

The connection between Harris’s understanding of writing and Sullivan’s understanding of blogging is they all think highly of showing the author’s own idea. Sullivan supports blogging mostly because an writer can express his own private and original ideas. They don’t need to make changes of their works to cater to others’ feeling. So I think blogging is a way for people to write his own private ideas, and to share them with the public, then get real feedback of the readers, of course, also learn and progress during the whole process.