"Coming to Terms" with post no.5

Joseph Harris’ definition of reading and writing are far more involved than more standard definitions of the words. Harris says that intellectuals don’t just read to know what the writer is saying, they also read to know what the author is trying to accomplish, and I find this very interesting. Before reading his book, I never really thought that there could be more than one goal in mind while reading a text. Harris claims that whenever you read, you automatically translate the text into your own language. This idea is especially applicable when rewriting texts, because in order to “come to terms” with a text you must understand what is being said and why.

Harris’ main point in “Introduction” and “Coming to Terms” is that the goal of writing is to respond to, or as he prefers to call it, “forward” someone else’s ideas to form your own. When writing in response to something the ultimate goal is to push forward what has been said before, possibly in a whole new direction. That is, when writing a critical response to another text, the goal is not necessarily to totally disprove the original text but to offer your own insights to essentially extend the conversation. “Forwarding” evokes a sense that writing is something done between people in a very interactive manner. The notion that writing is a “social practice” coincides with some of Andrew Sullivan’s theories about blogs.

One of the unique things about blogs, according to Sullivan, is the fact that blogs could be considered interactive journalism. Sullivan says that roughly one-third of his writing is reader-generated, giving a sense that the readers are more involved with what is being written. Rewriting/revising texts, according to Harris, is also a social and interactive practice. Sullivan commented that blogs are inherently social because of the ability to add hyperlinks to other blogs, allowing for a variety of opinions to be shared on a given topic. So basically, the discourse that takes place in the blogosphere is a parallel to critiquing other writers’ texts. Harris and Sullivan are seemingly totally different writers who write about totally different things. In spite of their dissimilarities, they can at least agree that writing is more social than it is generally considered to be.