{"id":635,"date":"2014-11-18T00:06:48","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T05:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/?p=635"},"modified":"2014-11-18T00:06:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T05:06:48","slug":"individuality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/2014\/11\/18\/individuality\/","title":{"rendered":"individuality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Franzen’s analysis of the German writer Karl Kraus was nothing surprising or noteworthy, in my opinion. Although he says a lot about what Franzen finds valuable about reading and writing, the qualities needed in a good book that he points out are what every reader should aim to look for when finding a good book. Franzen frequently harps on individuality and how important it is; he specifically gives an example of this when discussing the Apple vs. PC commercial. He wanted individuality, he criticized and complimented the two companies and their marketing strategies. He talks about how although he should be drawn to Macs, he would still rather have a PC. Franzen mentions how just because something is cool, does not mean it is noteworthy; PC’s are noteworthy to him, although not technically cool like Macs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Going off of individuality, Franzen says, “You wouldn’t want to read a novel about the Mac: what would there be to say except that everything is groovy?\u00a0Characters in novels need to have actual desires; and the character in the Apple ads who had desires was the PC, played by John Hodgman.” So, when reading a novel, we should focus on the characters, their desires, and their individuality as characters in the story. Franzen keeps touching upon “technological progress” and its influence on good and meaningful media; meaning that technology is now influencing things such as books. But what he always goes back to is the need for individuality in works such as books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Franzen’s analysis of the German writer Karl Kraus was nothing surprising or noteworthy, in my opinion. Although he says a lot about what Franzen finds valuable about reading and writing, the qualities needed in a good book that he points out are what every reader…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":873,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}