ELA-Author-Sym-IT

Author's Craft - Symbolism - Print - Information Texts

 * E1-E4

//Solo: My Adventures in the Air//** by Clyde Edgerton. Creative Non-fiction. ISBN: 156512426X & 9781565124264. In this self-revelatory book, the author makes flying a symbol of freedom and adulthood. With that freedom and adulthood comes growing and responsibility and the occasional slip-up. In his author's note, he indicates that there are many fine women pilots today, but his experience is one filled with men and the masculine side of this book shines through. Certain chapters lend theselves to short essays as man and plane become one.

//**The Right Stuff**// by Tom Wolfe. Creative Non-Fiction. ISBN: 0553381350. Serious literature on war, including the Cold War, generally contains sentiments of the effects of war on //Everyman.// Here, Tom Wolfe creates a kind of //Superman// who qualifies as a symbol of the hero with a code understood only by the members of an elite club. Wolfe cracks the code rendering beauty and tragedy among modern day Olympian Gods. The film [|The Right Stuff], adapted from the book, while good for reinforcement of some of the text, does modest justice to the prose herein.


 * "Elvis Gotta Gun"** by Joe S. Harrington, a chapter from //Sonic Cool:The Life and Death of Rock and Roll// by the author. ISBN: 0634028618. The ineffable effect of Elvis Presley who combined Black Blues, Southern Swing, and and a "chior boy persona" (for a time anyway) could out out-sing and out-swivel-hip others to a point where fans screamed and symbolized the popular ethos of the 1950s into the early 1960s. Interestingly, the films with Elvis forebode the death of Rock and Roll, according to this author.


 * //Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time//**. by Dava Sobel. Non-Fiction