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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Relax, and do it!, July 12, 2000
The academic world ready for a new approach to tackling the traditional problems of English composition, and the business world is on the brink of degenerating into a sterile environment of catch-phrases and e-terms that slam the door shut on creativity and turn potential clients into sleepy-eyed techno-drones. There is a beast within you who wants to write, and David Williams' new and irreverent book, Sin Boldly, will reach into your bestupored brain and pull out the impressive abilities of composition which you never knew you had. Shortly after Walt Whitman composed his famous book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, he commented on the influence of his hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I was simmering, simmering, then Emerson brought me to a boil!" This is exactly how I felt after a semester with David Williams, and it is the result that many aspiring writers will undoubtedly experience after digesting the lessons of Sin Boldly. The main point of Sin Boldly is that you must abandon your inhibitions, forget the tyrannical instructors who tried to mold your prose in the past. Writing is an iterative process, the first stage of which is exposition. How you expose your points sets the pace for the rest of the process and the final composition. David Williams educational credits include a degree from Harvard Divinity School and Ph. D from Brown College in American Studies. He is a seasoned expert on American culture and possesses a unique talent for bringing out the suppressed literary skills that we all have. He is one of the rare educators who belong to an elite corps of literary intellectuals who have abandoned the snobbery of departmental politics to dedicate his career toward teaching english composition college undergraduates. I was fortunate to have Dr. Williams for one of the first classes toward earning my masters degree in English literature. He set me free from the fetters of conventional paper composition that had been drilled into my head throughout my collegiate career. He has an entertaining and provacative style in his teaching that comes across remarkably intact in his writing. He makes you want to write. The point is writing is easy. It is something to be enjoyed, not dreaded. You don't have to be an English student to enjoy composition, either. Whether you are composing an e-mail or writing a proposal for a multi-million dollar telecommunications venture, writing your words should be as easy and natural as thinking them, with the added gratification of being able to see them on paper.
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't judge a book by its content., April 11, 2001
This is a potentially useful book to the student writer who discovers it on his own and therefore has no reason not to buy into its solid, commonsensical advice. There's nothing new here--Strunk&White directives, concisely expressed tips about brainstorming and revising, admonitions about cliched language and ignoring the conventions of grammar, punctuation and citation form. The strength of the book is the author's personal voice, logical reasoning disguised as irreverent defiance of the academic establishment, and invocation of countless examples from pop culture (the Simpsons to Monica Lewinsky), literature (a definite bias toward Melville), philosophy (Derrida and the post-modernists), and theology (Luther--the source of the book's title). While most of the author's points are on target, some may question his failure to distinguish between "opinion" and "idea," especially in the context of exhorting student writers to use the medium to trust and express their opinions ("Here I stand"). It's one thing to "sin boldly," the better to experience a state of despair and to be open to divine grace. But the gain in writing flagrantly bad somehow eludes this reader. Certainly the text is too spare to be of any use as a "Handbook," but as a "Rhetoric" it succeeds remarkably well in its first half in addressing the constant student refrain: "Is this what you want, Professor?" (I want what you want when you might have cause to be proud of yourself for having wanted it in the first place.) By so overtly taking the student's "side," the author conveys a responsible writing instructor's agenda in a manner that allows the student to view it as privileged information. In the latter half of the book, I'm afraid the author grinds a few too many personal axes--taking on the deconstructionists and postmodern types, for example--and strays too far from the matter at hand to hold, let alone influence, his audience. In some respects, the author's purpose becomes suspect (cf. David Foster Wallace's "display" piece on grammar and usage in Harper's, 4/2001). And the book ends in an eerily preachy style. The loud, naughty cover and penchant for scatological language (admittedly a potential turn-off for delicate sensibilities) help atone for the book's didacticism and moralizing as do the moments of refreshing candor (Ronald Reagan didn't know what he was talking about, George Will can at least write effective essays, etc). The price is right, so you can read or assign the first half of the book and ignore the rest.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Personal, perceptive, and purposefully provocative...goes where no other ... handbook has dared go before.", July 17, 2007
This review is from: Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide To Writing The College Paper (Paperback)
My favorite part of this book was an actual student paper that David Williams used as an example: "Women are Like Boxcars: A study of the Cinderella myth. ... They are just writing around waiting to get hitched."
Here's what Dr. Williams (And this Dr. comes from a Ph.D. from Harvard no less) says about this paper:
"The paper reproduced in this section is a real one. That is to say, it was written not by me--I swear!--but by a student in one of my college composition classes. Mr. Beard, the student author, is a respresentative of that pervasive sourthern species... Only kudzu, honeysuckle, and poison ivy are more resistant to cultivation... Over six feet and built like a refrigerator, he was the type of guy who causes the tractor to tilt when he climbs on... His papers tended to smell of the stuff he had clinging to his boots when he stomped into class. But they also had a distinctive voice, an enviable clarity, straightforward logic, good organization, and fair to virtuous grammar. What is more, given the political atmosphere in acadmeia today, he took dangerous risks. Horrified though I sometimes was at the content of his essays, I had to love them."
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