ESSAY #2

Different Worlds of Writing

 
             David Foster Wallace once said in his 2001 text, Gold Old Neon, that our internal feels are much too instantiates and spontaneous for us to record them, being that they constantly change and are immensely fast-pacing through our system as human beings. This can be used to describe Montaigne’s, Essays, being that he himself could not control the spew of ideas running from his head while he was writing his texts.  Montaigne’s style provides a rather run-on style; the equivalent to what improve is to comedy, more and more ideas came to him as he kept on writing. On the other hand, compared to Jane Austen’s, Pride and Prejudice, the two serve as rather polar opposites with Austen’s style of writing more poised and prepared, with hints of satire everywhere. However, both serve great techniques in writing, which may or may not relate to Wallace’s quote.

 

            Montaigne’s essays serve as a prime example to Wallace’s quote. Montaigne would begin writing an essay, about whichever topic, however slowly but surely the essay would drift off to a completely different subject. His train of though could not have been speeding any faster while he was writing his essays. The ideas he had came in a tremendous amount and caused his mind and writing to drift off into a sea of philosophy, not quite relating back to the essay’s subject, much like Wallace said that one barely can sketch an outline of one’s internal thoughts and ideas. Montaigne could’ve written an essay focusing on fear and begin to start implicating his own fears and go off those specific subjects themselves.

 

            While Montaigne went into a writing frenzy with his essays, Austen proved to have a more composed style of writing with, Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s novel consisted of volumes, like Montaigne, however these sections of text included structured chapters to follow a plot. Montaigne’s volumes of text would consist on immense text of essays focusing on different themes of life. Also, while Austen was writing fiction, she included satire and wit to aid her text, for example when she wrote about the Price’s father- she integrated her own humor to ridicule to aristocratic ego of the Price’s mother when writing the father’s dialogue. The Essays author did not input as much structured rhetoric themes in his text, he went off on his mind- thinking instantaneously, ‘in the moment’. Essays consisted of philosophical writing and a one-person perspective while Prejudice focused on a fictional character POV and conveyed a formatted story with conflict, rising action, and climax. There are evidently tow different styles for writing with Montaigne representing Wallace’s quote and Austen not, taking her time to write her novel.

 

            Wallace’s quote is universal, despite all. One simply can not document all of one’s thoughts, ideas, and new philosophies in an instant while it is still settling in one’s mind as new. While Montaigne proved this quote with his reckless, philosophical, ‘run-off’, wiring, Austen took those instantaneous ideas and composed them into a collected manner- creating a story out of them. Both authors, while differing in writing styles, share the same instantaneous, can-barely-write-it-down, thoughts we all have that Wallace stated in his quote.