| The dissertation "Coming Awake" is a collection of essays that deal with a wide range of subjects. These ten essays discuss the use of first person in essay-writing, views of growing up, religion and religious affiliation, personal understandings of pacifism, reading the essays of Richard Selzer, reading comic strips, learning to read poetry, the process of judgment and opinion-formation, goals and winning, and the present state of a culture obsessed with adolescence---including those physical, economic, cultural, and other forces that encourage that obsession. The dissertation is thus a creative work, falling within the essay tradition that begins at least with Michel de Montaigne.; Making up the dissertation are the following ten essays: "Why Write 'I'?" "On a Child's View of Adulthood," "On (Not) Going to Church," "Making Sense of My Pacifism," "The Doctor's Son," "In the Funny Pages," "On Becoming a Reader of Poetry," "On Judging and Judgment," "On Goals, Ends, Winning, and the Romance of the Bottom Line," and "The Apogee of Adolescent Culture." While these essays echo one another, each is a freestanding entity. |
