Jesse James 1

I know this isn't a creative writing class, but I had some major problems with this work. I found the reading, as interesting as the story is becoming, to be painfully dull. The way that the story was written took all of the excitement out of it. I almost couldn't finish reading the four chapters that my group decided to read before class this Wednesday because the language stole the life from the story and, by proxy, the reader (me). The literal and factual manner of speech and narration may have been commonplace in the time that this story was written, but it is slow and tame, which creates a poor contrast between the action-packed nature of the story and the words that make it up.  Short of the occasional "Bang! Ping! Thud!"s that appear to describe sounds, the first few chapters were really controlled and funneled with precise dictation. The story did start to pick up a bit during the train robbery, but that, too, was muffled by the puffy words. I am a bit of a hypocrite on this issue, though. I write in the same wordy and fluffed-up fashion to properly convey thoughts. Hopefully, I one day learn to stop writing like this myself, though, as I tend to suffocate my writings in the same manner. It must be infuriating to my professors!