S/Z, The Pillow Book, Rewriting

After reading all three of this sections readings, I found myself regretting not looking Joseph Harris's book first. This text was most interesting for me for a number of reasons. Before I read 'Rewriting', excerpts from 'The Pillow Book' and 'S/Z' felt rather meaningless and dull to me. I understood that the latter texts were aimed to help me better critically analyze literature, but gave me no motivation to actually delve deeper into them. However, after reading a few chapters and the introduction of Joseph Harris's book, I found myself wanting to go back over the previous texts I had read and use my new found methods of critically reading and try and re envision exactly the message that is being portrayed. Just after reading the first two chapters of Harris's book had me thinking about "rewriting" in a different way. I now understand that even if you cannot maintain a neutral stance on a topic while reading, it is still important to compare and contrast your indifference's you may have with a text in a way that will help you better understand the reading.