Writing in the real world, for a real audience
Longtime Shasta College English instructor Peter Berkow, who two decades ago developed an innovative PBS television series on writing, is now making those episodes available through an e-book.
As Berkow told me in a recent Zoom conversation, e-books lacked the capacity to stream video but his project changed all that, most notably for the millions of libraries worldwide that subscribe to the popular EBSCO e-books database. Librarians can easily license the book for patrons, or interested readers can purchase it directly from Amazon.
“English Composition: Writing For An Audience (20th Anniversary Edition)” ($40 in Amazon Kindle format from Peter Berkow Productions) offers 20 chapters, each streaming a half-hour video Berkow created for PBS.
The book-and-video package covers all the expected topics of an English comp course (narrative writing, comparison-and-contrast, research, editing and even “writing under pressure”). What sets this book apart is that it’s downright fun (and funny) to view (and read).
Berkow emphasizes writing “in the real world”; each video features interviews not only with Butte College, Chico State, and Shasta College instructors, but locals in a variety of occupations, from police work to engineering — not to mention NFL football coach Bill Walsh, rock icon Joe Satriani, or Academy Award winning writer-director Peter Farrelly emphasizing written expression.
Chapters introduce the video topic and then consider themes in detail, drawing on interviews with writers including Frank McCourt, Sue Grafton, Charles Johnson and Chitra Divakaruni. Of special note are interviews with Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore (in their 20-year-younger selves), each defining “welfare” in starkly different terms and thus opening up a persuasive writing discussion.
Berkow, former editor of this newspaper’s “Off the Record” supplement, admits that the book “takes a rather mischievous approach to learning grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules.” He finds special resonance with humorist Dave Barry, and warns students not to take Barry too seriously when Barry says of the comma, “wherever you just take a breath, you put a comma in. So, people who are in good aerobic shape hardly ever use commas.”
This is the most uniquest book on English comp you’ll ever view (just don’t ever let Professor Pete hear you say that).