Wesley Viola

I think Berube perfectly describes the difference between analysis and summary,
showing the usefulness of the first compared to the second. It makes complete sense that
a contestant on Around the Horn should receive no credit for just summarizing the sports
indisputable facts, and so an English student should receive no credit for simply restating
what happened in the text. My problem with Berubes essay is that, though he sets up
this important distinction, I still have little idea of how he judges the analysis. Clearly, as
in the Around the Horn example, there are smart or merely plausible analytical
remarks as well as obviously foolish ones and, though both these remarks show
analysis, they have different values. If Berube could spend more time giving a visceral
idea of what goes through his head as [he] reads [his students] work specifically with
the focus on what is sound analysis and unsound (obviously foolish) analysis, I think
this essay would be more interesting and important. I think this is the suspicious
judgment that English professors make, the idiosyncratic and subjective enterprise that
varies from professor to professor, and that it goes (mostly) unexplained by Berube. He
claims that it is identical to the more familiar remark-judgment in the game Around the
Bend, but then again - though I and others can often distinguish good analysis from bad it isnt so clear what makes that analysis good or bad, which is I think much of what
Berubes students are asking him.