American Author Thesis Proposal

Raul Valle Jr.
Block: L/D.
4.15.2008
Thesis Proposal for Richard Preston
(American Author)

Some thesis proposals that I first came up with were a bit dull or too weak. They were either based on just what I read and learned from reading, or they were based on simple topics that I took out of the books. Even though I have not finished reading my second book, there are some possible things that I may want to write about. One thing that I am really trying to focus on is the sense of style that Richard Preston likes to use when describing or writing his novels. Most of Richard Preston’s novels are related in some way or another. Well, at least the ones that I read were related. For instance, there is the way he likes to connect horrifying true stories and turn them into something ordinary. His use of style writing, as I like to call it, is something anyone can enjoy when reading his books. This type of writing is most definitely hard to find, though. In the books The Cobra Event and The Hot Zone, the one key thing is that Science can relate to almost anything. Not just plain Science, but science fiction in particular. Richard Preston knows how to put words in a way that is not only interesting to read but also informative and that is a special talent that not many writers can do.

ACTUAL THESIS: In both, The Cobra Event and The Hot Zone, Richard Preston’s use of science fiction enhances the ability of telling different stories and through that making a point that fiction sometimes is scarier than real life.

Although I’m not sure if I will stay with this thesis because I have not finished reading my books, I will try really hard to stick to only one because it makes it harder to keep changing ideas. The most important thing is that this thesis is based on most of the reading I did so it’ll be difficult to change it later. This thesis is not only challenging but stressful as well. That’s the way I like it. It will be hard to come up with a ten-page paper based on just this thesis so it is not a done deal that the whole paper will revolve around it. I will also want to include some of the author’s biography and some book reviews about The Cobra Event and The Hot Zone. I will try to connect them in some way. I will probably start off by introducing a clear thought of my thesis and then continue on with the biography and the different book reviews if I find any that are good. I will surely look at the books for some particular themes that will lead me to discovering more about “style writing”. I have read some short biographies of Richard Preston and from his novels to his lifestyle; it definitely shows how he can write such excellent pieces of novels.

Final blog for American Author Reading

As of right now, I have finally finished the book The Cobra Event. The final pages were about the overall look on the Cobra virus and all the people that died from it. It showed how all the deaths had something in common and that they all related to the same thing. It describes how they all died the same way. First, they started eating themselves up like vicious kinds of animals. Then they went into crazy mood swings and ended up squirting blood out of their systems. On the third to last chapter, the scientists Hopkins and Austen, and Lieutenant Commander Mark Littleberry go to a street in Manhattan called Essex-Delancey to discover the background on the cobra event. They go underground to a tunnel called the BJ 1 tunnel where it is said that the cobra virus came from a rat that was infected with it. That rat then, somehow, bit a person and the virus jumped out of the rat race and into the human race.

"Captain Dorothy Each, who had been bitten by Hector Ramirez, died on Governor's Island. Of a total of 19 cases of cobra in New York resulting from the bomb blast, 18 victims died. One 8 year old girl survived but ended up with chronic Lesch-Nyhan disease and permanent brain damage. All of the patients were given anticonvulsants and the experimental anti-smallpox drug cidofovir, but the treatments had no effect. The overall toll of infections in the Cobra Event stood at thirty-two cases, including the index case of Harmonica Man, Kate Moran, and many others, and also counting Thomas Cope...". This quote could potentially lead me to a thesis statement about describing the different cases that the cobra virus hit. It could also lead me to talking about how the different people that died from it had a connection to the infection.

I have already started my second and final book called The Hot Zone.The book is divided into four parts and I already read all of part one. This is a total of 153 pages which I began yesterday and finished today. From what I have read, the book is about a killer virus that stalks the human race. This virus has "supposedly" originated from Kitum Cave in Mount Elgon. People that have gotten infected with this virus would burst out in bleedings from the nose and from the mouth. They would first start out with massive headaches and backaches and muscleaches. This all would happen on the seventh day. Then, on the tenth day that they would get infected with it, they would explode in huge headaches and their eyeballs would also ache and they would spike a fever, become nauseated, and most of them even die. They would also burst out in vomit called vomito negro or black vomit. It really isn't just black it is also red. It is highly infective, very hot, loaded with a virus and smells like a slaughterhouse.

A man named Charles Monet got infected with this virus when him and his woman friend went to Mount Elgon on New Year's Eve to celebrate a new year. Him and his friend went inside Kitum Cave to see what was in there. The next day he went to work at the sugar factory. On the tenth day, he broke into the serious conditions and went to go see a doctor in Nairobi. There he burst out in black vomit and infected the doctor that was attending him. The doctor's name was Dr. Musoke. The story goes on with other people that got infected with it including Nurse Mayinga N., Sister M.E., Mr. Yu G., and Peter Cardinal. Another possible thesis statement could be the use of drama. As I read this book and read the other book, I noticed that Richard Preston likes to use drama to explain science fiction. His horrific story that can give people nightmares is the kind of writing he portrays in these books. He likes to describe things using a lot of detail to paint a picture in your head and that is something I would like to write about and explain his use of language. I don't necessarily want to base the ten page paper on one thing. I'd like to explain different things about this author and include some of his biography.

General Info.

I am still on my first American Author book. Like I said before and I keep saying it now, the writing is very difficult to understand so it's hard for me to read fast. I can't keep up with the pace of the class. I know I said that I would finish by last week but I most certainly will finish pretty soon. It's just that last week I didn't get much time to read. I'm on page 351 as of right now. There are 422 pages in the book so I'm almost done. I read from page 305 to 350. It is the beginning of Part Six. It was very complicated to try to keep up because so much information was thrown to you at once in these pages. All I really remember was that it talked about a boy named Hector Ramirez who also died of the same act that the others died and the scientists tried to continue their search on what is killing these people. It talked about gene therapy. Gene therapy is where a damaged gene in a human tissue is replaced by a working gene. It also talked about another person who got infeced with this virus. A person named Bobby Wiggner who started eating his face up as well. It sort of relates to Kate Moran's story. This is all I got through these pages.

Thematic or Stylistic Threads Through the Texts.

Unfortunately, I still haven't completed my first American Author book. So, I can't really say anything about thematic or stylistic threads through the writing. I plan to, however, end my first book by the end of this week. Like I said before, in my previous blog, this book is hard to understand. It is very interesting and disgusting, but challenging to read. That is why I am taking so long to finish. My second book, however, will go by quicker because I already have a taste of what it is about so it will be less challenging and faster to complete.

In my first book, I read from page 275 to 301. The chapter was called Invisible History (III.). It is also the last chapter of Part Five. Through these pages, I read that somehow the Cobra virus could potentially be related to AIDS. The scientists, Littleberry and Masaccio think that the Cobra virus has a little bit of everything. Some of the things it could be made up of are smallpox, Black Death, and Anthrax. Throughout these pages, it goes off into detail of what else it could consist of.

Symbolism, Stylistic, or Literary Devices.

In my book, The Cobra Event, I haven't really seen any type of symbolism used to describe a bigger idea. I don't think I will see any now because I'm alrady more than halfway done. Yes, I haven't done my transition from my first book to my second book. But that's only because my first book takes me a while because there is a lot of science words that are complicated to understand. My second book, I've already started reading it a while back, so I think that one will go by fast so I don't have to take a long time on that one.

My author likes to use fiction to describe real situations in life. He uses fake characters to express true events. This is the only type of literary device that I've noticed that my author uses. Throughout the weekend, I read from page 204 - 274, a total of seventy pages. Through these pages, I read that the virus that Kate Moran got infected with, other people also got infected with it. Those people were named Glen Dudley and Suzanne Tanaka who were technicians in the Army Medical Management Unit. Scientists called the virus the cobra virus. This infection was a mixture of a butterfly virus and the common cold virus. They call it the cobra virus because it hits a mucus membrane and zooms for the brain. " Cobra is a biological missile designed to take out the brain... Cobra is the ultimate head cold".

Mid-Winter Break Reading

The last time I read, I stopped after Part One. Over the break, I read Parts Two, Three, and Four. Part two is called 1969 and it is consisted of two chapters called Forbidden Zone and Invisible History (1.). Part Three is called Diagnosis and it is consisted of 19 chapters called Monkey Room, Vision, West of Babylon, Morgue, Kate, The Chief, Deeper, Union Square, Tracking, Unknown, The Ladies' Room, Invisible History (2.), A Cast of the Net, Cells, Houston Street, Island, Whirlwind, Cobra, and Knife. Part Four is called Decision and it is consisted of five chapters called Masaccio, Archimedes, Dash, Andrews, and Sioc.

Part Two is about a Captain named Gennadi Yevlikov who is on his boat a thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. He is searching for a place called Johnston Atoll. All around Yevlikov, on the deck, were the scientific men from the Ministry of Health. They were accompanying him on sea. Once they got to the beach of Johnston Atoll, they saw Lieutenant Commander Mark Littleberry, M.D., with his colleagues who were doing some trials in monkey labs. Mark Littleberry was a medical doctor in the U.S. Navy,a tall, handsome, African-American. He was a medical officer for the Johnston Atoll Field Trials. He had a degree from Harvard University and a medical degree from Tulane University.

In Part Three, there were a couple of chapters that basically gave a recap of what had happened earlier in the book. Like with the girl, Kate, it talks about her story and gives a further explanation of what happened with her and her seizure. It also talks about the Invisible History and gives a depth explanation as to what it is because inPart Two, it didn't really explain it. That's why it is called Invisible History 2. In Part Four, it talks about a guy named Frank Masaccio. he was the head of the New York Field office and an assistant director of the F.B.I. This chapter talks about him and what he does. Archimedes was this great mathematician and weaponeer who died in 212 B.C. He designed glass lenses or mirrors that focused sunlight on enemy ships and set them on fire. This chapter goes on about who he was in his time. It is a description chapter of him. The Sioc room was a windowless radio-secure chamber at the F.B.I. headquarters. Sioc is where a group of people sit down to have a meeting. The Sioc room was divided into sections that were visible to one another through glass panels.

American Author Proposal

Richard Preston’s Great Success

For my American Author Project, I want to focus down on the author Richard Preston. Richard Preston has written three lengthy books and other important things that have really been a big contribution to his life. There is one book in particular that I like and I think represents a good example to read for this project. This book is called The Hot Zone. I don’t want to read it just because it’s a true story, but because it’s a terrifying true story. The whole book is based on science. It revolves around a virus that is deadly and it comes deep from within the central African rain forest. There is no cure for it and it turns out to be a horrifying story.

The Hot Zone is a drama related book. This is what draws me to this author. The fact that Richard Preston can write Physics but in a dramatic way. His ability to write a 422 page book on a lethal virus and make it the #1 Bestseller of the New York Times. His great skills at turning some scientific information into a heart-throbbing human story that can be expressed as a real life nightmare that stalks the human race is the true meaning to read this book.

Richard Preston meets the criteria for the American Author Proposal by being a great donor to the society and delivering books that can change people’s perspectives on life. He takes a lot of his time to express what he wants people to know and he does this through his books. I feel that my author is important because he is a big contributor to The New Yorker. He has won awards for being a good writer. Awards like the AAAS-Westinghouse Award and the McDermott Award in the Arts from M.I.T. He is not that much of a well-known writer but from the comments I’ve read, he will be known pretty soon.

The other two books that he has written are called First Light and American Steel. First Light is about astronomy and it won The American Institute of Physics Award. American Steel is about the Nucor Corporation and its project to build a revolutionary steel mill. He has also written other books like The Wild Trees, The Cobra Event, The Demon in the Freezer, and The Boat of Dreams: A Christmas Story.

The author Richard Preston will enable me to write a ten-page paper with his intelligent skills of creating a nonfiction thriller. He has also written other books like the ones mentioned above about fictional details but nonfictional stories. His heart-stopping dramatic books are what enable me to want to keep on going through the books and find any deep meanings to his writings. I will want to continue investigating what pushes him to want to write such creative books and why he likes talking about thinking that the books themselves will take us into the heart of a human being. Or at least just trying to experience their world from within would be good to find out about too.

Well, the titles that I plan on reading from this author are The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event. I also plan to read them in this order because I already have The Hot Zone and it catches my attention more. The Hot Zone also inspired the movie “Outbreak” which starred Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo. The other book also catches my attention but since I don’t have that book yet, I will probably go and check it out at the library after finishing The Hot Zone. The Cobra Event is a novel that seems interesting according to the comments of people that have read it. From what Richard Preston said in an interview, President Bill Clinton received a copy of this novel. He says that Clinton spent two nights awake trying to finish the book. The first night, he spent reading it and the second night, he spent it scared to shit. The novel is based on bioterrorism. The Clinton White House later authorized billions of dollars to fund in case bioterrorism ever became real.