Capturing the Readers Attention with Literature from...

Let the Great World Spin and A Rose for Emily, are able to capture the reactions of people in extreme circumstances. We can see the writing style of both McCann and Faulkner and how they capture the reader’s attention and give us the desire to continue reading. Looking into the background of Colum McCann, the writer of Let the Great World Spin, you can see how he is able to write from so many points of view. At a young age he studied journalism in the former College of Commerce in Rathmines, now the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland. His first job out of college was reporting for the Irish Press, which was the national newspaper of Ireland. By the age of 21 he already noticed as an incredible writer and was given his own column. Then in 1986 he arrived in the United States to pursue a different hobby, other than writing for a newspaper. He came to the United States with the intent of becoming a novelist. He however soon found out that he did not have the life experienc e and the knowledge of other peoples backgrounds to write a novel, so for 18 months he took a bicycle tour across North America, gaining knowledge of others’ experiences learning how different walks of life of people lived. He later said that the influence that these people gave him helped his fiction, by adding to the wide range of voices and backgrounds of his characters. After going on his extremely inspirational bicycle tour he settled in Texas for four years where he worked for a program for