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Rating: 
Summary: Useful Compilation of Connors' Work
Review: For several weeks now, I have been considering how to defend the utility of Robert Connors's book - Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy - without sounding like a die-hard partisan, a rabid fan, or a closet sexist-racist-capitalist-non-radical pig-dog. To be blunt, Robert Connors is such an easy target that, at times, it seems like everyone wants to take a shot at him. In May of 1999, for example, I first noticed the nasty review on this web-site. And even for those scholars like Sharon Crowley who believe that the involvement of approximately four million first-year college students each year makes composition-rhetoric worth caring about, Connors routinely and invariably finds a pressure point. At conferences, he asks gadfly-ish questions in which he implies that radical pedagogical approaches and, indeed, most theoretical approaches of the last thirty or so years may well be "fads." In College English, he asserts that "the world of pure epistemological theory is not the world we live in," argues that there is a need for men's studies, too, and expresses sympathy for the men's movement (Pagan!). He seems to want all teachers in the academy to be, and be seen as, learned scholars (Idolatry!). And finally, he has the audacity to doubt the academic commonplace that "we live in a postmodern world" (Heresy! Blasphemy!). Not surprisingly, as of November 10, 1999, no composition studies peer has felt motivated enough to add a positive review to the Amazon site. However, the book is useful to practitioners of composition-rhetoric because each chapter presents enough evidence (what he calls "shareable data") to encourage practitioners to articulate and strengthen the rationale for their current practices.Early in the book, Connors justifies his work with a plea for contextualization: "We can, I hope, come to understand in a richer way the reasons rhetoric has been what it has, how it has changed, and how it is changing today." That last concern over contemporary changes in rhetoric stands out as a useful reminder to those of us trying to rest our practices on a disciplinary foundation, while at the same time trying to preserve our ability to improve those practices. Connors' contribution here is to establish how the discipline of composition-rhetoric evolved inseparably from its "host" society, and his book is a worthy attempt to tell the history of composition-rhetoric from a moderate-to-conservative intellectual stance.
Rating: 
Summary: At least the design is good.
Review: The book examines the development of a compositional trend nobody but this obscure and self-important author recognizes or really cares about. It might contain some valuable information for those willing to wade through Connors' bombastic pseudo-victorian prose. The cover is lovely, though.
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