response to sylvie's paper

Your draft is really showing how hard you've worked to bring together all of your evidence, and it is really shaping up to make a great argument. Your writing is clear and precise, and you choose words that fit perfectly to convey the most meaning without being wordy. You have chosen great primary sources, and your explanations and uses of these sources make your paper very credible and interesting. I really enjoyed your exploration of what went awry with your original concept, and think it added strength to your paper – the fact that you were willing to come to terms with a set of conclusions that you didn't originally see coming says a lot about how deeply and seriously you read your sources. In response to one of your questions at the end, I think that you appropriately tie together conservatism as tied to Catholicism, because you do discuss the main points that tie them together quite well, and you repeatedly bring up various other connections (such as, near the end, indicating how Buckley's crude suggestion that Indian people look up birth control in the encyclopedia as an example of his support of individualism).

While I understand what your first paragraph is trying to communicate, and though I think the facts contained in it are valid and appropriate for an introduction, I am wondering if there is anyway you could possibly paraphrase or introduce your own thoughts instead of quoting so extensively. Having a quote in the very first sentence, and having another quote take up the bulk of the paragraph, doesn't feel quite right – I would really like to start the paper off with more of YOUR words. On the other hand, if you feel the quote says it perfectly and you don't want to change it, I think it might possibly be better to actually start the paragraph with the quote.

Your first several pages provide a lot of really great specifics and anecdotal evidence, first about Catholic and Irish Catholic immigrants, and then about William F. Buckley's life. Many of your sentences in these pages add crucial background and depth to later parts of your paper. I understand why you started off with the Irish Catholic intro and then changed courses with “This brand of American Catholicism, however, was far from William F. Buckley, Jr.'s world”, but at the same time I think that a reader might feel somewhat misled – after several paragraphs of talking about 19^th century discrimination against Irish Catholics, you suddenly switch gears. The background info is great and is certainly crucial to setting up your main arguments – how Buckley's brand of Catholicism and his lifestyle were totally different – but I think it might help readers understand your structure if you perhaps start off with at least mentioning Buckley and what you intend to say about him, and then somehow transition into the “normal” American Catholic experience, before turning back to the explanation of Buckley's life. I encountered a similar issue in my draft – I spent a lot of time filling the reader in on important and interesting background information, but realized later that my real thesis only came up a few pages in. I totally get why you did it this way, but I realized in my own work that while it often works as a writer, readers might be confused, so you may want to consider that.

This might possibly be a misunderstanding on my part, but in the second paragraph you conclude with these two sentences:

Catholic churches were often almost uniformly rich, poor, or middle-class. What parish

one belonged did not often belie one's race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

I feel like there might be a bit of a contradiction there, possibly caused by a missing/misplaced negative – just wanted to check. If this is indeed what you intended to say, I think it needs to be cleared up, because I was pretty confused.

And this is sort of just a personal preference: I would caution against using “would've.” When speaking out loud, it makes a lot of sense, but in writing it looks informal. It's a small thing, but it can really bring a sentence down.

I really enjoyed reading your paper and think you have a really successful and impressive first draft. Can't wait to read the final draft!