The 505 Voice & Style Genealogy Assignment

ENL 505: Stylistics
Voice & Style Genealogy Assignment

Before Philo could savor the fear and awe in his face with any sense of justice –even a simple he’ll think twice sense- the part of Philo’s jaw that connects to his skull was separated and fractured into pieces from the punch of an OU wrestler who military pressed his body weight five times a week.
….Joe watched one of the girls talking into her phone: “a man’s been hurt on Court Street, he’s unconscious, in front of Pawpurr’s…” He looked back down at the ground, through the torsos parting, to see Philo’s face mangled into something like a broken vase, once pale, turning purple and black –his jaw had come so far away from his skull that his face didn’t look human except for his partially open eyes. Blood was filling under his distorted mouth, oozing from ugly lips swollen and shredded from foot stomps, in meek gurgles as his short breaths now condensed in the cold night air.

There is facility here; ability to convey story/scene and show style doing it. Emerging is awareness of grammar and syntax and using those for semantic/emotional affect. My hope is this is reminiscent of David Foster Wallace.

Captain And Officer

Captain: Foul play?

Officer: Poultry don’t engage in games sir; I believe play, with designated rules and desired outcomes, usually of the zero-sum type, is a solitary human endeavor. Why do you ask sir?

Captain: What are you talking about? The dead body here on the floor! Was it foul play do you think?

Officer: I don’t think birds had anything to do with it sir. Unless it was a murder of crows. Tee hee.

Captain: What do we know about forced entry or robbery at this point?

Officer: No sign of forced entry, nothing missing other than some decent decorating ideas. How do people live with these bland color palettes and mismatched materials not to mention a total disregard for feng shui?

Captain: Are you saying Chinese food is missing? Or was thrown away?

Officer: No feng shui is the use of energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. Sir.

Captain: Uh huh,... you hungry?

Officer: We just ate sir. Donuts.

Captain: Yeah! Well I want to use some energy forces to you know, harmonize with my surrounding, environments to feng some shui into my belly.

Officer: Sir?

Captain: Any Chinese places around here?

Officer: Sir it’s 9am.

Captain: Yeah, that’s early. Even for hot and sour soup.

Officer: I’m an egg drop guy sir.

Captain: Can it with that egg-drop talk would ya! I’m getting hungry again. No forced entry, nothing taken. When does forensics get here?

Officer: He was called ten minutes ago sir.

Captain: Call him again! Tell him to pick up some Chinese food. I don’t care what time it is!

Officer: Sir, the usual?

Captain: Tell ‘em to go heavy on the fortune cookies.

This conveys my love for Woody Allen’s humor, George Carlinesque word play, and reflects my desire to make others laugh.

Venn Diagram of essentials:

From the humorists I appreciate the ability to simply be funny but also hide profound points in humor.

From the fiction authors I value the ability to make others feel emotions, the power of voice, and like the humorists, to place philosophical ideas in a story.
From the nonfiction authors I glean the middle style and connecting seemingly disparate ideas into a larger philosophical point.

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Word Count: 570

Write: Although you may not have written much beyond academic or corporate writing, still you have a voice, a style, and you have been influenced by others, whether they be famous writers, not-so-famous writers, friends or family members. In this assignment, please look at some representative samples of your writing and describe your voice and style as you see them emerging from those pieces. Then, I’d like you to conduct a genealogy of your voice and style, tracing them back through the various writerly influences in your life, and what about those writers influenced you as they did. These writers don’t have to be literary. Could be the writers of jingles or cereal boxes, if that’s the writing that counts for you. Feel free to draw a family tree or flow chart, if that helps.

Reality Radar

The optimism of Terry Pluto just can’t be corralled. You could put a shit burger in front of Terry and he’d say “Aww, you toasted the bun. How nice.” I’m not against optimism, it just rubs my reality radar the wrong way is all and in Terry’s Case, his blind optimism for the Browns borders on some sort of dissociative fugue state dating all the way back to his beat reporter days. Terry is optimistic after the Browns began the season 0-3 losing in overtime to the winless/hapless/less-and-less Dolphins in which the Browns missed three field goals. Yep, time to make lemonade from those lemons because the Browns are going places. In this case, this place is last in the AFC North but you already knew that. Oh wait did I mention that they will be in last place next year too? You see, the Browns are stockpiling draft picks and have a bunch of Kurt Gödel’s running stats into a Texas Instruments calculator while the current players run up not only the loss column but also the hospital bills because the team sucks so bad. 

Here’s the thing and you don’t have to memorize lines from The Natural to know this: 

“Losing is a disease…as contagious as syphilis.”

 And the Browns lose. A lot. The most actually and the next two years isn’t going to change the losing but the Terry Pluto’s of the world think that because there is a plan in place to get younger that somehow the Browns will get “winnier.” Yep, the stats and the Ramanujan’s tell us to get younger and build through stockpiling draft picks. 

Just one question: Who is going to change the culture of losing that permeates and saturates the ethos that has become the Browns? 

I lied. Just two questions: How is the culture of losing that permeates and saturates the Browns going to get changed?

…especially after two seasons of unprecedented losing with (got to follow the plan!) young players?

Young players are vulnerable. Psychologically. To losing. The disease of losing may be curable but we shouldn’t rely on the ones in the hospital beds, figuratively and literally, to do the curing should we? It's hard to play football let alone win at football when you are in traction.

Coach Hue Jackson will be the salesman of the millennium if he can get his young players to believe the team will win IN THE FUTURE even as the losses pile higher than the number of slings and crutches in the locker room. 

And I don’t want to sound like a walking tautology but isn’t the only way to not lose, to win? The ethos and the losing culture won’t change until wins happen.

The Pluto’s of the world are banking on the future and the “plan.” 

Be optimistic, wear rose colored glasses if you want, get season tickets for 2019 if you want; just know that getting into the playoffs is based on win-loss record. If you don’t believe me, ask the Steelers, Ravens, and Bengals. 

Hell, ask Butch Davis if you want.