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.

***

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.

My Most, Viewed Post

Can someone please explain how this became my most viewed post?

http://heavylevity.blogspot.com/2015/04/kelly-f-in-olynyk.html

What's wrong with this post?

The 505 Crossword Assignment

Had the first sesh (session for the uninitiated) of Stylistics.

Upon completing a crossword, the assignment was to take 25 across words and 25 down words and compose a story.

Here, is my story:

I’d sparred with that knuckle-walking ogre back at the old gym, despite our difference in weight class, age, and overall cred in the amateur boxing world of Akron, Ohio. How I got in, and out of, the ring with this skilled baboon, a k a “Old Scratch” Charlie, so named because everyone figured he would end up throwing a fight at some point in his career, and he was bound to go pro, was a result of vicarious pride, my own stupid pride, and of course, a girl. She wasn’t just some girl though, she was the most beautiful thing on two feet and everyone, including that demon donning boxing gloves, knew it. And she was mine. All mine.
Fump! to the head. Ooof! to the ribs. My face was getting cratered and my ribs were caving to ruins. I couldn’t get him off me. Fucking Tasmanian devil in gilt-covered Everlast trunks. And what were his hands taped with? Every blow felt like he was holding a row of quarters in his fists.  I heard his trainer yell “take it easy!” but the blows kept coming in like sideways rain. It hadn’t been two minutes and my vision was blurred, my legs wobbly, and my core akin to wet paper. I tried to get on my horse but I couldn’t tire that fuck and my nose was a magnet to his laden fists and nothing, nothing was going to sate him till he put me on the canvas. Then told her about it. Did I mention my stupid pride?

My stupid pride is one thing but you would think my trainer would have shown some sense. But no, he was dense with idiotic pride too. He’d had his own career stolen from him, serving as a nam vet. To make matters worse, the trainer of the boxing beelzebub pummeling me, got a draft deferment somehow and enjoyed a brief but successful pro career that parlayed into a lucrative gym ownership. And my trainer, Joe Pesci bless him, thought I was going to be his ticket. He should have thought more about where exactly the ticket would take him when he agreed to throw me to this haymaking motherfucker.
“Move, move, slip it slip it!,” my trainer was yelling from my corner but he came off one punch right into another. Fwap! from a hook, back in with the rangy jab, body blow body blow. Fuck this I thought and almost ran in the ring to get away but he was able to corner me and even after who knows how many consecutive blows, he didn’t tire - one punch after another after another. Holy christ the bell rang and I sat down in the corner while my trainer ran a damp rag over my face and said something about him being vulnerable to an uppercut but any advice other than survive against this guy was wasted quicker than a frat boy at a kegger. “Gimme some water,” I huffed between breaths. The bell rang again and when I stood like a drained noodle, my trainer again said “uppercut, uppercut.”
I wasn’t averse to throwing an uppercut, I wasn’t averse to throwing A punch, I wasn’t averse to throwing myself on the mat and feigning internal bleeding...but the stupid pride...and the girl. He was pummeling me in a corner when he mumbled through his mouthpiece between blows, “that girl of yours,” jab jab, “the one that acts,” jab, hook “like a virgin,” rib shot kidney shot “think I’ll,” jab, cross “make her,” hook, uppercut “mine.” The blow took me down to one knee and he took a spell when his trainer yelled at him “ain’t nobody winning any damn award; take it fucking easy Charlie!” I was surprised he stopped; I could see in his eyes that he wanted to go retro on my ass and finish me because I wasn’t unconscious. The bell to end round two was to no avail: there would be no end. I was getting gored and my boxing life was dripping blood and bile on the tip of a pike.
I could see him, ogling her, a smooth liar, hiding his intentions, waiting outside her math class, smiling, walking to the end of the pier with ice cream cones in hand after they’d dined at some place where they called him champ - “hey!,” my trainer yelled. “You straight?” I nodded but it hurt to nod. “Don’t acts like a hero! You straight?” Again I nodded and again it hurt. My trainer gave me two quick mists of something up my nose. To this day he won’t tell me what it was but I think it was coke or at least speed.
My ears felt like eaten cobs of corn when the bell rang for the last round. The coke or whatever it was put new life into my lungs and legs. Didn’t matter though; he sized me into a corner in seconds and began to toil on my ribs again but this time judo style, with some elbow on the follow through. My trainer was hoarse but kept yelling for me “stick and move, in and out, be a pest, be a pest!” How can I be a pest when I can’t move? He started talking about her again. “She’s,” body blow, “a dancer,” body blow, “right?” Jab, cross, “can’t wait,” jab, cross, “till she,” hook, body shot, “jetes,” uppercut, cross, “on my,” step back, “cock!” He unleashed a barrage of uppercuts and crosses low and high like a jackhammer crushing concrete: foomfoomfoomfoomfoomfoom. I crumbled again to one knee but this time he couldn’t stand himself and he reared back to let go a blow to my chin sure to separate my jaw when I uppercutted that fucker in his nutsack organ so goddamn hard he could have sung an aria above middle C. My arm held a perfect ell shape as I continued to try to push his nuts so far up into his intestines that they resembled cookie dough. He picked the wrong enemy to try and wargame with.

Even this many years later, after an ale or ten, I can tell my old trainer that story and that sum-bitch elates like a giant party balloon. I wasn’t his ticket out but when I remind him of that, he realizes for a minute or two that it ain’t so bad sometimes, being in.

Prompt:

Using your completed crossword puzzle from last week’s class, compose a story. You must use at least 25 of the across words and 25 of the down words, excluding proper nouns. Please bold all words you use, and list separately at the conclusion of the story. Optional challenge: Use all words in succession, across words first, down words second. 

The 505 1st

As of this writing, I am enrolled in a graduate stylistics course, hereafter, the 505.

Here is an assignment.


Write: Imagine you have been asked to write liner notes for a musical album (your fave).
Liner notes may give brief descriptions of songs, or may give some cultural/historical/biographical data. The genre is open. Your job: to compose those album liner notes, discussing whatever it is you want to discuss, but in a way that reflects the style of the music. So, for instance, if you choose a hip-hop album, the liner notes should read like the hip hop music they address. If you write about country, the liner notes should be in "countrese."

My fave you ask. Not the fave but a fave: August and Everything After from Counting Crows.

 Maria says she’s dying, through the door I hear her crying.

Why?

Hear me out. Hear it out. When you’ve got nothing but time this, thing between us, is worth the time.

Everything works. It all fits and it needs worn. Maybe I’m lying, maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’ve done this sort of thing before. Maybe it’s a love/hate relationship with August. Maybe he’s not your type but I’m sure there’s something in a shade of grey.  You laugh with insecurity and tell me the words, so many words, don’t hit you in the gut and don’t make you feel wrenched or torn or wistful, and it just doesn’t do it for you. But maybe, man, I’m right. As right as the rain that falls in Baltimore, and maybe the words matter because words matter so damn much to you and me that’s why we can’t tear our ears away; not in 1993 and not and now in 2019.

Because: I walk along these hillsides in the summer 'neath the sunshine I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

Maybe you’re just afraid, afraid of knowing,  of giving in, of being changed by it. What would that do to you? Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you won’t or can’t feel, in fear, the periphery from the core, the essential from the meaningless. Maybe some things are too bright. For you.

Because: Start threading a needle, brush past the shuttle that slides through the cold room. Start turning the wool across the wire, roll a new life over.

I want you to love August. I want you to feel the way I feel when the keyboard swells from nothingness and that guitar riff reverberates on the opening track like death fading to life. I want you to be transported the way I am; to know that you’ll feel something, about music, about words, about life...and how lyrics and music are important and why they express BOTH the terrestrial and the sublime of humanity. I want you to recognize. What’s wrong with you? if you don’t.

Because: Round here we talk just like lions but we sacrifice just like lambs. Round here she’s slipping through my hands.

You don’t believe me and I don’t blame you. I can’t blame you because I know what’s at stake. Judge lest ye be judged but as I write these words baby, thinking about it, I’m willing…to be judged. By you.

Because: When the kindness falls like rain, it washes her away and Anna begins to change my mind...

And your mind matters and your heart matters and you deserve this. We all deserve this; it’s why we’re here, you and me, us and them: to be moved. Like this. To know art and how it’s a door that needs opened so life -your life, my life, our lives- can be looked at, heard, felt. Lived. But you have to let it, convince it, shove it tabula rasa into your heart.

Because: Lay me down in a field of flame and heather, render up my body into the burning heart of god in the belly of a black-winged bird.

I hope you let it in.

Doubling

Write your life story in 6 words. Then, write your life story in 12 words. Then 24, 48, 96, 192. 

Caveat: once used, you cannot repeat any phrase. That is, you are not simply revising, adding, filling. Each piece should be unique. And try not to repeat your “style” or “voice” from one to the next. Mix them up. Take chances. But meet the word count. Focus on making each word a vibrant contributor.

I am grateful, not fully great.

Born Gordon Fritz Rohler: genxer, philosopher, beside HER, never sure, unsure.

Gordon? Rohler? How many words do I get again? No! He was sensitive to a fault but man, sometimes, he could make you laugh.

Mistakes were made.             Success is a subjective measure.
            Talent was unrealized.           Wherever you go, there you are.
            You can’t explain it away.       One can’t derive an ought/imperative from an is.
            Opportunities were wasted.    Walk a mile in my shoes.
            Nothing was ventured.            Judge, lest ye be judged.

What does a man have but time? Time is the constant in a universe of variables. In any biography, the usage of time is the essence -the matter at hand. How have I used my time? Asking why when how is what you want to know. How is where it’s at. How makes money and everybody needs it, money that is. Why doesn’t cut it, why doesn’t bake bread; no one cares about why anymore! So I’m persona non grata. Or at least ignored. Time will tell which is worse. How or why? But why...how?

Think of the way it feels when you hear your voice on a recording. Most of us bristle, even if a little. “Is that what I sound like?” Autobiography asks a similar question: Is that what I’ve lived like?” Autobiography tosses your lump of a life onto a steel-cold table in the gross lab, where with razor sharp scalpels and muscular forceps and probes, tears apart your judgement and character and personality with unceasing fire-breathing criticism of your horrible decisions and gnashes teeth at your incessant laziness and wrings hands raw due to your pathological sensitivity and erodes all possibility of contentedness or serenity or self-actualization at best and at worst births institutionalization, to produce the same face piercing cringe when you hear your voice through your ears and not through your head. Autobiography is not some mild self-sadism akin to a sauna what with its relaxed muscles finale. Nor is it torturous introspection to show the glass is half-full and “just look at all you’ve accomplished from such modest beginnings!” Honestly and authentically, factually, it exposes existential pain reaped from a life lived not through the ears, but through the head.

Dispatches

Dispatches finished with me last week; I can't say I'm finished with it.

Though it came out in 1977, it is simply alive; still breathing and kicking and still wrecking people to existential and artistic crisis. 

Case in point:

But then this tidbit from an old interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: I think it took around 10 years for "Dispatches" to be published after you returned.HERR: Well, it took about nine years. That's because it took about eight years to write it.GROSS: How come it took so long?HERR: That's a long story, you know? It just took a long time. It took what it took, you know? I was afraid to finish the book.

Afraid. 

Books like Dispatches hold up a mirror to humanity.

And sometimes the abyss looks back.

The Death Problem

I read this

And, you know, it was fine.

Given that death is my favorite topic, I really latched onto:

Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell. Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes. Unlike any humans before us, we take those who are much closer to death than we are and sequester them in nursing homes, where they cannot remind us of our own fate in our daily lives. 

But I ask you Mr. Sullivan, how exactly does christianity solve death? How does christianity protect us from THE existential moment?

By unrealizing it. You never die. You are eternal. He that believeth in me...

I like my solutions a little more solution-like.

You might say don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

But the bath water never cleaned the baby and christianity NEVER solved the death problem.

You die. we die, he dies, she dies, they die...all men are mortal, Socrates is mortal...

Death is your own-most possibility and it cannot be outstripped.

How are you going to LIVE with this possibility?

By unrealizing it? This has epistemic-health consequences.

What you believe matters.

What you think matters.

A lot.

Pinker's progressivism and all it entails doesn't deny death; it has that going for it. Which is more than I can say for christianity.

psst: http://www.pewforum.org/2018/11/20/where-americans-find-meaning-in-life/