23 Feb 2007
It all started last summer, when a column in the Los Angeles Times sports section, which I rarely even glance at, caught my eye. It was about Marion Jones finally getting busted (well, almost), and it was very well written, employing a slew of rhetorical strategies and devices, many of which I teach in my Advanced Placement English Lit course. You know, stuff like repetition, parallel construction, metaphor and simile…stuff that has fancy terms like anaphora, asyndeton (or polysyndeton), antistrophe, etc.
Or maybe you don’t know. Bill Plaschke didn’t. He thought he was just writing from the heart. So when I emailed him and asked him if he’d give my class permission to perform a style analysis on the article, he gamely accepted. I had my students scrutinize the article and, armed with a list of terms and definitions, they wrote up style commentaries, which we forwarded on to the sports columnist.
“I thought anaphora was a skin disease,” Plaschke deadpanned in an email response. He’s a pretty funny guy. He was also flattered and impressed, and he generously offered to drive up to Santa Barbara to talk to my class about writing.
When I initially contacted Mr. Plaschke, I had no idea what a serious mucky muck he is in the world of sports journalism. So when I perused his bio on the L.A. Times website—National Sports Columnist of the Year, regularly featured in “Best American Sports Writing” (cousin to “Best American Essays” and “Best American Short Stories”), Pulitzer nominee—well, I realized we were getting the real deal here.
My students, who also informed me that Mr. Plaschke is a regular commentator on an ESPN talk show, “Around the Horn,” were ecstatic. Some of them sported colorful costumes for the occasion, wearing bizarre combinations of colors, patterns and numbers that loudly proclaimed loyalties in ways that mystified me. I didn’t get it—I’m culturally bereft when it comes to team sports—but Bill did. “Hecklers,” he said. “Wonderful.”
And it was wonderful. For over an hour, Bill talked about how powerfully and meaningfully writing has shaped his life. He started writing, he told us, for his high school newspaper, and soon learned that writing was a compelling and effective venue for communication and expression. During his unscripted, uncanned talk, he shared inspiring, funny, and at times brutally self-critical stories about his years writing for the Times. My students were entranced. It was one of the best classes, several of them later said, they’d ever experienced in high school.
Several times during the presentation, which felt more like a tete-a-tete than a lecture, I wanted to jump up and yell “Yesssss!” when Bill passionately emphasized the beauty and power of the written word. For many of my students, seniors who will make their way into a complex web of choices in the critical years to come, his visit was an affirmation. “I’ve always wanted to major in something that would prioritize writing,” confided one student, “and now I’m sure of it.”
Bill Plaschke’s writing is fresh, smart, and blunt. He applauds the human spirit without prettifying it, and isn’t afraid to call us out for both our achievements and our frailties. Somehow, his writing manages to walk the line between sentimental and cynical, heartfelt and edgy. His hour with us in the classroom struck the same note. I can’t think of a better way to appeal to high school seniors.
Thanks, Bill. You came, you shared, you inspired. That’s called asyndeton.
