We can teach great writing one sentence at a time

Tip of the hat to Frank Bruni's weekly blog feature titled "For the Love of Sentences" for today's selection of recently published work that has been brought to his attention. Sharing small chunks of great writing is a great class starter or in-class modeling for young writers.

I used this sort of approach for AP Lang classes -- not just journalism courses -- and found that I could work on vocabulary development as well as syntax development... and even get kids thinking about current events and people in the news.

From a George Will column on Missouri Senator Josh Hawley: “Nimbly clambering aboard every passing bandwagon that can carry him to the Fox News greenroom, he treats the Senate as a mere steppingstone for his ascent to an office commensurate with his estimate of his talents.”

My quick analysis: Did we really need "nimbly"? We often talk about avoiding adverbs, but "clambering" could certainly mean clumsy or hurried. All rules need exceptions. Students need to know what a "bandwagon" means here (a rhetorical fallacy involving people joining just to join) and would need to know that a "greenroom" is a place for TV guests or theater actors to prepare before going on stage. "Commensurate" is a sophisticated way to say "equal to" and would not be a word most students use often. 

I also note that although this column rips Hawley, there is no blatant negative language here. Will leaves it up to readers to make inferences and he never "writes down" to a lower level.

To pivot to The New York Times, here’s Wesley Morris on the cosmetic signature of the basketball star Trae Young, who sports a “magnificent unsolved mystery” of a haircut. “I’m calling it a haircut. But that’s the thing about Young’s hair: cut where? How? This is hair so rich with paradoxical intrigue that a season of ‘Serial’ wouldn’t be unwarranted. It’s thin yet full, short and long, wet but also dry, seemingly ‘young buck’ despite seeming geriatric too, an optical illusion of barbering. There’s a fade, a part and bangs. It’s simply not a haircut. It’s a Michael Crichton novel.”

This would go in my collection of great descriptions, but it's also full of allusions both current and dated. Do students still read Crichton novels, with their convoluted plots and sometimes scifi themes? Are students familiar with podcasts like "Serial"? It is also fun to discuss the oxymorons in that list of paradoxes that all seem to apply to the athlete's unusual locks.

A class discussion of this would benefit from a photo of Young on a screen so the non-NBA fans can get a clearer view of what is being discussed.

Then there is the difficult sentence: "It's simply not a haircut." Word order could be discussed. What happens if we rewrite this as "It's not a simple haircut"? Or "It's not simply a haircut?" Or what about tightening to "It's not a haircut."? Is anything lost or gained?

NYT columnist Bret Stephens observed that Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people “have reminded the rest of the free world that a liberal and democratic inheritance that is taken for granted by its citizens runs the risk of being taken at will by its enemies.” 

This sentence reminded me that freedoms are never guaranteed forever and that apathy tends to allow the zealots some room to cause trouble. This is true for freedom of speech, voting rights, being able to use the bathroom of choice, and so many other things students may take for granted.

Finally, In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay came out against Major League Baseball’s efforts to speed up extra-inning games: “Why does baseball need to be like everything else? Why must it cave to the modern attention span? Baseball is played without a clock. There’s no horn or buzzer or countdown. It is what it is. It ends when it ends, like a pizza, or a State of the Union speech.” 

I am not a fan of "it is what it is," which seems like a fad phrase that defies logical definition. "A rose is a rose is a rose," wrote Gertrude Stein in a poem, and it has forced literature students for many decades to struggle with teasing out meaning. And Lin-Manuel Miranda's famous, "Love is love is love is love" speech is constantly quoted. What if we simply deleted that sentence? Would anything be lost? Or is it part of the rhythm of the language?

The "kicker" is the final sentence, which references what is often thought of an example of long, meandering speech, the State of the Union address. After all, it is a report and could easily be shared with the nation as a sort of memorandum. Do we need all the pomp and circumstance involved?

Notice that I offer many questions and few answers. Answers are up to students here.