Rent 9780321014702 | Short Takes : Model Essays for Composition

Summary Table of Contents

This lively collection of short, readable essays provides readily accessible models of the various thetorical modes, including argument. Representing a mix of ages, genders, and cultures, the readings illustrate primary and secondary patterns of exposition through a variety of familiar, interesting topics while the extensive apparatus promotes an understanding of the choices writers make.

Thematic Guide

Preface

xix

Freeze Frame: Reading and Writing

(11)

Description

(33)

... MORE

The Mute Sense

(4)

Diane Ackerman

``Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences.''

A Confederacy of Friends

(5)

Kristy Guarino

``Her head hangs as though she hasn't the strength or need to lift it. Hidden beneath a dingy pile of polyester, she drags her fingertips across the leather of her face, which she shifts slowly, side-to-side, as her lips scrunch roundabout as if she's talking to someone. But no one is there.''

El Hoyo

(4)

Mario Suarez

``From the center of downtown Tucson the ground slopes gently away to Main Street, drops a few feet, and then rolls to the banks of the Santa Cruz River. Here lies the section of the city known as El Hoyo.''

Frightened by Loss

(4)

J. Merrill-Foster

``Widowed, alone, children and grandchildren flung wide from california to New England, she fills her days with little things.''

Left Sink

(7)

Ellery Akers

``In the world of the bathroom the light shelf was a delicatessen of the highest order. Light Buddha sat there night after glorious night, lazily snapping up moths as they fluttered past. The other two frogs seemed content to stake out the sinks, which weren't quite as dependable a food source, though they weren't bad.''

Narration

(30)

The Night of Oranges

(4)

Flavius Stan

``It is Christmas Eve in 1989 in Timisoara and the ice is still dirty from the boots of the Romanian revolution.''

The Pie

(4)

Gary Soto

``I nearly wept trying to decide which to steal and, forgetting the flowery dust priests give off, the shadow of angels and the proximity of God howling in the plumbing underneath the house, sneaked a pie behind my coffee-lid Frisbee and walked to the door, grinning to the bald grocer whose forehead shone with a window of light.''

My Inner Shrimp

(5)

Garry Trudeau

``Adolescent hierarchies have a way of enduring; I'm sure I am still recalled as the Midget I myself have never really left behind.''

I Have a Gun

(4)

Tania Nyman

``I don't want a gun. I don't even like guns. But it seems I need one.''

Angels on a Pin

(4)

Alexander Calandra

``Some time ago, I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student.''

Example

(34)

Honky Tonking

(5)

Molly Ivins

``Contrary to popular opinion, it is not easy to write country songs: many try and fail. One guy who never made it is Robin Dorsey from Matador, Texas. He went to Tech and had a girlfriend from Muleshoe about whom he wrote the love song `Her Teeth Was Stained but Her Heart Was Pure.'''

Sweatin' for Nothin'

(4)

Michael Barlow

``We have treadmills, rowing machines, stairmasters, stationary bikes, Nordic Tracks, butt busters, and wall climbers and we labor at them while going nowhere. Absolutely nowhere! We do work that is beyond useless; we do work that takes energy and casts it to the wind like lint. And we don't even enjoy the work. Look at people in a health club. See anybody smiling?''

Stop Ordering Me Around

(5)

Stacey Wilkins

``Food-service positions are the last bastion of accepted prejudice. People go into a restaurant and openly torment the waiter, leave a small tip and don't think twice about it.''

When Only Monsters Are Real

(4)

Brent Staples

``Never forget Edmund Perry, the black Phillips Exeter graduate who seemed destined for Wall Street or Congress until he was shot to death trying to rob an undercover cop.''

Electronic Intimacies

101

(8)

Peter Steinhart

``Our living rooms are livelier than any national park. Any day you can switch on Nature or the National Geographic Specials and watch monkeys cavorting in trees or lions slinking through the grass.''

Definition

109

(34)

In All Ways a Woman

116

(3)

Maya Angelou

``Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work.''

O the Porch

119

(5)

Garrison Keillor

``A good porch gets you out of the parlor, lets you smoke, talk loud, eat with your fingers--without apology and without having to run away from home.''

Picket Fences

124

(5)

J. Decker

``Wisconsin is the land of the Green Bay Packers, most of the serial killers you've seen on television, three cows for every person, and the Cheddar Heads. This alone is enough to scare many longtime residents away, let alone a visitor.''

The Myth of the Matriarch

129

(5)

Gloria Naylor

``I've seen how this female image has permeated the American consciousness to the point of influencing everything from the selling of pancakes to the structuring of welfare benefits. But the strangest thing is that when I walked around my neighborhood or went into the homes of family and friends, this matriarch was nowhere to be found.''

Discrimination Is a Virtue

134

(5)

Robert Keith Miller

``. . . [W]ithin the last 30 years, this word has been so frequently misused that an entire generation has grown up believing that `discrimination' means `racism.'''

The Handicap of Definition

139

(4)

William Raspberry

``. . . [I]t occurs to me that one of the heaviest burdens black Americans--and black children in particular--have to bear is the bandicap of definition: the question of what it means to be black.''

Division and Classification

143

(30)

Not Sold by Intellectual Weight

150

(6)

Tom Kuntz

``Ah, those dewy, yawn-filled childhood morns at the breakfast table, when a glazed perusal of the cereal box during milky-sweet crunches of flakes was just the ritual to clear the brain's cobwebs for a new day of rascality.''

Always, Always, Always

156

(5)

Bill Rohde

``Tell the metaphor-happy student that commas are like dividers between ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise; fences between dogs, cats, and chickens; or borders between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Without them, messes result.''

The New York Walk: Survival of the Fiercest

161

(4)

Caryn James

``I know better than to talk back to guys who hassle women on the street. But on one weird August afternoon, I was caught in pedestrian gridlock in Times Square and the humidity turned my common sense to mush.''

Intense!

165

(4)

Richard Brookhiser

``Intense cuts across such categories as good and evil, great and mediocre, success and failure, happiness and the lack of it. Jimmy Carter in office was decent, piddling, unsuccessful, and troubled, whereas Lenin was wicked, grand, triumphant, and possibly happy (he was known to laugh at the murder of his enemies).''

The Plot Against People

169

(4)

Russell Baker

``Inanimate objects are classified into three major categories--those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.''

Comparison and Contrast

173

(31)

The Writer

180

(3)

Perry James Pitre

``The Writer steps into the roller coaster car and straps himself in as he anticipates the ride to come.''

Fashions in Funerals

183

(3)

Shana Alexander

``. . . [T]he most important advantage of the high-rise mausoleum is that by putting everything-but-everything under one roof you cut down on the high cost of dying.''

That Lean and Hungry Look

186

(5)

Suzanne Britt

``Long after fat people have removed their coats and shoes and put their feet up on the coffee table, thin people are still sitting on the edge of the sofa, looking neat as a pin, discussing rutabagas.''

Two Ways to Belong in America

191

(5)

Bharati Mukherjee

``This is a tale of two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find themselves on different sides in the current debate over the status of immigrants.''

Man, Bytes, Dog

196

(4)

James Gorman

``In five to ten years, I am sure, the Macintosh will be superseded by a new model, like the Delicious or the Granny Smith. The Cairn Terrier, on the other hand, has held its share of the market with only minor modifications for hundreds of years.''

Of Prophets and Protesters

200

(4)

Robert C. Maynard

``And, although Huey Newton and Dr. King differed on solutions, their deaths are joined as reminders of the nation's unfinished business.''

Process

204

(31)

How to Cram

210

(6)

Jill Young Miller

``Cramming is like going to the dentist; if you have to do it, you want it to be as painless and as productive as it can be.''

Love of the Putrid

216

(3)

Laura Van Dyne

``A bath might be in order following a `Pass through the putrid,' so I'd like to take this opportunity to cover that topic.''

A Room Without a View

219

(4)

Christina Erwin

``Under the pressure of a six p.m. deadline, I know I'd have to work quickly for my house to pass my mother-in-law's white-glove inspection. I had completed the major events of my cleaning the day before, bulldozing through the laundry, sandblasting the dirty dishes. All that remained was the detail work.''

A Woman's Place

223

(5)

Naomi Wolf

``Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.''

You Sure You Want to Do This?

228

(3)

Maneka Gandhi

``Are you one of those women who feel that lipstick is one of the essentials of life? That to be seen without it is the equivalent of facial nudity? Then you might like to know what goes into that attractive color tube that you smear on your lips.''

Death by Fasting

231

(4)

Joan Stephenson Graf

``Every 11 days, on the average, a convicted member of the Irish Republican Army dies of starvation in the Maze prison near Belfast.''

Cause and Effect

235

(35)

Still a Mystery

242

(3)

Edna Buchanan

``Real life can be grim, unlike mystery fiction, where writers can wrap up those loose ends, solve the mysteries and best of all, write the last chapter, where the good guys win and the bad guys get what they deserve--so unlike real life.''

Tiffany Stephenson--An Apology

245

(6)

Bjorn Skogquist

``I know now that people need each other, and I wish I could tell the fourth grade that we could all be friends, that we could help each other with our problems. I wish that I could go back. But all I can do is apologize.''

Wrestling with Myself

251

(5)

George Felton

``Wrestling may be a hybrid genre--the epic poem meets Marvel Comics via the soap opera--but its themes, with their medieval tone, could hardly be simpler: warrior kings doing battle after battle to see who is worthy, women pushed almost to the very edges of the landscape, Beowulf's heroic ideal expressed in the language of an after-school brawl: `I wanna do what I wanna do. You gonna try to stop me?''

Censoring Sex Information: The Story of Sassy

256

(4)

Elizabeth Larsen

``Sadly, what was to a few young editors just a sobering lesson about the power of advertising was a great loss to young women, who need the information Sassy once provided.''

Black Men and Public Space

260

(5)

Brent Staples

``After dark, on the warrenlike streets of Brooklyn where I live, I often see women who fear the worst from me.''

Reform Should Make Room for Dad

265

(5)

Joseph Perkins

``While there are myriad public and private programs that provide aid and comfort to unwed mothers, there are precious few that support unwed fathers. That's because our culture tends to view the role of fathers in family life as less important than mothers.''

Argument

270

(47)

Old-Fashioned Housing for Simcity

282

(5)

Amber Kucera

``Each Victorian home would be surrounded by a lush, green lawn and a multitude of trees and bushes. The houses would be situated on straight, narrow streets, and nestled between approximately every 20 homes would be a park.''

Last Rites for Indian Dead

287

(5)

Suzan Shown Harjo

``What if museums, universities, and government agencies could put your dead relatives on display or keep them in boxes to be cut up and otherwise studied?''

Gay Marriages: Make Them Legal

292

(4)

Thomas B. Stoddard

``The decision whether or not to marry belongs properly to individuals--not the government.''

America Needs Its Nerds

296

(2)

Leonid Fridman

``There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious.''

Responses to Fridman

298

(4)

David Lessing

David Herne

Keith W. Frome

299

(3)

``Mr. Fridman is equating two distinct perspectives on the student to substantiate a broad generalization on which he has no factual data.''

Lessing and Herne

``...[O]ur pedagogic goal ought not to be to produce nerds or jocks, but human beings who are thoughtful, healthy and socially adept.''

Frome

Why I Hunt

302

(2)

Dan Sisson

``For me the essence of hunting is not the indulgence of the instinct to kill, nor is it to be found in the instant one kills.''

Why I Don't Hunt

304

(2)

Steve Ruggeri

``Hunting is wrong, and should be acknowledged to be so not only by those who espouse the strict precepts of the animal-rights credo, but by those who hold a common sense of decency, respect, and justice.''

Why We Hunt

306

(4)

Humberto Fontova

``We like to kill animals. I can no more explain this predatory instinct to the satisfaction of Friends of Animals than anyone else can.''

Putting Africa at the Center

310

(2)

Molefi Kete Asante

``Since Africans in America have been dislocated--that is, taken off their own terms for the past 345 years--we seldom operate as the subjects of our own historical experiences.''

Beware of the New Pharaohs

312

(5)

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

``African-American studies should be the home of free inquiry into the very complexity of being of African descent in the world, rather than a place where critical inquiry is drowned out by ethnic fundamentalism.''

Credits

317

(4)

Index of Authors, Essays, and Terms

321

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