Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik

Spunk and Bite: A Writer’s
Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style

For this review, I decided to head to my local bookstore and pick up something that might actually help with STF.com – a guide to writing. Faced with many decisions, I selected Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk and Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style. From reading the title of the book, it’s clear it’s somehow related to the immortal The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. But howso? And which is better? And how dare Plotnik make a mockery of a book that’s been being pushed on students by english teachers since its first publication in 1957! But most importantly, how does it stack up against the myriad of other writing guides out there, and is it worth the read? I say yes.

When I found this book it was actually right next to Strunk and White, which is a stuffy old writing “guide” that, while useful and accurate, discourages use of certain styles and grammar usages that have become acceptable and often even the norm since the late fifties when the book was written. Just think of how society has changed from 75-cent restaurant dinners and fedoras to $600 cell phones and spinners. In many ways, writing has changed just as much, and Arthur Plotnik realized this.

Spunk and Bite covers everything from adverbs to word choice and gives tips on how to make one’s writing not so old-fashioned and stuffy as Strunk would have one write. While in essence Plotnik agrees with the principles in Strunk he also describes times and manners in which these rules can be flexed, and even broken. Let’s face it – nobody wants to read Steinbeckese all the time, right? Look around – newspapers, magazines, ads, modern fiction and nonfiction – all these types of print and genre have their own ways of communicating, and if they all followed Strunk, you’d end up with Tommy Lee not sounding like this in The Dirt:

I triggered a a sample of a long descending sound, like someone jumping off a bridge – Aaaaaaaahhhhhh – then put my food back in the strap, grabbed the rope that originally carried me up, and prepared to jump. It was Norman’s job to pull the handbrake at the last nimute, so that I’d screech to a halt like five feet over the heads of the crowd and then just bounce there on this elastic rope. I liked it to look insane. None of this fucking Gene-Simmons-fly-me-over-the-fucking-audience-like-Peter-Pan shit. I wanted to be fully dropped, freefall style.

but rather something more like this:

I triggered a sample of a long descending sound, and put my foot back in the strap. I grabbed the rope that had carried me up and prepared to jump. Norman was required to pull the handbrake so that I would stop my descent and bounce five feet above the crowd from the elastic rope. I wanted it to look insane, unlike Gene Simmons’ show.

- not as exciting, and doesn’t sound like Tommy Lee. Plotnik realizes this, and while Spunk and Bite doesn’t encourage the flagrant misuse of the basic rules of grammar provides for ideas when this type of style or rulebreaking may be to the writer’s advantage.

More importantly, in my opinion, Plotnik also reveals many of the pitfalls one can get into when trying to write “contemporarily,” or when breaking the rules of Strunk. This is very important, and the best way I know how to describe it is by using Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility” idea. In other words, Plotnik basically says, “sure break these rules, here’s how to do it, but don’t get too carried away, or else you’ll look like an idiot and nobody will want to read what you write.”

In all, I think Spunk and Bite is a good read for the aspiring writer, or casual blogger, or even the seasoned pro. His style is very readable, and actually kind of humorous in parts, which is surprising for a grammar book. I actually learned a lot from it – some rules for grammar, but more than anything what things are called, such as the my-AP English Teacher-would-kill-me-for-this-hyper-hyphenation-instead-of-an-adjective phrase (Germanism) or even the all too common and often overlooked “dangler.” Definitely a good read, and worth-while too. While you college kids may not find yourself using all of Plotnik’s ideas in college essays, even the simple e-mail or rant on a certain website (ahem) may benefit from giving this one a go, or even give you a spark to actually write something down.