A World of Pizzazz

According to Annie Dillard, “the creator loves pizzazz” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 139). In context, the phrase refers to whatever deity Dillard imagines created the physical world. But out of context, I think her words can be used to make another significant point: the creators of text should love pizzazz since the audience is drawn to it.

The synonyms of “pizzazz” include style, glamour, zest, flair, interest, and excitement. But really, I think the word “pizzazz” is highly abstract, depending less on actual definition than the sort of reaction experienced by the hearer/reader. When I hear or read “pizzazz,” I think of oil paintings by Leonid Afremov. One of the most noticeable differences between his paintings and others is the presence of such bright colors—but then again, some other painters also use similar vivid hues. Since I don’t know much about art technique, all I can say is that Afremov’s paintings are set apart because of his…pizzazz.

So how does one write with pizzazz if we can’t even fully describe what it means? Dillard, Hancock, Kunzig, and Shreeve all offer us clues. “Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time. Landscape is the texture of intricacy” states Dillard. Similarly, the “landscape” of our writing is composed of all sorts of textures, or intricate details. This type of texture is exactly what Hancock refers to when she advises writers to “put in all your raisins (i.e., fun facts, great quotes, and interesting comparisons)” (97). The raisins are borrowed glimmers of brilliance; “you may not be able to turn a brilliant phrase yourself, but if you can recognize brilliant material when you see it, you can come close to a brilliant effect” (97). These raisins—borrowed, brilliant quotations, facts, and the like—create part of the texture. And according to Hancock, just as you can’t mess up the texture of bread pudding by adding too many raisins, so also you can’t mess up your writing by adding too much “texture.” Perhaps we may then infer that the “texture” of our writing has something to do with “pizzazz.”

According to Shreve, coupling intricate details with narrative structure is “essential” (140). Details are meant to show rather than to tell. For example, Shreve claims that “Gawande’s cool, unadorned style conveys the horror and intensity of the fire that night much better than if he were to start throwing around words like ‘horror’ and ‘intensity’” (141). Suppose I were a medical student writing about my mother, who inspired me to pursue the medical field. Rather than writing something like “My mom was very passionate about her work and enjoyed it immensely,” I would describe “Even after a full day of long hours at the hospital, I could ask my mom about her patients and still her face would light up; all the weariness seemed to fall off her as she talked about her various clients. She was like a little kid bubbling with all the news of the school day and hardly able to express it in an intelligible manner.” Again, details should show rather than tell; what does an exciting, breaking science discovery look like? “It’s a challenge, but you can construct narratives that are based almost entirely on ideas and how they developed” writes Kunzig (129). We have no excuse—we can use detailed, textural, narrative structure in our science writing for that little bit of “pizzazz” that will cause readers to exclaim, “Gee whiz!” (127).

At any rate, these texts definitely got me thinking about the strange, indescribable quality of “pizzazz” and how I might attain it in my own writing. But at least their suggestions seem especially fitted for a science feature. Perhaps the hardest part is simply opening our eyes and seeing the pizzazz already in the world—then we’d have only to transcribe that pizzazz rather than inscribe it. Dillard appropriately says, “This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz” (148).