Pantheon Writing

I used to get these kicks all through grade-school where I would just sit down and write stories. I even handwrote one 23-page(!) story in which I won “the girl” by showcasing an imagined athletic prowess loosely based on the 1989 Notre Dame Football highlight tape.¹ These were the type of stories that I would unearth three or four (or six or eight) years later, read the first two pages about some kid and this girl he had a crush on, cringe at the terrible composition and plot development², then rip the story out of whatever notebook and tear it into tiny pieces hoping that by doing that, I could erase that part of who I was and rewrite it in my mind with some cooler, suaver³ version of me. As I grew up, I continued going on two-month-at-a-time writing binges, where I would compose about forty pages worth of material in that time, only to give up at the first sign of boredom and disinterest. Somewhere in the backlogs of the internet, three or four or five of my failed blogs have their final resting place. Some died because of disinterest and others because my parents caught me using the "Fuck" word and they didn't like it. I even wrote an entire (long) short story for my girlfriend at the time over the two weeks she travelled to Ireland with her choir.⁴ I’ve started and stopped writing projects on a number of different occasions. Something still draws me to the water.

I once attended a lecture by Nicholas Sparks⁵ at Notre Dame. A kid no older than 10 got up during the Q&A session and asked what advice Mr. Sparks had for aspiring writers. “Write,” he said, “Write as much as you can. People often think that they become better writers by reading. They don’t. They become better writers by writing.”⁶ And here I am…again.

So that’s the story of my writing career. Perhaps my style mimics my path – decent, well composed, but with gaping holes in thought and development as if the author takes long breaks between composing. If so, I definitely deserve it.

Like always, my attempts at writing will touch on a number of different subjects. I generally write about sports⁷ and about some kind of social commentary, but I’ll toss my hat into the music, movie, and television show criticism. It will be eclectic, just like me. But, unlike my other attempts at blogs,⁸ I’ll save my best writing solely for The Pantheon. Hopefully I’ll update regularly. Hopefully I’ll have the skill to.


I hope with this I’ll crawl out of my hole of mediocrity and into a world where my writing gives the reader a glimpse into my mind and my soul. Malcolm Gladwell does it well. He writes with the distinct style of someone who knows he’s telling you a story you won’t be able to put down. His essays and books⁹ have the same style. He starts with the end of the story, giving away the triumph of the main character before any background at all. Then, Gladwell takes us back to the beginning, long before the hero emerges as such, and tells the story from there. He’s the master at making mundane, historical details read like a novel. It’s an easily repeatable formula, but one he does better than anyone and one I devour every time I can.¹⁰

In the same vein, Michael Lewis can write about the interesting qualities of home paint thinner and win me over. He single-handedly changed my baseball-loving life with Moneyball, a book about how small market Major League Baseball teams compete with the Yankees and the Red Sox of the world.¹¹ And his equally as impressive The Blind Side, brought to life the story of yet another underdog in a way that made the reader want to grow up in the poor area of Memphis in order to be the subject of such a story.




Then there’s Bill Simmons, who stands as an anti- Malcolm Gladwell even as the two are huge fans of each other’s work. Simmons writes for ESPN¹² and crafts his essays and columns as if 1) you and he have been best friends for several years and 2) you know everything about his subject that he does. He assumes we know a lot, and, if we don’t, he at least assumes we’ll get his references to underperforming NBA players and late ‘70s porn stars. He can explain the difference and the importance of the difference between Ray Allen and Doctor J by referring to the times they each starred in movies. You may have never seen them play basketball or watched any movies they’ve starred in, but you’d get it. You’d somehow understand what he means. Like Gladwell, he brings his non-fiction to life.¹³ In a world where a lot of people fail to tell stories at even a passable level¹⁴, these two make even the most mundane profiles gripping.¹⁵

I will accomplish this too. Maybe not at the onset, but eventually.

I will write as if I know I’m right, even if I’m wrong about things. My English teacher in grade school and high school implored us never to use, “I think,” or, “In my opinion.” Softening a point by using first person does just that; it weakens your argument. And so I won’t do that. I will not speak as if there’s a possibility that I’m wrong. Writing isn’t good when it’s weak. It touches no one. So, let me say right here that despite my absolute decrees and statements from this soapbox, I’m so acutely aware of my frequent wrongness. This is my one disclaimer. I will not say it again.

In Ancient Rome, the Pantheon was the temple of all the gods. It was a place where one could go and encounter all divinity, a room set aside for the entire body of heavenly creators and rulers and the worship of these gods. No explanation necessary as to why I’ve titled my blog this way. I just want to live up to it.

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1. Not autobiographical

2. It wasn’t so much that the plot development sucked. It was that the plot sucked

3. Microsoft Word is telling me that this is not a word. Fuck it. It’s staying.

4. This made my 6^th grade stories look like Catcher in the Rye.

5. Strangely, he did not entitle his lecture series “How to Write Douchey Novels.”

6. This would be akin to me thinking I’m good at skiing because I once watched Bode Miller in the Olympics and was less drunk than he was at the time.

7. Read: Notre Dame Football

8. Except for that one where I spent the whole time critiquing television commercials.

9. Which, let’s face it, are just compilations of essays

10. I even bought a Gladwell book called What the Dog Saw in which every single reprinted essay was available online for free

11. While the Cubs have the third highest payroll in the majors, there’s no need to include them in the conversation of “teams that should be feared due to their ability to buy good players.” The only thing to fear with the Cubs is that they’ll wise up, fire their front office, and those baseball minds will find their way into your team’s organization.

12. And, honestly, if there’s ever been a bastion of misinformation or a haven for the uneducated and uncultured, the ESPN family of networks takes the crown.

13. You know, as if it actually happened.

14. Oh man, my brother is the worst storyteller in the world. He starts every story by making people listen to him, chastises everyone who interrupts him for being “so rude,” and usually ends with, “he said something…I forget what it was, but it was like…no, I mean…well, something like that.”

15. I’m going to deal here with the white elephant, and that is these footnotes. Yes, they’re Bill Simmons’ literary idea, but let’s face it; every single person thinks in these tangents. All Simmons did was open a door for people to write more like they think.