Outside Reading: Reflective Essay 4

February 21, 2011

From The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell; published 2002

Essay: “Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead at 75”

Pg 177-180

As per her usual, Sarah Vowell exhibits an almost uniformly sarcastic tone throughout her essay “Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead at 75.” However, unlike her other essays, Vowell shows the audience her, often unrevealed, emotional side. Vowell discusses in this brief essay that Tom Landry, the former Dallas Cowboys head coach, was more than just a coach and a family man. To Vowell, he was one of the few people who truly understood life.

Vowell’s complex use of diction never fails to completely amuse and reach out to the reader. Vowell uses repetition near the end of her essay to push her point that Landry was a great person who knew what life was really about. She writes, “In the comic, Landry… looked back on his youth. He said that as a player he won games. He said that he fell in love, got married, had children, became a coach. And then, he said the thing that shocked me. He said that despite the wins, the love, the success, the family, he said that something was missing.”

From the above quotation, one can also note the syntax used by Vowell. When she writes, “He said that he fell in love, got married, had children, became a coach,” Vowell uses syntax that makes the reader push through the sentence with anticipation for what is to come. In the three closing lines of her essay, Vowell also uses short sentences for emphasis: “And to die. Rest in peace, Tom Landry. Something is missing and it’s you.”

Though Vowell’s tone often frightens me a bit as a reader, her quirky details add a layer of wittiness that should not be left out. We as the reader are allowed a brief glimpse into her life, and with sentences like, “My Pentecostal youth was awash in salvation testimonials that consistently backfired,” the reader cannot resist the charming nature of her essays.