Carolina Alumni Review - May/June 2009

DAPHNE ATHAS ’ 43

exercises for all the parts of speech and then went further into nonsense, into figures of speech, into everything about language. It’s more about language than grammar.

“I hoped they would like grammar and be more logical and understand what sentences did because I happened to love them. However, I didn’t really care. I wanted to have fun. Once I got into it with them — because it was very collaborative — I had as much fun as they did.”

Marianne Gingher, who so loved taking the class that she has taken over teaching it, said, “We don’t think, in talking, how syntax, sentence structure, pauses, body language affect the listener. In ‘Gram-o-Rama’ we study how to be aware how all those things affect writing.”

Athas continued in the same blog: “The old rules on where and when not to stick adverbs are based on Latin Grammar. The Council of English Teachers dumped these rules in the 1960s, an act which made sense but led to virtual disappearance of teaching

‘I wanted to teach them grammar, but I didn’t want to be in a fight with
students about rules. I don’t think there’s a right and a wrong, but there’s a
hearing. There’s only been reading for 400 centuries in the way we’ve done it,
and now it’s going out because we’ve got TV, and we’ve got online. And people
don’t hear it anymore. I always heard it.I did from verbs, nouns, the whole bit.’

Daphne Athas ’ 43

grammar in the schools. Such good intentions led to the present cliche in thinking about grammar.

“Now Sticklers are considered Grammar Nazis. Ninety-nine-and-nine-tenths percent of us are Grammar Ignorami. The other One-Tenth are writers and singers.”

Dave Krinsky ’ 85 finds himself applying “Gram-o-Rama” all the time when he’s writing scripts for King of the Hill. “It taught you a lot about the rhythms and the sound of language, and how that could be more important than the actual subject,” he said. “I picture her as that quintessential col-

PHOTO COURTESY OF DAPHNE ATHAS

With Marianne Gingher, left, and Alane Mason ’ 86 at the North Carolina Writers Conference in 1986. Gingher believed the “Gram-o-Rama” course should be revived, and she now teaches it. Mason is one of many former students with whom Athas remains close.

lege professor in movies you always hoped you’d have, but seldom do.”

“She was not too directive. She allowed people to find their own voices, their own subjects,” Moose said.“She wanted to let people find their own ways. Stylistics did that with language. That broke me open to a different way of thinking about writing.”

The course took on a life of its own, a

hectic one, and it wore Athas out. She stopped teaching it in the mid-1980s, and it went dormant for 15 years. Then Gingher told her she wanted to revive it. For the price of a teaching assistant, she talked Athas into it, and in 2001, Gingher took the course, worked all the exercises from a student perspective. They team-taught it for a while. The 15 or so slots in the class were so in demand that Gingher began taking applications and doing formal interviews.

And during the hiatus something had
changed: The swing in education from the
didactic to the interactive was more com-
plete; and, though the grammar
exercises remained the founda-
tion, more emphasis was put on
performance pieces — parody,
song and even pantomime —
for kids who were reared on
Saturday Night Live and other
sketch acting. The semester-end-
ing extravaganza that plays to a
packed house was born.
“Marianne has kind of sold it
as grammar as performance art,”
Athas said. Meanwhile the mas-
ter’s hearing was failing her, and
more than ever, “Gram-o-
Rama” depended on being able
to hear in a room full of rules
breakers. Last fall, she bowed
out, making only a couple of
guest appearances.
The thing about the hearing
is it has sort of validated what
she always felt instinctively about
grammar and language, going
back to the days when Athas and her
boyfriend would banter in fake languages.
When she watches a performance now, she
relies much more on the rhythm, the musi-
cality.