Susan Orlean’s profile on Biff Truesdale the champion show dog boxer is a perfect example of thinking outside the box when it comes to profile writing. The subject of this particular feature is a dog, but Susan gives him personality and makes the reader fall in love with this lively egotistical character. Right from the very first sentence when Orlean proclaims “If I were a bitch, I’d be in love with Biff Truesdale,” I was hooked. Throughout the entire piece Orlean’s incredible use of personification and detail work to truly paint a picture of Biff the person not just Biff the dog. She also does an incredible job of using contrasting themes. Here is Biff the boxer who is a champion show dog and “very much” in charge of his own destiny yet every part of his day is scheduled down to the last detail. Biff is a dog. He would be perfectly happy chasing a ball around all day…the shows make his people happy.

One particular part of the profile that really stood out to me the most was the description of Biff’s face: “His face is turned up and pushed in, and has a dark mask, spongy lips, a wishbone-shaped white blaze, and the earnest and slightly careworn expression of a small-town mayor. Someone once told me that he thought Biff looked a little bit like President Clinton”. This little passage is packed with description and really provides the reader with a mental picture of Biff’s sweet face. Orlean describes a dog’s face with a human’s expression which falls right in line with what is done throughout the entire profile. Biff is made out by his trainer, owners, and friends to be a man in a dog’s body. Even his owners talk about him as if they are truly his parents: “Oh, he has my nature,” Tina said, “I’m very strong-willed, I’m brassy, And Biff is an egotistical. self-centered, selfish person”. Tina takes credit for every aspect of his personality and this does not seem bizarre to her in any way.

Ultimately what I took away from this piece is that a profile doesn’t HAVE to be about a human. Orlean wrote a feature about a dog that is also about the show circuit wrapped in a story about the people that take credit for the accomplishments of their animals while still trying to make it seem like their dogs have decision making skills. It’s fascinating. Biff is interesting on his own and the extra characters just add even more humor, fun, and absurdity to the piece. I also really lover her use of description and quick short sentences followed by long descriptive ones. It moves the story along…pacing it somehow. I hope to master this tool for my own profile…if I can’t have Biff I can at least use him (and Orlean) as a road map.

Orlean takes a very unique perspective and narration style during her writing. She is very uncensored and becomes very creative with her point of view. It isn’t until about the second paragraph that we realize she is actually referring to a dog as the subject of her story. She refers to her character with a first and last name, mentions that she would be in love with him, that he is rich and famous. All characteristics we may not associate with a dog normally, but she is not incorrect in doing so. While she is discussing her subject as if he were a person, she does not fail to accurately describe him the same way she would describe another human being. She also refers to the dog and his family as “the Truesdales”, similarly to the way she might describe a human family. She starts to reveal more about his actual personality and activities as a dog during the middle and more towards the end of her writing. Orlean has clearly done a lot of researching relating to her subject and discloses that she has a very close relationship with Biff, her subject. She really gets into her character when she says “While he was napping, “I pawed through his suitcase” using the verb “pawed” as a pun for her relationship with the dog. She is almost describing herself as a dog and taking the perspective that she and her subject are equal and the same. But when she is still reflecting on the characteristics of her subject, she writes “After he appears at the Westminster Kennel Club’s show this week, he will retire from active show life and work full time as a stud.” She maintains normalcy in her tone with little sarcasm but perhaps slight humor in the way she describes the dog. She still takes on the theme of describing her dog as if she is describing a human, but reveals more facts that would lead the audience to infer that it is in fact a dog whom she is talking about. Overall, a very unique way of describing a subject and she makes herself a character in her own story. In my own profile article, this creativity might be useful. Not that I would be describing a dog, but to have the underline sense of humor and relationship with the subject is important for an effective article!

Orleans uses simple language throughout her writing. She talks in a way that seems to me like Biff would be able to understand her. There were never any big words used and I noticed how this nicely flowed the writing along. With the simple sentences you could understand what Orleans was talking about. Instead of difficult word choice, she uses a different tactic to give the reader a hook and interesting twist. She chooses not to mention that Biff is a dog until the second page. This makes the things she is saying seem more funny and shocking because she writes as though she is talking about a human. There is a lot of praise for Biff throughout the story and it seemed as though it were an ad campaign to get across how he does not need a blow dryer and other things, he does not mind being in his crate, he wins many shows, and he is a great breeder. There was never really anything bad said about Biff and I got the feeling that this was a review of Biff that he was going to read himself because he was spoken of so highly and like he was a person. I thought this was a really good way to tell the story because anyone with a dog would say that they are people too.

My favorite part was the paragraph that started with the list of items in his suitcase. I thought it was a little comical that a dog has a suitcase in the first place, which goes with a bunch of other things in a show dogs life that are pretty out of the ordinary. This paragraph creates a long list of items that gives an idea to the reader of what kind of dog uses them. I like the idea that Orleans makes this list of all the things to make him look nice and then goes into how Biff was scheduled “to make a semen deposit” and “had a date that same week with a bitch named Diana.” The list sums up Biffs appearance and how he is easily maintained in the sense that he does not need to be blow dried or use curlers, just some powder and baby oil. This leads really well into the breeding life of Biff. Orleans does a good job of creating a transition between two separate subjects with one line about a schedule. The idea of giving the list then talk about breeding adds a funny element to this paragraph as well as throughout the whole story.

I think I would take away the idea to use clever transitions in my own profile article. I would use my words carefully to reflect the story that I am going to tell. I like the idea that Orleans waits to tell the reader that she is describing a dog which is also something I may thing to play around with.

Throughout the piece and until the very end, Orlean uses personification to describe Biff’s behaviors and gestures in a very hilarious yet intellectual way. For instance, when giving a close up description of Biff’s appearance, she writes “Someone once told me that he thought Biff looked a little bit like President Clinton. Bill’s face is his fortune.” Or on his hobbies, she writes, “What Biff likes most is food and sex. This makes him sound boorish, which he is not-he’s just elemental.”

She succeeds in personifying Biff as somewhat of a good looking workaholic, who follows a rigid schedule, exercises to maintain body weight, and soon to retire from successful career. Biff the person is egotistical, self-centered, and selfish, “He thinks he’s very important and special. and he doesn’t like to share.” He is always on a schedule, traveling to shows around the country almost every weekend of the year, and doing something that prepare him for the competitions. But we never get to see much of his animal side until the very end.

“He wanted to go out, so Tina opened the back door, and Biff ran into the back yard. After a few minutes, he noticed a ball on the lawn. The ball was slippery and a little too big to tit in his mouth, but he kept scrambling and trying to grab it. In the meantime, the Truesdales and I sat, stayed for a moment, fetched our­selves turkey sandwiches, and then curled up on the couch. Half an hour passed, and Riff was still happily pursuing the ball. He probably has a very short memory, but he acted as if it were the most fun he’d ever had.”

In this moment, Biff the dog gets to enjoy the simplicities of life that most dogs experience on a daily basis. Retirement seems to be a good thing for Biff; he deserves a break from his ridiculously busy life. It’s this last paragraph that actually triggers the whole point of the article: let a dog be a dog. In fact, this is the only time where Biff seems normal. Since the very beginning, Biff has always doing something on the schedule that his owners already plan ahead of time for him, which makes it seem so weird when he actually does something that’s dog-like. To a certain extent, the whole concept of Biff, or the concept of Truesdales’s show dog business in general, seems ridiculous. I mean, they’re dogs.

Susan Orlean takes, to some, a very serious subject and brings a dual sense of comedy and serious narrative journalism. She employs a variety of stylistic tactics to create a sense of the characters and make this seemingly boring story very interesting to read. I personal haven’t much experience with profile writing, so I was shocked to see the piece in more of a narrative and set as a “traditional story” than an expose type of style. Less like news, more like literature. This style not only makes it more readable, it can paint a superior picture for the reader.

She starts off by using the dog as the main character, which is very useful, to detail the life of a show dog, instead of profiling the owners/handlers. By creating a “person” out of Bff, we see him less as an object, and more as the actual main character. Her descriptions of him. Were simple, yet disguised so it keeps her intentions for the direction of the story hidden until she wishes to use them. This goes back to the Kathryn Roethel article, “Magazines are like a strip tease” Even the line “He like food and sex” is tricky to take apart.  This make sense when you think it’s a dog or a man (especially one named Biff) but it isn’t painfully obvious until she mentioned the bars of soap. , but the story is set up to make you think that he himself is the complete center, everyone else taking a back seat.

If there is anything I could learn from her, it would be to treat the magazine profile with more of a literary hand and slowly reveal my details in a story-like manner. Also, to do thorough research.

From the opening line “If I were a bitch, I’d be in love with Bill Truesdale,” Susan Orlean makes us aware of Bill’s status as a dog, but continues on in a way that blends personification with the actual. Throughout the great opening and the entire piece itself, Bill is given almost full control of his life. Instead of saying that his owner’s sell him as a stud to people who want to breed their dogs with Bill, Orlean writes instead that Bill himself charges for his sexual favors. What’s also great is the idea she puts forth in the opening that Bill has to watch his weight, but it is all ok because he likes working out. The key to Orlean’s style in this piece is the power over his own existence that she gives Bill Truesdale’s character. Although you could initially see the opening as maybe just that, and expect Orlean to shift gears and perspective, the beginning of the second section, “PRETTY soon, Biff won’t have to be so vigilant about his diet.”  lets the reader know that this style of writing is going to be the piece. We are going to see Bill’s life through Orlean’s filter, almost as if he had told her the details himself.

Susan Orlean immediately grabs reader attention with bold statements that have an intentional comic undercut. She opens the piece with a very deliberate play on words that at first shocks readers until they understand that she’s using “bitch” in the traditional sense of the word – to describe a female dog. She goes on to describe Biff, a “boorish” canine that would have captured her heart had she been a dog. The key thing to note here, however, is that she never explicitly states that Biff is a dog. She anthropomorphizes him and describe his actions in such intense detail that readers can almost forget she is describing a dog and not an actual human being. Once she is done describing his personality, she states that he is, in fact, a boxer.

Her sensationalist writing style makes it clear that every show dog has its own character and quirks, and that they are treated in such a sensational way that it is almost a bit ridiculous. She incorporates sly tones and sarcastic humor to show just how over-the-top and extravagant the entire dog show competition idea is. She goes on to say that, “Pretty soon, Biff won’t have to worry about his diet.” Is this something a boorish boxer is really worrying about – gaining pounds that could jeopardize his chance at a ribbon? It’s clear this is an albeit ridiculous concern voiced by the owner of the dog, but Orlean does a fantastic job of using this dry humor to provide a whimsical and engaging social commentary of a scene she appears to find entertaining if not slightly over-the-top.

Throughout the entire piece, her conversational syntax is entirely accessible – it is not overly wordy, drawn out, or verbose. There is a simplicity to her writing and conversational, easy-going humor that makes it easy for readers to establish a relationship with the text. I think this was my biggest takeaway from the piece. When writing a profile piece, it is important to make readers want to care about something or someone they may not know anything about, nor have any interest in doing so. Orlean takes a very specific community, those of the show dogs, and writes about them in a way that is comic, easygoing, and engaging. More importantly, she uses her tone to create an element that makes readers care and want to keep on reading. Her bold approach and easy humor throughout the entire piece kept me engaged, and really showed the importance of using voice to establish an intimate connection with the reader.

From the very beginning of the piece, Susan Orlean creates a surreal, light vibe that is apparent throughout the entire story. Her very first words “If I were a bitch,” and soon after, in reference to Biff, “He almost never drools,” show that she clearly isn’t taking herself or her subject too seriously.  There is also a comparison made between Biff and President Clinton’s appearance. There is a general treatment of Biff as a subject as if he were a human being that serves to, in my opinion, highlight just how ridiculous the whole show dog scene is. Here is this dog that doesn’t have the capacity to understand why any of this is happening that is then paraded around for show as if he were a king or a supermodel (which, I guess, he is).  She also repeatedly uses the term “bitch” for a female dog, and although it is entirely correct, it serves to jar the reader every time it is used, seemingly to remind them that there is something slightly off about the whole situation.

Her decision to name off some of the other dogs that are appearing in the show served to even further highlight the ridiculousness of the dog show lifestyle. Instead of just mentioning that she flipped through the show’s catalog, she specifically named Spanktown Little Lu Lu (honestly, who started the tradition of ludicrous names like this?) and Energizer O’Motown. This served to keep the piece fun and entertaining without ever crossing the boundary into a mocking tone. Orlean did a fantastic job creating a fun and engaging piece out of a subject that few people truly care about.

“If I were a bitch, I’d be in love with Biff Truesdale. Biff is perfect. He’s friendly. good-looking. rich, famous, and in excellent physical condition. He almost never drools. He’s not afraid of commitment. He wants children-actually, he already has children and wants a lot more. He works hard and is a consummate professional. but he also knows how to have fun.”

Susan Orleans grabs the attention of the reader by seeming perverse, but really plays around with canine terminology in this piece. “Bitch” being used to describe a female dog, she lures the eyes to continue reading to figure out whom this man is that she is willing to be a bitch for.  Her writing style is simple, easy to follow, and colorful. She brings the character to life by personifying his emotions, even comparing him to Bill Clinton. Biff is a professional and he understands his abilities. He fluidly follows his celebrity caliber schedule and exemplifies traits of an actual human being. Even with the description of his most subtle actions like rolling his eyes, or sighing out of contempt.

The roles of the human and canine seem reversed in this story as the reporter takes on the role of the idle bystander, the usual role of a pet. She uses phrases like ” as I pawed through the files” to accomplish this. Her thorough use of canine terms tie this piece together and always remind the reader that this dog “with an attitude” is in fact a glorified pet and not the suave (human) gentlemen that we imagine him as.

I think her use of syntax and the flow of this story is what I plan on taking to use in my article. It’s about not doing too much and using sentence structure that captures the same essence as the character. Orleans’ tone was witty yet simple. Her descriptions of Biff’s owners, handlers, and their interactions with the dog were well executed because they were not polluted with complicated sentences. The piece therefore read itself. When writing a profile piece, the writer should not try to impress the reader with fancy vernacular, but be the clearest you can be to properly capture the subject.