Dec 29 2009
A Few Big Sellers
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I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar by Sharon Eliza Nichols (St. Martin’s Griffin, $9.99).
This has been huge for us this fall. Folks are buying multiple copies at once. It’s a compilation of photographs of signage with egregious errors in grammar. My personal pet peeve is the misuse of the apostrophe. People in St. Louis just love to add apostrophes to plurals. I’d never seen this before moving here and then began to see it so often that I started to truly wonder whether that was accurate usage. “Tomato’s For Sale” ” Fence’s Repaired” etc.. My high school English teacher Mrs. Grey is probably rolling over in her grave.
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis ( Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, $30.00).
Containing all her stories to date, this is a pretty hefty volume. Considered a master of the short story form, Davis’s writing is peculiar in its way, with often very brief prose pieces standing in for “stories”–some as short as four words. Even though there is scant character development or narrative, her wit shines through making the pieces funny and creepily insightful.
Elegy:Poems by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf, $15.00).
The paperback version of this 2007 National Book Critics Assoc Award winner and 2008 New York Times notable book has been a big seller since its release. And for a poetry book that is especially big news. Bang teaches at Wash U as part of the highly-regarded writing program there, a program boasting quite an impressive roster of emeritus professors. Elegy, her fifth collection, chronicles the year following her son’s death. It is heart-wrenching, personal, universal, urgent and beautiful.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Gosh (Picador, $15.00).
Another paperback release of a best-selling hardcover, Sea of Poppies is the first in a projected trilogy and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It takes place just before the Opium Wars in China and delves into the sweeping colonial history of India and the diaspora of its indentured servants. Thrown together on a ship crossing the Indian Ocean a diverse group of characters–American, Indian, French, Chinese –and their varied lives are at the heart of this historical adventure.
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5 responses so far
The misuse of “its” is my pet beef. As in: “It was so tired it’s tail was drooping.” I’ve seen that in all manner of copy — even copy that’s supposedly edited by people getting professional pay to, ahem, edit. I’ve seen it in our newspaper here. It’s all over the place!
Seeing as I am the laziest and least competent editor-for-pay that currently breathes, I feel I must weigh in on this. Grammatical errors are devilishly easy to spot in work that is not your own, and increasingly difficult to spot in the copy you’re being paid to edit; the longer you look at it, the fewer errors you spot.
I have a few theories as to why this is, but the one my gut tells me is the most likely is the “It’s Just a Job, People,” factor. When I was a stock boy, I took no great pride in the facing of shelves; it’s just a job, people. When I was a male model, I didn’t care if the pants fit well or if the excess was clothes-pinned in the back so the photographer couldn’t see it; it’s just a job, people. When I attempted to jump that rocketcycle over Snake River Canyon, I didn’t care if the engine had enough horsepower to actually clear the gap; it’s just a job, people.
That said, if I spot a grammatical error in SOMEONE ELSE’S copy, I will mock and ridicule that error until my throat is raw. Why? SCHADENFREUDE IS MOTHER’S MILK TO ME.
Ah yes, Sir Paul From Across the Street. I know that when *I* was a male model, I got around the danger of my Christian Dior or Haggar elasti-belt pantaloons not fitting properly by simply not wearing any pantaloons. If the photographer and art director protested, I stamped my bare feet and THAT WAS THAT. In the world of glamour, a lack of assertiveness on the part of the talent soon lands one in the lawn implements section of the Ace Hardware circular, mon ami.
Oh, in my first comment I was referring to our daily newspaper, just to clarify.
P.S. I was there at Snake River Canyon for your jump. Unfortunately my lack of pantaloons got me ejected by les gendarmes.
No clarification needed on the paper of record. It takes but the briefest of reads to start picking out the grammatical gaffes (or, “Gragaffes,” as I like to call them; please feel free to use that neologism, and if you do and you enjoy it, place a nickel in an envelope and mail it to me every time you do so to cover the royalties), in that paper I help make. I used to sit down with a copy and circle all the questionable and painful errors I found, but eventually realized it was just making me mad (like an Englishman in the noonday sun), and it didn’t really help me do my job any better.
I never thought I would find cause to mention this, but you, sir, have haunted my dreams since that fateful day at Snake River Canyon. Slicing through the foetid atmosphere on my way to infamy, I noticed a striking man-mountain minus his Evans-Picone trousers and became hopelessly distracted by the whimsical beauty of it all. The River, the rocketcycle, the wind, the terra firma screeching towards my windscreen — these mortal trivialities paled to nothingness in the glory of the Snake River Sans Culottes Spectator and my fate was sealed. It is almost the greatest shame of this nation that you have been bound by law since that day to wear at least two kilts at all times.
Dear Sir,
As I recline in the hammock strung for me betwixt the Rs through Zs of our poetry section and the imposing, strobe-lit, Chilton’s auto repair manual stand-up display, comely maidens — loyal customers all — massage my feet with scented oils (banana-cinammon is best) whilst reading to me from Catallus and Denis Leary. I read your missive with the tenderest nostalgia for those halcyon days when I had sufficient leisure to attend massive open-air events of a sporting nature. Such as (to be precise as my platinum Movado) your immortal attempt to span the Snake River Canyon, as the winter eagle spans our mighty Mississippi — in a word, blithely. Insouciantly. As for the edict that ensued in the wake of my infamous appearance at the Canyon sans trousers of any sort, I for one am grateful the long arm of the law smacked me on the nude buttock, as it were, that fateful day. You must understand that the aforementioned two kilts constitute not only a sartorial coup of the first magnitude, laddie — they are also warm.