The Contrarian reviews Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
To begin with, this little book on punctuation has a few little punctuation errors. And they’re none too subtle.
Lynne Truss is confused about commas, both American and British, as well as about the wee distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.
But the Contrarian had a graver problem with this book: Which author is he to believe?
Is it the literal Ms. Truss? A misplaced apostrophe in a store window sends her into shock, anger, and despair, and she urges her fellow “sticklers” to deface the property.
Or is it the winking, nudging Ms. Truss? She has a life beyond commas, thank you, and she doesn’t really endorse vandalism. She’s feigning anger to make a point.
The Contrarian has read her have-it-both-ways book. He’s read Frank McCourt’s gushing preface, which reveals Frankie’s own difficulties with punctuation. The Contrarian is aware, furthermore, that the New Yorker’s reviewer suspected a hoax.
But after watching this worm for a while, the Contrarian has decided to swallow. He believes Ms. Truss #1. He thinks she really is one of Those People.
Civilization’s thin line
They march through life with their briefs in a bunch, furious at the latest outrage by the unwashed against — whatever. Table manners, the carpets, monarchy, subject-verb agreement.
Against these ruffians, Lynn Truss rises to defend punctuation marks.
She loves the little abstractions. The Contrarian judges that passing weird — but he believes her, and easily, because her book is one long anthropomorphization of the marks.
Stolid little apostrophes with mummies and daddies
Really — it never ends.
The bang is cheerful, the pos a brave and “stolid little chap.” Well-trained colons “waltz in together” with Policeman Semicolon. Other species play too: A comma can be a “friendly little tadpoley dot” or a darting herder that “woofs” at words.
This goo finally explodes all over the kitchen in a passage that casts periods as daddies, commas as mummies, and semicolons and other marks as children. Ghastly.
Yes, the Contrarian has known the smiling e, the clever f, the stolid B, the no-nonsense period. But that was in second grade, when he was littler and less contrarian. Nowadays the cartoon gets a bit tedious, especially at feature length.
Credit where it’s due
Still, give Lynn Truss credit where it’s due. She quotes a few gems to illustrate the use and misuse of punctuation marks, and often explains these correctly. She reports the opinions of others, some interesting and some less so. Chekhov found catharsis in an exclamation point; Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that . . . rather odd.
Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that odd.
The book provides thumbnail histories of the marks, which may be accurate. Ms. Truss also misquotes G.B. Shaw and repeatedly misstates the best-known difference between British and American English, which involves the placement of closing quotes relative to different punctuation.
To keep things lively, she issues opinions without bothering to explain, must less justify. Italics “are a confession of stylistic failure.” Did you know that? The Contrarian didn’t know that. He still doesn’t.
The author also ventures far, far afield, to explain how new technology has altered the act of reading. To illustrate, she contrasts reading in print to reading on screen — for which, she says, “your eyes remain static” while content scrolls past. No, they don’t. No, it doesn’t.
Ms. Truss also confuses reading with scanning, which are wholly different functions whether performed online or on paper.
But hey, other than that . . .
This author is angry, sir!
Sure, she’s confused about a few things — Who the hell isn’t? — but at least she’s willing to STAND UP against the ninnies who would disrespect Our Culture and Its Punctuation Rules.
At bottom, the entire enterprise seems just another way of fetishizing language. Rare book buyers do it; so did William F. Buckley, by equating vocabulary with exoticism. (Found a word you didn’t know — whee!)
The Contrarian is more charitable than you may think. He can overlook these things. He can even overlook other things, like Ms. Truss’s boast that a certain presidential twin had “raved” over the work.
But in Eats, Shoots & Leaves he encountered two deal breakers.
Deal breaker #1: The broad target
Ms. Truss’s choice of prey is shopkeepers, followed by teenage cell phone users. What sport!
Hardware merchants provide us with sharp tools and sturdy twine, not grammar lessons. That’s their offer — take it or leave it. And teenagers are an alien life form, not carbon-based. Their tongues and IM tappings are not susceptible of adult comprehension, much less influence.
While she’s at it, here’s another rich vein Ms. Truss might consider. A town near the Contrarian’s home requires that all signage include “clear English translation.” The sticklers who enforce this law (and presumably the punctuation rules that are so necessary to clarity) carry not markers but badges and guns.
Surely Lynn Truss knows that there are people in this world who live by the pen. They stake their claims not in twine or hormonal angst, but in effective use of the English language. And some of them are pompous pedants indeed, ripe for the skewer.
But they fight back. So Ms. Truss prefers to lecture truants and harried merchants. It’s nice work if you can get it.
Deal breaker #2: Like a wee mousie
Deal breaker number two takes us back to the start: those little punctuation errors.
So small are they, so very wee — even full-grown punctuation is by nature wee — that they might be excused in an advertisement for penny nails.
But in a guide to punctuation they stand tall and grim.
Please note that no cri is issued here for “punctuation vigilantes” to enter bookstores and manually correct Ms. Truss’s errors. With that crowd the Contrarian has no truck.
Instead, he has simply amended a rule. It had served well, over many decades, in this form:
12(a) For guidance on punctuation, don’t consult retailers or children.
Rule 12(a) is amended to add: or Lynn Truss.
