Up in Ontario

Eaten, Shot and Left

One of the more surprising recent sales phenomena in publishing has been Lynn Truss' book on grammer and punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Truss describes the book as "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," and readers have taken up her call to arms in droves.

But a backlash was inevitable. Today I came across a link to an article by Louis Menand in the New Yorker that soundly thrashes Truss in the most delightful manner. The article begins life as a review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and evolves into an essay on writers and how they strive to capture, or fail to capture, the elusive quality known as 'voice.'

That précis may sound unfocused, and if evaluated as an argument the article would come across as distracted, but it makes for great reading. Menand proves to be a writer of the highest quality. His review describes a mind at wander, engaged with the world, and for his reader great pleasure comes from following his digressions and musing as they lead away from where he started and into the interesting territory of investigation. Read it, I recommend it.