Here at the untamed
Examiner book pile, a lot of bizarre stuff gets thrown
on the heap. Memoirs about communicating with the dead,
compendiums of teenagers' cellphone text messages ("I
THT U WR RLY GR8 N TH SCL PLY" equals "I thought you
were really great in the school play"), a Florida
woman's tribute to her succession of now-deceased dogs
(billed as "an eloquent exploration of grief for a world
dealing with the aftereffects of 9-11").
But I can always count on
Rohnert Park-based Pomegranate Books to send wacky stuff
that doesn't suck. Its latest title to leave me tickled
is so odd that I don't even know how to explain it.
Steve Schaecher's "Mobile Homes by Famous Architects"
(Pomegranate, $17.95) takes famous architectural
examples by everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to I.M. Pei
to the ancient Egyptians and transforms them into
road-worthy doublewides.
Thus Schaecher, an Indiana
architect, offers professional-looking concept drawings
of the Goths' "Salisbury Cathed-roll," Charles Moore's
"Piazza d'Oublewide" and Le Corbusier's "Motor Dame du
Haut." The accompanying text gives a swift, readable and
accurate architect biography, along with a
not-so-serious explanation of why each created his
mobile masterpiece.
Pei's famous glass plaza for
the Louvre, for example, becomes the "Pyramid du
Trailevre," wherein "the museum staff will wheel this
trailer away and drop off its visitors at a camp
operated by the French Foreign Legion, where they will
be required to train for one week. The visitors are not
allowed back into the Louvre until they say 'I.M. Pei,
you are funnay.' "
The fictitious R.V. Parke
provides the preface for this follow-up to Schaecher's
similar volume on outhouses. The great thing about this
new tongue-in-cheek survey is that it teaches you just
as much about architecture as the two straight-faced
pocket-size studies Pomegranate has just released under
the auspices of the Chicago Architecture Foundation on
Sears Tower (Pomegranate, $12.95) and Marshall Field's
(Pomegranate, $12.95).
And the list of seemingly dry
subjects into which the Pomegranate list breathes new
life knows no bounds. One example: Marin author Jeffrey
Kacirk's just-published "Altered English" (Pomegranate,
$22.95), which perks up the dusty field of etymology
with nearly 1,500 entries of now-obsolete meanings of
common words.
A 19th century "ejaculation,"
for instance, was "a short prayer in which the mind is
directed to God on any emergency." In the 16th century,
"manure" meant "to cultivate, train the mind or body."
And a "poop," in the 16th and 17th centuries, was "a
short blast in a hollow tube, as a wind instrument."
Ken Smith's "Junk English"
(Blast Books, $12.95) is also fun skimming, but browser
beware: This abrasive modern-day equivalent of Strunk
and White's standard style guide takes no prisoners.
Smith's prime targets --
sloppy metaphors, convoluted sentence structures,
trumped-up business jargon and more, organized
alphabetically under headings like "Invisible
Diminishers" and "Cynic Incubators" -- deserve his
wrath. But other peeves, such as "Desexed Designations,"
aren't so clear-cut.
Smith laments the
gender-sensitive shift from "con man" to "con artist,"
but surely his contention that "police officers" and
"fire fighters" should continue to be called "policemen"
and "firemen" is taking PC-backlash to offensive
extremes.
"Junk English" is more a
political book than a style guide, following in the
George Orwell tradition of pointing out the inextricable
connections between language and power. The chief evil
here is capitalism, which Smith pummels by pulling
examples from advertising and marketing. And Smith's
incensed attacks admit no room for polite debate.
C. Edward Good's new "A
Grammar Book for You and I ... Ooops! Me" (Capital,
$17.95), on the other hand, is all about the kinder,
gentler approach to teaching writing. It's intended for
lawyers, managers and other professionals tired of
feeling ashamed about their clumsily phrased memos and
reports, and it's laid out in a breezy, conversational
tone.
It's also more than 400 pages
long, and though Good's simple explanations of all the
old bogeys from split infinitives to dangling modifiers
are fun review for a grammar nerd like me, I can't
imagine your white collar everyman plowing through such
a comprehensive volume.
If you're disciplined and
looking to get serious about grammar, "Oooops! Me" will
make it go down more easily. But unless you're an
aspiring language die-hard, check out Patricia T.
O'Conner's succinct "Woe is I" or "Words Fail Me"
(Riverhead, $11) instead.
E-mail: rhoward@sfexaminer.com
