The Vine: July 2, 2010
Lots to choose from in the TN Read-Along #2 poll; vote today!
*****
Dear Sars,
I’ve been trying to track down this radio ad that I heard in the recent past, and my inability to do so is driving me slightly crazy. I thought I might appeal to your knowledgeable readers to help me out.
The facts are these: I heard the ad only once, sometime in the weeks before Christmas. I believe I heard it during a local sports talk show on an AM radio station, but it could have been on the FM station that was playing Christmas music for all of December (although I believe both stations are part of the giant radio conglomerate Clear Channel). I have no recollection of what the ad was for, although I’m pretty sure it was some sort of public service announcement, rather than an ad for a product, but maybe not.
The format was of a bunch of different children’s voices reciting a list for Santa, each saying something they wanted for Christmas. However, the listed items weren’t toys, but rather legal terms and other common phrases. The only thing I remember clearly as being on the list was “power of attorney.” I really don’t remember any of the others, but they were along the same lines of 2 or 3 word phrases like “prenuptial agreement” or “supreme dictatorial power.” They weren’t all legal terms, but they were phrases that you might recognize as being…you know, things you’ve heard of. I just remember thinking the list was really amusing and I would like to know what was on it.
Googling various combinations of the above informational nuggets gives you, as you might expect, lots of sites about establishing power of attorney, but no amusing PSAs. If anyone could come up with what the ad was actually for, that would obviously be a huge help in tracking it down. Anybody else happen to recall hearing this ad while driving about running holiday errands?
Was the ad not effective or do I just have bad recall?
*****
Hi Sars,
I’m hoping that you or the readers can help me with some book recommendations. My boyfriend adores Wodehouse, whom I suggested after reading some books by his other favorite author, Edmund Crispin.
Now, boyfriend has read all the Gervase Fen (i.e., Crispin) mysteries at least a dozen times, and has plowed through everything Wodehouse has ever written. I’ve tried Amazon for rec lists, but didn’t have much luck. Can anyone recommend authors or books in the same vein?
The Empress of Blandings
*****
Hey Sars,
I have a slightly odd grammar-related question for you. Where would you send someone who wanted to learn more about the rules of grammar? I have always been interested in the ways that we string words together, and how we use grammar to do this, but I never learnt any hard and fast “rules.” I don’t know if it’s the same in America, but the educational system in Australia has moved away from teaching grammar in this way. I’m about to become a teacher (don’t worry — not an English teacher! Drama and Film, but still), and I feel I need to have a more concrete foundation.
While I wouldn’t categorise my grammar as bad, I only go by what “sounds right,” not by any rules. While this has served me well so far, I need more! The brief look I had at grammar theory, I found a bit daunting. Any suggestions to an absolute beginner in grammar theory, who just wants to learn before she’s teaching, damn it!
I speak English good soon please
Dear Soon,
I’d suggest Garner, of course, and Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The books aren’t necessarily rules-based, but you can learn a lot just from leafing through them or jumping from entry to entry.
The trouble with Garner is that it’s a dictionary of modern American usage, so perhaps the readers could suggest a more useful Australian version — or some other illustrative text or online resource that converts “sounds right” to a named rule. Readers?
Tags: Ask The Readers grammar popcult
@Empress – Give Sarah Caudwell a shot. Not as silly as Wodehouse, but a similar tone and reliably makes me absolutely guffaw. She only published four books before she died in 2000, but all four hold up to repeated readings. I actually flipped your question with my husband – he devoured and adored Caudwell, so I recommended Wodehouse next.
Empress of Blandings:
I love Edmund Crispin! These may not be quite what he’s looking for (no one is exactly like Crispin and Wodehouse), but I recommend checking out Margery Allingham, Gladys Mitchell’s earliest books, The Stately Home Murders by Catherine Aird, and, this might be pushing it, but Georgette Heyer’s 1930s era mysteries. Most of these have been republished recently so they’re not as impossible to find as they were a few years ago. They’re all mysteries by contemporaries of Wodehouse/Crispin with strong farcical elements set among the British upper crust during the first half of the 20th century.
I believe it’s also an American usage book, but I got a real kick out of Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies.
@Soon – I can recommend Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, of “Grammar Girl’s quick & dirty tips for better writing” (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com). She’s on Twitter as @grammargirl, and each week her podcast on quick & dirty tips gives a short talk on one of the rules of grammar, along with an explanation of the principles behind it and a good mnemonic for how to implement it.
Empress: I would recommend Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat,” and Connie Willis’s “To Say Nothing of the Dog” that brilliantly references the former. Of course, you could ask for recommendations regarding string theory, and I’d still try to make the case for these two books.
Empress, your boyfriend should definitely check out Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, and maybe the works of Evelyn Waugh.
@Empress – Since your boyfriend likes mysteries, I would recommend “Parker Pyne Investigates” by Agatha Christie and the Lord Peter mysteries by Dorothy Sayers. Parker Pyne has the same tone as Wodehouse and Lord Peter is essentially the intelligent version of Bertie Wooster.
For a more modern take, there’s “Wake Up, Sir!” by Jonathan Ames (alcoholic writer hires a valet named Jeeves). He might like Stephen Fry, too.
If he’s really into the English country house thing, there’s also the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson.
Empress – if he likes British writers, I suggest Evelyn Waugh (dry, outrageous, tongue-in-cheek short stories and novels ranging in the same vein to more serious – ie “Brideshead Revisited”) or E.M. Forster. Two of my favorites!
A good, modern day British mystery writer is Caroline Graham. She wrote the novels that the BBC series “Midsommer Murders” is based on – but her novels are much more intelligent than the series itself (and I say that as someone who has watched a zillion episodes).
:)
Soon,
I can recommend a big fat book about English grammar with lots of “rules,” but rules that are based on systematic linguistic analysis rather than random collections of tradition and lore. It actually explains things, and uses evidence to support claims…amazing!
R. Huddleston and G. K. Pullum, eds. (2001)
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
(Any Language Log fans out there will know Geoff Pullum.)
Aussie soon-to-be-teacher: Bill Bryson’s book Troublesome Words isn’t a guide to grammar as such, but he does discuss many of the common problems. And he’s very funny.
I’d second the Margery Allingham recommendation and add Dorothy L. Sayers if he started off with Edmund Crispin. Josephine Tey is also a good read, although sometimes hard to find.
At a slight tangent, he might also enjoy Mark Gatiss’ novels; they’re modern spoofs of Edwardian (The Vesuvius Club),1930s (The Devil In Amber), and James Bond (Black Butterfly) novels as well as being pacy thrillers.
The Empress of Blandings,
He might like Cold Comfort Farm.
There’s also Saki. His short stories have a lot of the silliness of Wodehouse, but with some added venom.
Empress of Blandings:
Sarah Caudwell was my first thought too. They’re set in a more modern world (albeit with slight incongruities with the one we actually inhabit), which makes the studied elegance of the prose all the more delightful.
The other author who comes to mind in this respect, an American who has admitted to Wodehouse being his inspiration, is Joe Keenan. These are set in a present-day gay milieu, with the narrator being a writer of musicals and plays (who fails to make a living at it, hence the schemes he always reluctantly gets pulled into). They’re a bit more sexually explicit than the other authors, but basically frothy, artificial, and farcical. (Kennan was a writer for Frasier, and was responsible for the famous farce episodes from that series, like “The Ski Lodge.”) He wrote two books around 1990, and the third in 2006. He has said that he hopes to continue the series, but that this is not the writing that brings in income so it tends to have to wait while he finds other TV jobs.
@Cara –
“Lord Peter is essentially the intelligent version of Bertie Wooster.” I would add “crossed with a ninja”.
Also seconding the recommendations of Allingham and Tey. I just reread “Brat Farrar” recently, and it was just as great as I’d remembered.
Damn, I was beaten to it!
Empress, definitely go for Dorothy Sayers and Connie Willis. I can’t say enough for Connie–her time travel novels and short stories continually blow my mind. In fact, I’d recommend her short story Fire Watch as a read before To Say Nothing Of The Dog–I read To Say first and loved it, but its setting made a bit more sense to me after I read Fire Watch.
Three Men In A Boat and its sequel, Three Men On The Bummel, are both a riot. In fact, Jerome K. Jerome’s entire ouvre is a great example of turn of the century light writing, with some genuine feeling layered through here and there.
Aussie, Bill Bryson’s work is great, and you may want to check out his travel book on your native land, In A Sunburned Country. It’s a bit dated (from the mid-90s) and definitely from an American point of view, but very funny.
Wow, thanks so much, everyone!
I love Lord Peter, so that was one of my suggestions, but bf thought they were pretty dry. He’s much more interested in the farcical than the mysterious, something I should have made clear in my letter.
These are all fantastic suggestions. I LOVED Cold Comfort Farm but read it, oh, 15 years ago at least and completely forgot about it (ah, middle school), so that’s going at the top of the list. I’m super excited to share these all with him and get started on some great summer reading.
More British mystery recs: Elisabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series, and Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series. Both are marvelous. Rendell’s novels and short stories are very dark; I love her stuff.
Empress: The Jasper Fforde books (The Eyre Affair and its sequels) remind me of Wodehouse in the sense that they have similar wordplay and the tone is similarly arch and funny; the mystery novel aspect might also appeal to him.
Empress: Along with all the previous suggestions, he might like the “Mapp & Lucia” books by E. F. Benson. Or try some Robert Benchley, or Will Cuppy.
Maybe try E.M. Delafield’s “A Provincial Lady” and the following books. Written in diary form by a wonderfully snarky gal in pre-WWII, through the war. Great stuff. Made me laugh out loud.
Also try him on Stephen Fry’s works, or George Grossmith’s “The Diary of a Nobody”.
(I would note that the Keenan books are very raunchy – not just “a bit more” sexually explicit than the other writers.)
@ Ad
I don’t think this is it…but your description totally reminded me of this campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myG8hq1Mk00
Maybe they did a radio version?
@ Soon – It isn’t a grammar usage book, per se, but Perfect Agreement by Michael Downing is a story with grammar usage explanations at the end of each chapter. I wasn’t sure about it, but it turned out to be a very clever book, and the grammar sections were amusing and had the added bonus of clearing up grammar mysteries that I’ve never understood! :)
The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch is an excellent history of English grammar.
Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy mysteries and M. C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth mysteries. Both ended up as BBC series which were good despite being rather different from the books.
Empress,
He might also check out almost anything by Oscar Wilde, if he hasn’t already…I remember being in tears laughing at most of it. The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan come immediately to mind, but there are many others. Even if he doesn’t usually read plays, he would still probably like these.
Also don’t neglect the BBC/PBS “Jeeves & Wooster” series on DVD; I loved the way it brought Wodehouse to life.
And on the off chance that we have similar senses of humor, he might like some John Irving, especially A Prayer for Owen Meany. It’s not the same era as Wodehouse, but it has some similar elements. Enjoy!
Thirding the Mapp and Lucia books! They’re not comedic in quite the same way as Wodehouse (not much is), but Lucia is a character and a half.
I adore Connie Willis, but if the bf is looking for comedy, the only one of hers I’d recommend is To Say Nothing of the Dog–and if he’s at all interested in Sayers, he should read the Sayers first, as Willis heavily spoils Gaudy Night. The other books are excellent, but the tone is completely different.
Angela Carter’s Wise Children is also a good long-term farce, following a pair of chorines from the 30’s to the ’90s.
As a Wodehouse fan myself, I’d like to mention the Charlie Mortdecai mystery trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli: Don’t Point That Thing At Me, After You With The Pistol, and Something Nasty In The Woodshed. I bought them because of the enthusiastic blurb by Stephen Fry on the front cover of the first book and found them to be funny and heavily influenced by Wodehouse, but with some lovely English sleaze and nastiness to boot.
Essentially, I’ve found that if Stephen Fry likes it, there’s a good chance that your average Wodehouse fan will like it, too.
I second Jen’s recommendation of the Cambridge Grammar — it’s expensive, but oh so worth it.
I think it might be helpful if the original poster chimed in to say whether she wants to know more about proper USAGE, which is the social aspect of language (we frown on saying certain things not because they don’t make sense, but because we believe that educated people say things one way, and uneducated people say them another way) or about GRAMMAR, which is the system by which utterances in a language actually do make sense (or not).
To put it another way: is she interested in the laws of physics (how fast can this car go)? That’s grammar. Or is she interested in the traffic laws (how fast am I allowed to drive this car)? That’s usage.
There’s a certain irony in a linguist claiming that grammar means X and usage means Y, because of course most people say ‘grammar’ when they mean ‘usage’. :-) But in this case it’s helpful to make the distinction.
@Empress: Anyone who likes Wodehouse should absolutely love Saki (H. H. Munro). Margravine is right about the additional bite, but it’s the same sense of humor, and about the same milieu, and he strings sentences together just brilliantly. My dad gave me Saki’s collected short stories when I turned 12, with a note that said “This is what it means to write well,” and he was right.
Benchley’s another good suggestion — and Dorothy Parker, too, although then we’re talking about a LOT more venom, albeit still brilliant and funny and elegantly written. Or James Thurber.
And as long as we’re talking about funny — @Soon, don’t overlook The Elements of Style. Tart, funny, accurate, and a very quick read.
@Soon, also try Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 3rd ed. It’s the British English form of Garner’s, and is likely to be quite helpful.
Ha — I did hesitate over whether to say “a bit more” or “a whole lot more” in my original comment; I suppose part of that uncertainty was being unable to know how it would strike a straight reader, and wondering how prudish I might seem to warn this readership about such things.
But without going back to reread them all right now (which would be fun, admittedly), my impression is that the first two Keenan books refer to characters having sex without getting all that explicit about it; it’s really the newest one that, yes, gets down and dirty. (I’ll confess that it surprised me as an authorial choice, kind of breaking the urbane polished surface that otherwise prevails.)
I find Waugh much, much more biting and dark than Wodehouse, but his first novel, “Decline and Fall”, is close to Wodehouse in its setting and in the use it makes of farce. Waugh’s “The Loved One” also has some comparable characters. Max Beerbohm’s “Zuleika Dobson” is another satire of the English upper classes set rather earlier than Wodehouse’s stuff.
If Wilde appeals (and keeping in mind that his stuff too is set significantly earlier), start with “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. George Bernard Shaw’s stuff, in a similar vein, might be good for a laugh – try “Mrs Warren’s Profession”. These three are all plays, so keep that in mind if he’s only after novels.
Empress, if he’s looking for farcical Britishness, he could try some Gerald Durrell. I don’t recommend (at least not for a start) the ones where he’s out collecting in “Darkest Africa” (there are heavy helpings of obnoxious colonialism to be found therein) but the three books which are basically just collections of anecdotes about his crazy family? (Including Famous Author Lawrence Durrell, incidentally, who is Gerald’s older brother.) Yes with a side of yes.
My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; and The Garden of the Gods.
@ Soon, Give ‘Wordwatching: field notes from an amateur philologist” by Australian barrister and author Julian Burnside a try. It’s extremely entertaining and really educational, and it’s Australian.
Empress,
Will Cuppy – there’s not all that much of it, but it is wonderful. It should be required reading, every single morsel of it, and somehow it is not.
Angela Thirkell – less giddy than Wodehouse and much less dark than Waugh – british social comedy between the wars, during ww 2 and post ww 2. The early ones – Pomfret Towers, The Brandons, Summer Half, Before Lunch – are my favorites.
James Thurber and Saki, and Damon Runyon is good for giddyness and Psmithesqueness, only it wears sooner than Wodehouse does. S.J. Perlman. Tom Sharpe – the Wilt books, but pretty much everything – he is wildly, constantly snarky.
Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and Birds Beasts and Relatives. His zoo-collecting ones are just less cripplingly uproarious.
Good Omens – it’s a Terry Pratchett-Neil Gaiman thing.
And there’s always Raffles, and the lighter Nancy Mitford – Don’t Tell Alfred and Pigeon Pie, Wigs on the Green and The Blessing.
Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series is good. Not funny, but better formed, somehow, than Allingham’s Campion and less dry than most of Sayers, although Murder Must Advertise is one of my favorite books.
EF Benson – mostly Mapp and Lucia. And DE Stevenson.
These are some great reccs! I wonder if Empress of Blanding’s bf might enjoy The Pursuit of Love (collected in the trilogy Love in a Cold Climate). Similar milieu, and I recently re-read The Pursuit of Love and it’s a whole lot funnier (in a very dry way) when you’re a little older.
Also, if he find the Dorothy Sayers’ novels too dry, just wanted to point out that there is a book of all the Peter Wimsey short stories which have a slightly more accessible style than the novels.
Finally, how about the complete Strand edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories? If you like them, it’s very pleasing to have such a giant doorstep of a book to read through and the illustrations are entertaining.
Sorry, me again. Wanted to add, they’re contemporary(ish) not 1930s but the Wilt books are totally farcical and have English backdrops. ‘Wilt on High’ made me cry with laughter. There’s a whole sub-genre of farcical books about English male academics. I also liked Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man and David Lodge’s earlier books (like Changing Places), Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, etc. The politics and gender relations are a bit old-fashioned now but it’s it’s still funny to read about clever people making idiots of themselves.
Also, I recently read the book of the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (set in 1970s English suburbia), which I’d recommend especially for anyone who hasn’t seen the TV versions. I think it’s funnier when you have to imagine the characters for yourself.
To put it another way: is she interested in the laws of physics (how fast can this car go)? That’s grammar. Or is she interested in the traffic laws (how fast am I allowed to drive this car)? That’s usage.
I mostly just wanted to say how brilliant I thought this analogy was. Nice going, Erin. At the risk of undermining how much I think of the analogy, I can’t help adding the observation that Lynne Truss’s Eats Shoots and Leaves is shaped by British English and some of her prescriptions, and proscriptions, aren’t really quite right for North America, I find). So maybe there’s a Geekenberg Uncertainty Principle for Grammarian-Physician-Prescriptivists?
Empress, your boyfriend might like Jerome K. Jerome’s novels, and the work of James Thurber.
Ruth Dudley Edwards’s books featuring Robert Amiss might be worth looking at. They’re very British, very arch, and witty. They’re mysteries set at various British institutions: Cambridge, Parliment, a newspaper, the civil service, and so on. Very politically incorrect, and delightful. I’m not a mystery fan, but I own all of these so I can read them once a year.
@Sand: The author isn’t North American, which is why I recommended the Truss — it’s an amusing read, but would probably confuse the issues for North-American speakers who aren’t already familiar with the rules.
Ack! Somehow Soon’s reference to the Australian education system got by me. Sorry, all. I do agree that the Truss book is a fun read.
Dear Soon,
I recommend the charming and illuminating books The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed and The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed both by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.
My husband and I met over a mutual love for Wodehouse, so this is my question! I completely agree with the recommendations for “Three Men and a Boat” and “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, they both have that lovely froth that Wodehouse was a master of. As well, we just read a very funny travel memoir called “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay”, about two American girls going to Europe in the 20s, the author is Cornelia Skinner Otis (or Otis Skinner?).
If he likes Fantasy, Terry Pratchett is brilliant and very funny; Neil Gaimen also, but darker; and Douglas Adams (a Wodehouse fan himself, I believe) can be hilarious, but darkly silly in that Monty Python way which can get tiresome.
Empress, if he likes the transcendent silliness and farce of Wodehouse he should really, really check out Dornford Yates’s Berry stories. They’re collected as Berry & Co. and The Brother of Daphne.
I also second the recommendation for Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. They’re not quite as silly as Wodehouse, but they are very funny (especially if you pick up the in-jokes; research may be required) and very good.
And now I’m going to run off to the library and check out some of these other awesome-sounding recommendations. Yay!