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The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed Hardcover – Illustrated, August 10, 1993
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Additional Details
- Print length192 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPantheon
- Publication dateAugust 10, 1993
- Dimensions7.6 x 0.78 x 9.6 inches
- ISBN-100679418601
- ISBN-13978-0679418603
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It is not often that circumstances force me to utter more than one sentence at a time, or, for that matter, one after another—the usual arrangement of such things. And we are dealing with usual arrangements here: the form and ordering of words, be they mumbled, bellowed, or inscribed. Grammar is a sine qua non of language, placing its demons in the light of sense, sentencing them to the plight of prose. Don’t take an immediate and sullen dislike to this book or look askance before you’ve even begun. Do not mangle it yet. By allowing yourself to be misled by the subject you will end up more intimate with the knowledge that you already possess.
This is a dangerous game I’m playing, smuggling the injunctions of grammar into your cognizance through a ménage of revolving lunatics kidnapped into this book. Their stories are digressions toward understanding, a pantomime of raucous intentions in the linguistic labyrinth. By following them through this rough and twisting terrain you will be beguiled into compliance with the rules, however confounding those rules may appear to be. Learning is less a curse than a distraction. If you nuzzle these pages with abandon, writing will lose its terror and your sentences their disarray. I am not trifling with your emotions, nor flapping an antic mirage in your face. Whether you dawdle or maraud your way through these pages, you will return to them repeatedly to find your place and see your face.
Before I leave you in the embrace of the transitive vampire, I should introduce him to you, for he too went through the dubious process of education and name out none the worse for wear. He was not always a vampire. He can recall the bittersweet pleasure of a morsel of marzipan dissolving on his tongue and earlier memories of the vanished bliss of his mother’s breast. He was a child of immense generosity and voracious intellect. By the age of ten he had read all of Tolstoy and Pushkin and The Torments of Timofey, a neglected Slavic epic that greatly affected his sensibility and filled his young mind with dread. He knew suffering from the inside out, abjection like the back of his hand, which was slender and silken and thrilling to all who were touched by him.
When his manhood set in, our hero set out from home to seek his fortune, or at least his way. The mountains of his mother country were monstrously metaphysical. Words reposed in stones, and it was here, high above the cradle of his childhood, that his nature and purpose revealed themselves, not far from the howling wolves. No one knows quite how it happened, but he came back decidedly changed, transfixed through some secret effect. He had become one of the night’s creatures, with a grammar he had received from the great and jagged unknown. Treading carefully among the broken rules, he returned to set things straight. It was a noble undertaking, and it was noted in his epitaph, although he is immortal, like language itself, and still prowling around.
Product details
- Publisher : Pantheon; Revised edition (August 10, 1993)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679418601
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679418603
- Item Weight : 1.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.6 x 0.78 x 9.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #178,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #37 in Language Humor
- #205 in Grammar Reference (Books)
- #209 in Lawyers & Criminals Humor
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That being said, it is definitely designed for someone who wants to be there really learning the grammar. It's not one of those technical manuals that will answer the quick question you have about that pesky comma. It's going to teach you why the comma is there and how to identify the parts of your sentence with the fluency to rearrange them for greater effect, thus avoiding having to include that comma at all. It wasn't all sunshine and roses, though, from the point of view of a grammatical craftsman who likes to compare constructions in French, German, Latin, and ancient Greek. Gordon swept the differentiation of tense from aspect under the rug, and the book was completely lacking a discussion of mood. Since that's kind of an enormous gaping hole in an otherwise charming, illustrative, and exhaustive book, I have to go 4 stars instead of 5.
By no stretch of the imagination is this the best book on grammar out. Nor is this the best book written on the subject. I would equate it to a grammar coffee break. It's useful, but also pleasant. If you want a hyper-organized, get the answer quick reference book this is a poor choice. If, however, you want a fresh source of ideas to present to your hyperactive, low attention span, immediate gratification students you may find this quite a bit more useful that diagramming you millionth sentence.








