Archive - Mar 14, 2009

"When did it become acceptable to write shit and get it published? "

This thought crossed my mind, as I was sitting in my ahem *study* reading a recent copy of The Atlantic, purchased on a whim to offer diversion from The Watchmen omnibus, and the foot-high pile of journal articles sitting by the bed.

Take this example, from a book review :

Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering From the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes

"Because It's STILL There" might well have been the working title of this comprehensive account, a vacuum-filling history (the first of its kind in five-plus decades) and an enormously engaging addition to the climbing-lit canon.

Seriously? "Because"?? It's a book review for the love of God, I learned not to start a sentence with 'because' while sitting on the rainbow rug in Ms Ginoux's second grade classroom.

What else is wrong here? Structurally, it's like the author took a perfectly good sentence, cut it up and played grammar boggle with it for a few minutes. Did you have to lead with the joke Mr. Author-pants? Could you not have written:

This enormously engaging addition to the climbing-lit canon, the first of its kind in five-plus decades might well have been titled "Because It's STILL There" so long has it taken for a comprehensive work on this subject to appear?

I mean, or is that like, not cool sounding? Trust me I am no stranger to writing sentences that go back to front in order to sound clever - ask my thesis adviser, who sends red arrows flying left to right over my insufferable and disorderly syntax.