The Glamour Of Grammar: A Guide To The Magic And Mystery Of Practical English, by Roy Peter Clark

It would have been so easy for this book to be a great one. The author considers himself to be America’s writing teacher–I have not heard of him so that does not speak highly to his real contributions to the study that the two of us share. The author, in general, strives to stake a moderate position in a wide variety of debates concerning the English language, and seeks to present himself as a fair and balanced writer towards the beginning of the book. If you stop there, you might think he manages to succeed, but no, throughout the book he manages to show his bias and his tiresome left-of-center political views that show themselves as faux-moderation, and the book joins a long list of disappointing titles that could have been great books if their authors could simply shut their trap about politics. As it is, this book could have been great and even should have been great, and then the author waxes poetic about Obama’s supposed eloquence and demonizes populists (though strangely enough, this bias is only directed towards the right), and expresses his love of the NPR despite their similarly toxic partisanship. Instead of discussing the magic of writing, the author seems to be of the mistaken belief that his fake moderation and fondness for finding examples of skilled writing in a broad array of places and his seeking to mediate a position between descriptivism and prescriptivism can win over any reader, and sadly, he reveals too much of his own perspective to win me over.

This book is almost 300 pages long and most of it consists of 50 short chapters masquerading as rules and principles divided into five parts. After introducing the book with a goal of encouraging the reader to embrace grammar as powerful and purposeful, the author focuses his attention first on words (I), with chapters on reading the dictionary for fun and learning (1), honoring the smallest distinctions (4), taking a class on how to noun verbs and verb nouns (6), which the author unfortunately labels as cross-dressing parts of speech, and so on. The second part of the book contains the author’s thoughts on punctuation. This is followed by the author’s thoughts on standards, as the author is uncomfortable (unsurprising given his moral shortcomings) with unchanging rules and principles of behavior. After this the author writes a few chapters that deal with the thorny issue of meaning and tells readers to ignore fussy grammarians. The fifth and final part of the book talks about the purpose of writing, after which there is an afterword that encourages the reader to live a life of language, and then three appendices that include words the author has misspelled (i), words the author has confused (ii), and a quick list of the glamor of grammar, after which there are acknowledgments and an index.

In registering my disappointment about the book, it must be remembered that there is still a lot to appreciate about this book nonetheless. The author expresses his interest in not only where language has been but also where it is going. He goes over examples where words that seem to be distinct find themselves to have common roots that are worth appreciating and taking into consideration. His understanding that there are moral aspects to writing is very true, even the author would not see morality in the same places that I would–at times he shows himself to be the worst of both worlds when he views the gender confusion and corruption of contemporary culture as being a positive example of justice and the triumph of good standards, a low point in this book. Though there is indeed a great deal of glamor in grammar, the author’s being on the wrong side of cultural and political matters undercuts his credibility to speak to America as a moral authority or even as an authority on the spoken and written word. Such corruption as the author demonstrates makes it impossible to view the author’s positions with respect. Perhaps silence would have been an improvement, or at least rigorous enough editing to save the good parts of this book and excise the bad parts.