<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The New York Times <\/em>has called the author Jess Walter \u201cridiculously talented.\u201d \u201cHis sentences nearly sing,\u201d says the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em>. \u201cOne of my favorite young American writers,\u201d says fellow novelist Nick Hornby.<\/p>\n We agree with the critics. Walter\u2019s 2012 best-seller Beautiful Ruins <\/em>is a masterpiece. But today we\u2019ll do a different kind of book review.<\/p>\n Our job at GrammarBook.com is to preserve and promote standard English. This sometimes puts us at cross-purposes with Walter, who chooses to speak to his readers in an easy, accessible voice\u2014the people\u2019s English, not the scholars\u2019 English. If his writing is where the language is headed, we traditionalists must accept that we are fighting numerous losing battles.<\/p>\n In Walter\u2019s short story We Live in Water<\/em> one finds this line: \u201cThe resort was comprised of three newer buildings.\u201d Word nerds will question why he didn\u2019t use composed <\/em>instead of comprised<\/em>. In 1926, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage<\/em>, H.W. Fowler hissed, \u201cThis lamentably common use of comprise<\/em> as a synonym of compose <\/em>or constitute<\/em> is a wanton and indefensible weakening of our vocabulary.\u201d Seventy-six years later, in 2002, Bill Bryson\u2019s Dictionary of Troublesome Words<\/em> was no less emphatic: \u201cComprised of <\/em>is a common expression, but it is always wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n So it seems clear that Walter used the phrase because he either did not know or did not care that \u201cthe experts\u201d say it\u2019s wrong. By writing \u201ccomprised of,\u201d Walter is legitimizing this \u201ccommon expression\u201d over the adamant objections of a dwindling cadre of fuddy-duddies.<\/p>\n From Walter\u2019s 2003 novel Land of the Blind<\/em>: \u201cI don\u2019t know who liked this new world less, him or Mr. Leggett.\u201d Walter, who could have used the correct he<\/em> in this sentence without sounding stilted or affected, opted instead for the colloquial him<\/em>. Apparently, neither he nor his target audience loses any sleep over such erudite technicalities.<\/p>\n In another short story, The New Frontier<\/em>, the author writes, \u201cHe convinced her to model.\u201d But technically, he persuaded<\/em> her to model. \u201cConvince<\/em> may be followed by an of<\/em> phrase or a that <\/em>clause, but not by a to <\/em>infinitive,\u201d counsels Theodore M. Bernstein in The Careful Writer <\/em>(1983). That rule is upheld to this day by the Associated Press Stylebook<\/em>: \u201cYou may [only] be convinced that<\/em> something or of<\/em> something.\u201d Walter isn\u2019t buying. He\u2019s trusting his own ear, as writers will do. The fine distinction between convince <\/em>and persuade<\/em>, he is saying, has become a quaint bit of trivia.<\/p>\n He introduces sentences with danglers. He repeatedly writes \u201cdifferent than\u201d rather than \u201cdifferent from.\u201d He says \u201csnuck\u201d even though sneaked <\/em>is still considered the correct option. At least once, he uses strata<\/em>\u2014the plural of stratum<\/em>\u2014as a singular. He writes \u201cclose proximity,\u201d long dismissed by sticklers as a windy redundancy.<\/p>\n Walter is too busy spinning his wondrous tales to be distracted by such minutiae\u2014his instincts tell him: Why bother?<\/p>\n Why, indeed? That question gives all language watchdogs nightmares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New York Times has called the author Jess Walter \u201cridiculously talented.\u201d \u201cHis sentences nearly sing,\u201d says the Los Angeles Review of Books. \u201cOne of my favorite young American writers,\u201d says fellow novelist Nick Hornby. We agree with the critics. Walter\u2019s 2012 best-seller Beautiful Ruins is a masterpiece. But today we\u2019ll do a different kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing","category-pronouns"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}