The transitive Vampire. A Handbook of Grammar für the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed.

Gordon, Karen Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0812911016 / ISBN 13: 9780812911015

Published by Times Books. Random House, 1984

About this Item

Hardcover 21x14 cm, cover slightly used, dust jacket rubbed and with tears. 149 pages. Gewicht in Gramm: 330.

Seller Inventory # 103800

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The transitive Vampire. A Handbook of Grammar für the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed.
• Publisher: Times Books. Random House
• Publication Date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0812911016
• ISBN 13: 9780812911015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 330 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Belletristik

About this title

Synopsis

Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Review

Karen Elizabeth Gordon is no ordinary grammarian, and her works (including The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and The Disheveled Dictionary)--are no ordinary books of grammar. A special edition of the 1984 classic, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is populated by a wickedly decadent cast of gargoyles, mastodons, murderous debutantes, and, yes, vampires (both transitive and otherwise), who cavort and consort in order to illustrate basic principles of grammar. The sentences are intoxicating--"How he loved to dangle his participles, brush his forelock off his forehead with his foreleg, and gaze into the aqueous depths"--but the rules and their explanations are as sound as any you might find in Strunk and White. Outlining the building blocks of the English language, from parts of speech to phrases and clauses, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire goes on to exorcise such grammatical demons as passive voice, fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences. At last, a handbook of grammar you will actually want to read. In the words of Gordon's preface, "Howling, exploding, crackling, flickering with new life-forms, and drunk on fresh blood (some of mine is certainly missing), this deluxe edition reminds us on every page that words, too, have hoofs and wings to transport us far and deep."