Between You & Me

Last week the smoke coming from wildfires in Washington state, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia was brutal here. The sky was perpetually gray and you couldn’t go outside long without your eyes and lungs burning. I can only imagine how bad it was in the places where the fire actually was. Now finally the blue sky has returned and I’m no longer taking oxygen or the sky’s color for granted. I just hope rain will come soon to the areas still ignited in flames. This has been a particularly harsh summer for wildfires out West, and it’s made me look forward for once to cooler fall temps.

Meanwhile, my last book for August was Mary Norris’s 2015 memoir and grammar usage book “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.” I listened to it as an audiobook narrated by the author, which was great as I felt like I got a better sense of what Mary Norris is like. She’s definitely a hoot and seems eccentric in her grammarian ways and interests.

If you haven’t heard of this book or her, Mary Norris has been a copy editor and proofreader at The New Yorker magazine since 1978. She’s still there, holding fort over all the minutiae — particularly the style and grammar that goes into the mag. Her book reveals some anecdotes of her days at the magazine, but mainly it delves into usage issues, such as spelling, punctuation, that vs. which, pronouns and antecedents, and dangling modifiers, among other things. One needs to be quite taken with the particulars of punctuation and grammar to keep interested in this book because at times Norris can go on and on about a single example or topic, seemingly not knowing exactly when to stop.

I didn’t mind though because I worked for many years at a newspaper as a copyeditor myself so I used to deal with these things on a nightly basis. It gets ingrained in your bones — all the tiny details, where you have to catch everything and eliminate all the errors and put words into the style of the publication’s. It can be tough and hair-raising on deadline. Afterwards, you often wake up in the middle of the night worrying whether you made a “fix,” or if you think something slipped through. I remember those caffeinated late nights and some that gave me ulcers or at least felt like it.

But the best parts of “Between You and Me” aren’t really all the grammar schooling that’s in it, but more the anecdotes Norris shares of various writers and their particular style traits. She touches on the poet Emily Dickinson and her use of dashes, the life of lexicographer Noah Webster, and the writing of Herman Melville, particularly the mystery over who put the hyphen in the title of “Moby-Dick.” She mentions her dealings over the copy of writers Philip Roth, George Saunders, James Salter, and Pauline Kael among others. These are the parts I really enjoyed. I also liked the bits about her personal life and her work life of what it’s been like at The New Yorker. I would have liked more of this memoir-type stuff and less about usage rules.

In particular two chapters towards the end of “Between You and Me” could have been subbed out in my opinion for other material. In one, Norris includes a whole chapter on the usage of profanity in copy that is laced with … well, a lot of profanity that turns out not to be that enlightening. In the other, Norris writes about her fettish for pencils and pencil sharpeners, which I guess I found a bit amusing and charming. But then she really gets into the details of both. I’m not kidding, I haven’t heard or thought so much about pencils since grade school, and likely not back then either, LOL. Wow that’s when I thought “Whoa she’s pretty eccentric” … but not exactly in a bad way.

Still I was quite entertained by listening to Norris read “Between Me and You.” I laughed quite often and agreed with her on much of her wisdom and insight. She comes off as pretty down-to-earth, modest, salty, funny, and not snooty like one might think of a longtime reference guru. I think that’s what really won me over. She includes errors she’s made and doesn’t sound like a bossy know-it-all. (As long as you don’t write or say “between you and I,” she probably won’t go too batty.) For that, “Between Me and You” is a refreshing read among the recent spate of style and usage books that at times come across too heavy-handed in their righteousness or correctness.

What about you — have you read or heard of Mary Norris’s book — and if so what did you think of it? Or have you liked any other books on style and usage?