Between You & Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2015, 228 pps.
Mary Norris has been a proofreader and copy editor at The New Yorker for more than 30 years, certainly time enough to qualify her to remark, wax elegantly, and, at times, pontificate about the finer points of punctuation and grammar. Ms. Norris does all three in her book entitled Between You & Me.
Wisely, the book covers more than writing issues; rather, it combines those discussions with mini-memoirs of her experiences editing some of The New Yorker's most famous writers along with descriptions of moments from her life, for example, her first job in high school as a ''foot checker.'' One summer she checked swimmers' feet at a local pool in her hometown in Cleveland, Ohio. (If you must know, she was checking for athlete's foot.)
I was fully expecting Norris to draw an admittedly tasteless parallel between checking feet and checking page proofs, you know, it's a stinky job but somebody's got to do it? But, no, her book never approaches that low point. Amazing, huh? Would that my suggestion be more aromatic than Mary Norris' approach. Alas, poor Yorick, while one might argue that her level of taste is higher; neither is she of infinite jest or most excellent fancy, I can assure you.
No, Ms. Norris often stays on the straight and narrow, and when you consider how few risks she takes, her writing certainly has paid off handsomely because her book has been praised by the likes of The New York Times,, National Public Radio, and The Guardian, among others who all seemed to agree that Norris' book is ''witty,'' and generally a rollicking good read.
I'm certain Ms. Norris will be crushed to learn that my review of her just-out book is not nearly as positive. I found the proof-reader's quibbles over grammar and punctuation at times tedious; her humor sometimes forced and some of her mini-memoir episodes irrelevant.
Between You & Me is not without its high points, however. Overall, I found it to be uneven. Reading it was like riding the E train back to Queens after work when I lived in NYC. Sweaty riders on all sides of you pushing in close. The train coming to a screeching halt and the lights going off every ten minutes. Then suddenly speeding along at sixty miles an hour until another crisis of confidence brings your reading to a screeching halt and leaves you in the dark. That is to say, Norris's book gets you home safe and sound.
Some of the high points that contribute to the book's overall worth:
Her admission of the futility of trying to edit the ''incomparable'' George Sanders admitting that ''the fix does violence to the writer's voice.'' (Pg. 54) As a fiction writer, I gloated at her admission. Of course, some might take the opposite view, i.e., that we writers are beyond both fix and salvation.
In her discussion of the awkward use of ''he'' and ''she'' caused by the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun in English, she let on that personal pronouns have such deeply imbedded identities that on one occasion a single pronoun slip-up (forgetting that ''he'' was now a ''she'') threatened to scuttle her loving relationship with her transgender sister. Very moving. (Pg. 72)
Of course, the title Between You & Me, pays homage to a common blunder, i.e., people saying, ''Between You & I,'' which simply isn't correct. (Pg. 77)
I loved this quote: ''I am not trying to fit anyone for a linguistic straight jacket.'' (Pg. 86).
Chapter 5 entitled, ''Comma Comma Comma Comma Chameleon!'' was great fun. (Pg. 93)
Chapter 6 entitled ''Who Put the Hyphen in Moby-Dick?'' I found sort of fascinating. (Yes and no.) She's right of course, although I had never noticed it before: In the title of the famous novel, Moby-Dick is hyphenated; however throughout the text it is not. Why? After descriptions of exhaustive research described in exhaustive detail (she certainly exhausted me), we learn that a copy editor inserted the hyphen on the title page because it was customary to do so in mid-1800s America: ''The hyphenated form refers to the book; the unhyphenated, to the whale.'' (Pg. 111)
I loved Chapter 9 in which she makes a convincing case for the use of profanity, saying it's fun and lively. (Pg. 157) The chapter opens with these words: ''Has the casual use of profanity in English reached a high tide? Fxxk yeah.'' (Well, sort of. Full disclosure: She put an entire irrelevant sentence between her ''high tide'' question and her witty answer, totally gutting its power.) It's sad for me to write, but it's true: Mary Norris needed an editor. For her next book, let's hope she gets one. The New York Times review let on that the reviewer found a typo in her book. That is not what an author wants to read in a review of her book.
More full disclosure: I wanted to adore this book once I learned that Mary Norris graduated from Douglas College, which in primordial times when I attended Rutgers University was my alma mater's woman's college just across town from Rutgers.
I used to hang out at the Douglas library because I liked brainy women who were literate. Still do. Married one. I might have met Mary there and asked her for a date except she graduated about a decade after me. (Or,is that ''after I?'')
