Maira Kalman illustrates "The Elements of Style"

Haven't seen it yet, but wow, what a great idea.

Here's the how to order it page from the New York Public Library shop. There was a performance tonight of a song cycle based on the work. Read about it at the NY Times - 'Style' Gets New Elements. There is a photo labelled Style Music here from the NYT agency.

Kalman is the author of such classics as "What Pete Ate from A-Z: Where We Explore the English Alphabet (In Its Entirety) in Which a Certain Dog Devours a Myriad of Items Which He Should Not" (Maira Kalman) (Amazon), (AADL)

Geoffrey Pullum is none too happy about this all. He's quoted in the Chicago Tribune thusly:

"There is an ILLUSTRATED edition of `The Elements of Style' coming out?" he replied by e-mail. "Oh, how pathetic, how horrible. . . . You have depressed me."

I don't think anyone is going to be illustrating his books any time soon. The Language Log says "Omit needless noises".

Library Journal has an interview with Maira Kalman.

Describe your thought process. For example, what inspired the image with the dog ("Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in")?

My very poor attention span allows me to jump from thing to thing with childish abandon. I chose the sentences only on the basis of what I liked. But once I narrowed down my choices, I wanted to be literal and true to the sentence. So, for instance, for the phrase "The temple of Isis" [see image, far left] I found images of the actual temple, which is on a small island on the Nile and rendered it with some characters sprinkled in. I tried to do this as often as possible. A reasoned madness.

The basset hound [near left] is based on a photograph that my sister gave me. I have a dog and I so often say that. And you might not know who is in a mess, the dog or the person the dog is looking at. Along with the literal images, I found the freedom to incorporate the wonderful and absurd images that I collect as I travel through my day. "Polly loves cake more than she loves me" is a Gainsborough painting. The boy with the box on his head is my son. So it goes.

Looking forward to seeing the book!

UPDATE: roberta fallon and libby rosof's artblog has a very nice illustrated review of the book in their blog entry Grammar Lessons.

UPDATE 2: Here's the New York Public Library's program for THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE: A Short Happy Evening of Song with Maira Kalman and Nico Muhly , courtesy of a review written by Patrick Cooper.

Technorati Tags: book, books, grammar, kalman, strunk, style, white

Comments

[[libcat]]

More Pullum on S&W: "[W]hat I'm saying about the extreme age of the outdated nonsense in Strunk White can perhaps best be put like this: White's formative experience in Strunk's class was so long ago that the Red Sox had just won the World Series the year before." [ http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001604.html ]

Pullum suggests instead to use Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage---"it treats you like a grown-up. Strunk and White treat you like the abused 9-year-old daughter of a pair of grumpy dads ("Omit needless words, damn you! And fetch my slippers. And bring his slippers too. Now fix our supper. And don't let us hear you beginning any sentences with however"). Don't put up with the abuse." [ http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001803.html ].

[[libcat]]

(above reference to "Strunk White" is thanks to your wonderful character reference-stripping comment system. Should be "Strunk and White".)

[Edward Vielmetti]

NPR had a story on the opera version of Elements of Style that was done at the NYPL. Several hundred people were in attendance. Check out their story here -

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4985137

it made the "most emailed stories" podcast on NPR as well -

http://www.npr.org/sendEmail/top25emailed.html