Happily cataloguing Spunk & Bite

Art Plotnik, who hired me at ALA and was my first guide to libraryland, writes me occasionally. His recent e-mail complemented our catalog, commenting on the editorial mugs. Having seen my post on LibraryThing, he asked if I had catalogued his book Spunk & Bite, now in paperback. Yes, I have! The harcover edition. Although it wasn’t in my first handful when I set up the account, I did demo LibraryThing for my wife, who had asked about it, and Spunk & Bite is what I pulled from my shelf.

Corresponding with Art, an author of books on writing, I sometimes feel self-conscious about my flat responses to his elevated expression. So I was heartened to see that he is not above the cheap pun. He writes in Spunk & Bite:

Perceived correctness can be comforting to the reader, like a tidy house. But what distinguishes a piece of writing is the ambiance—the environmental mood—that language can create. That’s why locution, locution, locution is so important to us realtors of the words.

Plotnik defines locution as the use of a word or turning of a phrase in a stylistic manner. As he does throughout the book, he provides examples. “If a thing can be done, why do it?” from Gertrude Stein. The British, queenly locution, “We are not amused,” as an understated way of expressing displeasure. And a curious locution that he claims New Yorkers will recognize: “That terrific woman, which you should have married her!” In the bell-ringer category, he quotes the “jailhouse locution” from Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full.

Look bruvva . . . I ain’t tryin’ a disrespectchoo . . . I ain’t tryin’ a sweatchoo, an’ I ain’t tryin’ a play you. So whatchoo doggin’ me for?

Plotnik admits to doggin’ E.B. White, co-author with William Strunk, Jr., of Elements of Style, but only because “few American locutionists stand taller than White,” yet his advice to writers “concerned itself more with boundaries than White-like flights above rooftops.”

What’s number one in LibraryThing’s Spunk & Bite recommendation machine? Elements of Style, of course. Writers, read them both.