A Fair Trade Book
Title: Metapunctuation
Title: Metapunctuation
Date: 1993
Publisher: Dell
Length: 192 pages
Quote: “Why not have symbols that can tell us what the speaker means when he says, ‘I love you’?”
(An earlier version of this review appeared on Blogjob, where it earned money for Blogjob, but not for me, for more than two years.)
Would Americans ever seriously try to learn and use the dozens of punctuation marks Frumkes proposes as indications of the “tones” in which sentences are uttered? Ha. Ha. Those extra marks aren’t on computer keyboards, and when was the last time Frumkes saw a young person actually write anything?
However, there’s plenty of chucklebait in Frumkes’ cases for, definitions of, and examples of use of new punctuation marks, from the Delta Sarc (used at the beginning of a sentence uttered in a sarcastic way) to the Perhaps Sign.
When would you use a punctuation mark called “Startles”? In “instances of mild or sudden surprise,” of course, such as, “Three pounds is rather large for a goldfish.” What about a “Romantic Love Heart”? To introduce an utterance like, “Ten dollars.Here, take fifty dollars.” (Support this blog...) What about a “Boast”? Maybe before the actual titles of chapters in Nietzsche’s obscure autobiography, such as “Why I Write Such Good Books.”
Not that Metapunctuation is consistently lofty and aimed only at people who read Nietzsche. Actually, the joke that runs throughout the book is that many of the examples come from the lives of a (fictional, we hope) group of foolish, even self-destructive, young people with names like Rock, Pancake, Tallulah, and Daryl, who embody the concept of a “Slacker Generation.” They’re friends...which makes it hard to imagine how they’d behave toward their enemies.
This is another book that belongs in the paperback format, because it’s a good choice for someone using out-loud laughter for pain control. If you don’t want to wait for an actual illness, and insist on reading Metapunctuation at the office or on the train, you will probably be able to control your chortles by reading fast. If you want to laugh out loud, reading this book slowly and thinking about the possible context of each sentence will trigger laughter. You can lay down the book and let your arm relax while savoring each ridiculous image.
And by now there has to be someone out there who’s found himself or herself sitting on a train near someone who seemed friendly, and shared these little mini-comedies, and formed a relationship that...even if it didn’t work out, it would have to have had more going for it, at least at the time, than the romance of Rock and Pancake.
Metapunctuation is a Fair Trade Book, meaning that if you buy it online by sending $5 per book + $5 per package + $1 per online payment, Paypal or U.S. Postal money order, to either of the addresses in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, we will send $1 to Frumkes or a charity of his choice. To buy eight copies, send a total of $45, and we will send Frumkes or his charity $8.
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