HOW TO WRITE WITHOUT KNOWING NOTHING

by H. Allen Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A ""devout believer in human folly"", note-taker and file-keeper Smith is in full cry chasing words, phrases and speech (as she is spoke) to illustrate that ""Words are funnier than everything"". With a look at writers and writing, editors and audience, he displays his collection of malapropisms, spoonerisms and (his own word) snooperisms; he lets you know what happens when you wake up to write down the ideas you have in dreams. He talks about sports lingo, Dizzy Dean, Variety, Col. Stoopnagle; he tells a talking dog story and what happens when you ask directions; he crusades against wrongly attributed quotations; he ponders how to answer compliments. There is the biography of the word ""rhubarb"", the results of trying to speak a foreign language, the impossibility of writing the kinds of letters you would like to, the art of telling jokes, Irish bulls -- and the genius required in ""not speaking"". More than your money's worth in syntactical confusion and reversed English by a man who knows quite a bit about it.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION