We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate
Amazon.com Review Karen Elizabeth Gordon is no ordinary grammarian, and her works (including The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and The Disheveled Dictionary)--are no ordinary books of grammar. A special edition of the 1984 classic, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is populated by a wickedly decadent cast of gargoyles, mastodons, murderous debutantes, and, yes, vampires (both transitive and otherwise), who cavort and consort in order to illustrate basic principles of grammar. The sentences are intoxicating--"How he loved to dangle his participles, brush his forelock off his forehead with his foreleg, and gaze into the aqueous depths"--but the rules and their explanations are as sound as any you might find in Strunk and White. Outlining the building blocks of the English language, from parts of speech to phrases and clauses, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire goes on to exorcise such grammatical demons as passive voice, fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences. At last, a handbook of grammar you will actually want to read. In the words of Gordon's preface, "Howling, exploding, crackling, flickering with new life-forms, and drunk on fresh blood (some of mine is certainly missing), this deluxe edition reminds us on every page that words, too, have hoofs and wings to transport us far and deep." Product Description Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout. From the Inside Flap Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout. From the Back Cover Here now is an enlarged version of the only handbook of grammar you will ever want to read. With this special edition, Karen Gordon gives the reader more illustrations and even more examples of confusing appositives, the many uses of gerunds, the complicated matter of agreements. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire spins a lively gothic narrative with such characters as the Debutante, famous courtesan, wolf, bat, vampire, mastodon, pizza chef, lummox, lamia, and trilingual solitary. Gordon conjures up this eccentric cast with a uniquely wicked, witty and playful style. Yet every rule is explained with great clarity and precision. While entertaining the reader with the unexpected, she makes the most intricate and impossible usages clear for the first time. "You will not find a more charming or constructive companion than Karen Gordon", Kenneth Auchincloss reported in Newsweek when Ms. Gordon's punctuation book, The Well-Tempered Sentence, first appeared. "How rare it is to laugh as one studies a grammar text", Doris Grumbach exclaimed on National Public Radio. And in the New York Times, Herbert Mitgang warned, "(Karen Gordon's) sentences might make the Edwardian Brothers Fowler blush and, perhaps, Professor Strunk and Mr. White wince". For any reader who finds the rules of grammar irregular and confusing, this book should guide him with confidence through the maze of linguistics. About the Author KAREN ELIZABETH GORDON is the author of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, The New Well-Tempered Sentence, The Ravenous Muse, The Red Shoes and Other Tattered Tales, The Disheveled Dictionary, Paris Out of Hand, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness. She divides her time between Berkeley, California, and France. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction It is not often that circumstances force me to utter more than one sentence at a time, or, for that matter, one after another—the usual arrangement of such things. And we are dealing with usual arrangements here: the form and ordering of words, be they mumbled, bellowed, or inscribed. Grammar is a sine qua non of languag
