Same Strunk & White – only this time with pictures. It’s a grammar book! This had to be a novel, a book on fashion, or something sharing a name. Only this edition is hardback and Illustrated! At first I thought: how queer can this be? It has got to be a mistake. This year, for my birthday, I received yet another copy. For me Boosies and Hawksies came and went, but Strunks and Whites have remained constant. It may have sounded more erotic than Strunk & White but certainly less dramatic.
Maryanne, made a similar pontification in the same lounge a month later “Oh no, I have lost my Boosey & Hawkes”* which I did understand. I think at one time I actually had four copies. This would become the first of many copies of Strunk & White that have come and gone in my life. A few weeks latter my required English 101 professor insisted we hit the bookstore and buy ‘The Elements of Style.’ We were to treat it like the Holy Grail of grammar, carry it with us at all times, sleep with it, and consider it our eternal faithful lover. I remember, my Freshman year, sitting in the Music Building lounge waiting for my next class when Maryanne came crashing in, with an appropriate amount of chaos, announcing to all “Oh crap, I can’t find my Strunk and White.” Everyone else in the room apparently knew what she was talking about, but I sat with a blank stare.
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