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Lynne Truss is cranky and middleaged, which are two somethings she and I
have in common. I first made her acquaintance in a slim volume called
Eats,
Shoots & Leaves, a wonderfully articulate dissertation on
the history and function of punctuation and a rant on all the world's
abusers of same. Now she's back, with another slim volume on another
rant-worthy topic: the decline of civility in the modern world.
Subtitled "The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World, or Six Reasons
to Stay Home and Bolt the Door", her new book decries our more
casual and far less civil society. Her efforts are likely to be in
vain, I fear. But if we pause for even a second to consider what
we've lost, maybe it will have been worth it. Besides, when the
author is this witty and bright, how can she not be worth at least a
listen?
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