An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.

Janet Maslin on Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen’s new novel, Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th:

This is not a matter of isolated typographical errors. It is a serious case for the comma police, since the book’s war on punctuation is almost as heated as the air assaults it describes. “One would have to be dead, very stupid Fuchida thought,” the book says about the fighter pilot Mitsuo Fuchida, “not to realize they were sallying forth to war.” Evidence notwithstanding, the authors do not mean to insult the fighter pilot’s intelligence — or, presumably, the reader’s.

(Thanks to Nat Irons.)

★ Thursday, 24 May 2007