Crankiness is all the rave

I love letters to the editor. They are the first things I read most mornings. I like starting my day by finding out which stories have riled readers and which have hit home. It prepares me for the rigors of teaching news writing and copy editing to college students. With that in mind, I had to share a wonderful letter published in Sunday's edition of The New York Times Book Review and written by Ian Mackenzie of Brooklyn.

Here's a sampling:

To the editor:

Never have I finished an outright rave — and a front-page one at that — less convinced of a novel’s merits than I was at the end of Liesl Schillinger’s review of Charles Bock’s “Beautiful Children” (Feb. 3). It is only the latest example in a worrisome trend of slathering praise upon the prose of a certain genus of writer — Marisha Pessl comes to mind — who operates in a constant, hysterical pitch, at the expense of precision, lucidity and memorable elegance ....

Mackenzie goes on to discuss commas, nouns and metaphors, as well as the definitions of brimstone and sulfur. Who knew they were synonyms? This is the stuff of dreams for cranks like me.

Read the entire letter.

To the critic:

When I retire, I'd like you to take over this blog. Thank you for caring about the language I love.

Sincerely,

The Crank