Karen Elizabeth Gordon - Looking back to the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, but also casting sidelong glances at metafictional sugardaddies like Queneau, Nabokov, Cortazar, Gass, and Milorad Pavic, The Red Shoes is a Rabelaisian romp through the language of sensuality

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Red Shoes and Other Tattered Tales, Dalkey Archive Press, 1996.




Best known for her Gothic language handbooks (reissued recently as The New Well-Tempered Sentence and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire), Karen Elizabeth Gordon here turns her extraordinary talents to fiction, and the result is as unconventional as her seductive grammar dramas.
The Red Shoes consists of tatters of a half-dozen tales (“The Glass Shoe,” “The Gingerbread Variations,” “The Little Match Girl,” “Don Juan Is a Woman,” and the title story, among others) sewn together into a novel by two seamstresses. “Fabric, fabrication―such is the stuff of these lost chronicles come together here,” Gordon writes in her introduction. “Swinging their hatboxes, swaying their hips, chapters with torn slips wander in on high heels and blistered feet.”
Looking back to the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, but also casting sidelong glances at metafictional sugardaddies like Queneau, Nabokov, Cortazar, Gass, and Milorad Pavic, The Red Shoes is a Rabelaisian romp through the language of sensuality.




"Gordon's isn't the only postmodernist pastiche parading down the pike... but in the company of the metafictional big boys, Gordon can hold her own." -- Columbus Dispatch


"One of the most innovative and enchanting books of recent time.... [Gordon] has constructed a novel in dictionary form in which ordinary words reveal secret worlds that cling passionately to one another in a merry, whirling, lexical dance." -- Thomas Christensen




"[The Red Shoes] make[s] the mundane seem magical and transform[s] our earthbound language into a joy toy of infinite possibility.... The voice behind the dictionary is a wonderful creation--a nut in shining amour who comes at the world with both a resolutely girlish imagination and the lusty wisdom of the Wife of Bath. The most enjoyable aspect of The Red Shoes is its all-round lively writing." -- Washington Post




Is a dress the same dress if you change the buttons, make the cuffs into a collar and slash the hem from ankle to thigh? A similar question could be asked of Gordon (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire). She has taken her 1989 Intimate Apparel: A Dictionary of the Senses and refashioned it, using many of the same text selections that appeared in the previous book. This new version may do little more than move it from the reference section where, as Gordon teases in her new afterword, "no one I know ever goes looking for diversion, delight, and debauchery," to fiction. It might be better shelved with poetry, since it seethes with alliteration and interior rhyme. It also demands more attention than readers who prefer a linear narrative may be willing to give in order to reap the full power of Gordon's wordplay and layered story lines. Told in dictionary form, with alphabetical sections ranging from absinthe to zipper, the book needs to be read not just straight through, but by weaving back and forth among footnotes, references and related characters and definitions. Gordon employs a multitude of characters and fairy-tale references, but it's not really a book about Yolanta or the Little Match Girl as much as it is a book about loving language. As in her earlier books, the imagery is sensual ("She sank her slight buttocks onto the bench and wiggled into her new kid gloves"). Gordon's use of language can almost be too lush and unconventional, but that is also the charm of this unusual, fascinating and sexy literary experiment. - Publishers Weekly





Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed, Pantheon, 1993.
read it here


Playful, practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit & black humor. Black-&-white illustrations throughout.




Can you explain what a subordinate clause is? Can you define a verbal? For those of us who somehow missed that series of grammar lessons in our formal schooling, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Gordon is the ideal resource for catching up: it entertains as it educates in its quirky, gothic, bizarre, and distinctly adult way. Gordon has a flair for both language and teaching, and her clear, accessible, and precise explanations of grammar are complemented by scores of weird examples and arresting visuals. She uses angels, vampires, gargoyles, bats, and skeletons to illustrate, both literally and figuratively, the parts of speech and make the potentially difficult and boring subject of grammar come alive on the page and in the reader's mind.
In this engaging book, Gordon explains just about everything you ever wanted to know about the grammar of the English language: sentence structure; nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions; transitive and intransitive verbs; infinitive, participles, and gerunds; subject-verb agreement; phrases and clauses; and fragments and run-ons. Gordon embellishes each of her explanations with many playful sentences that demonstrate her penchant for the strange. A few examples can provide a taste of Gordon's humor in The Deluxe Transitive Vampire:

The baby vampire hurled his bottle at his nanny and screamed for type O instead. (p. 22)

After the podiatrist had sanded her calluses, she clubbed him with her old soft shoe. (p. 49)

The Lilliputian who was dressed in yellow silk sang to her flea in its cage. (p. 144)

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire demystifies grammar in a unique way, and is recommended for any educator in search of a good book on the subject. Gordon's élan as a teacher and a grammarian makes The Deluxe Transitive Vampire a handbook that is fun to curl up with for a crash course on nonrestrictive clauses and the passive voice, as well as a resource on grammar that will serve as a handy reference for years to come. -  E.J.M. http://hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-66-issue-3/herbooknote/the-deluxe-transitive-vampire_247


Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, Mariner Books; Reprint ed., 2003.                  
read it at Google Books

At long last, The New Well-Tempered Sentence rescues punctuation from the perils of boredom, with wholly original explanations of the rules of punctuation, whimsical graphics, and utterly unforgettable characters (yes, characters in a grammar book). Gordon teaches you clearly and simply where to place a comma and how to use an apostrophe. Gradually, as you master the elusive slashes, dots, and dashes that give expression to our most perplexing thoughts, you will find yourself in the grip of a bizarre and bemusing comedy of manners. Witty, saucy, and utterly unforgettable, The New Well-Tempered Sentence is a must-have for anyone who has ever despaired of opening a punctuation handbook but whose sentences despair without one.

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon, Mariner Books; Reprint ed., 2003.
read it at Google Books


With her signature cache of illustrations and flamboyantly gothic examples, Karen Elizabeth Gordon, "who has achieved cult status with her whimsical references, defines an array of daffy, delicious words" (Library Journal). In The Disheveled Dictionary Gordon conjures a world of words, their definitions and myriad uses, and along the way invokes favorite characters from earlier books. Gordon's eccentric wit and unique insights take readers on a delightful romp through the dictionary that will expand their vocabularies and exhilarate their minds. Along the way she celebrates not only the obscure but also our most beloved and basic words. The Disheveled Dictionary is a treat for anyone who loves language -- its sound, its sensuality, its ability to surprise and delight.