Knowbodies

In a review of some recent books on English usage, Joan Acocella provides a useful survey of the descriptivist vs. prescriptivist battles. She omits two of my favorite installments, however; Nicholson Baker's "Leading with the Grumper"(1994), and David Foster Wallace's Tense Present (2001).
Among the pleasures in Acocella's review is this line about Kingsley Amis: Amis’s father was a clerk in a mustard-manufacturing firm, so his pleasure in spotting arrivistes is understandable.