b o o kr e v i e w Buying Into the Art of Car Buying By Brendan Gardiner There are several ways to go about securing an auto for private use. You can buy something brand new and know you are the first to drive it. The price can be prohibitive, but often there will be a warranty. You can buy a used car, which can be more affordable but which introduces a higher set of risks. Then there is leasing. No one I know leases. I bought a book recently called The Car Buyer’s Art, which I would like to review. It is published by Book Express. Mostly the information provided is good, but the writing itself is very, very bad. Darrell Parrish, who wrote it, was in terrible need of an editor. He used to be a car salesman, and that is how he knows so much about the business. As good as he was at that, I do not think he had any writing experience before putting what he knew into a book. But then, maybe this Parrish is the kind of guy who is very touchy when you offer an opinion to him. Maybe someone at Book Express did try to edit the book, but Parrish just said, “Hmm. I see what you’re trying to do here, making the writing good and all, but I like what I wrote a little better.” With some people there is just no use in discussing perfectly inoffensive topics like grammar and clear expression. Of course, there are some subjects that are guaranteed to agitate even the least touchy people. I told a friend of mine the other day that he reminded me of T.V.'s Madam. He shot back angrily, "Who does?" (intoned like "WHO does!” very accusingly). And I think that is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable response to that question. In casual parlance, a guy will try to keep his cool, deflecting a mock insult as the gamesmanship he knows it to be. No one wants to be known as an easy mark -- humorless and thin-skinned. So we laugh off put-downs delivered with apparent sincerity because we can afford the gamble. But if there's even a 1% chance that we actually do bring T.V.'s Madam to mind in other people, we want to know about it. It is probably the one case in the insult game where a guy would not be faulted for completely losing his cool. No one looks foolish or desperate demanding "Who does?" -- because the answer is one of the most important he will ever get. The same holds true for people when you tell them they smell like poo. At the most basic level of personal maintenance and public presentation is the wish to avoid smelling like poo. At times we manage our lives not so well as at others, and as much as we try to mask this, we do reveal ourselves to the world through clues such as a wrinkled shirt or a neglected cowlick. But when we fail to avoid smelling like poo, the world knows we have done a bad, bad job getting the most important job done. The slightest suggestion of failure in this regard throws people into panic. It is a pleasure to observe this panic for a few seconds, but then you have to tell them the truth, assuming you were joking. We owned an Irish setter when I was a kid. Before she got very old the worst she smelled like was a wet dog. We named her Penny, though we sometimes called her Sandy, the name given her by the old man who was her original owner. When we used the old name her ears would perk, her eyes taking on an urgent look, and she would lunge about looking for him. Then we would feel very bad and pet her to make her forget the old man. The guilt afterwards was horrible, as was the certainty that we would do it again sometime, in the same way that a kid puts a 9-volt battery to his tongue over and over in spite of himself. On the twin topics of guilt and powerlessness, there's something about the smell of Frito's on another's breath that makes you either desire some for yourself or pitches you fullforce into a murderous rage. I do not know why this should be so, but it is. I would claim it as my defense in a capital case, whether or not the victim had been eating any Frito’s. I think some of the braver jurors would reflect on the times they wanted to kill co-workers or family for the same reason. I believe this would result in at least a hung jury, if not an acquittal. In truth, such an obvious open-and-shut case should never get as far as that, not when there are greater matters that deserve the court’s attention. If there is one thing I cannot tolerate, besides offensive odors, it is wasted time. As an example, people should really decide who will call whom should a phone call be disconnected. Many man-hours are wasted in mutual re-dialing, and mutual pausing, and then mutual resumption of the re-dialing, when there are still so many other things that need doing. Also, people should avoid yelling vagaries or cursing when they injure themselves. A pointed, specific exclamation such as "My whole right hand!" would eliminate time-wasting queries into the where-abouts of the injury, speeding up triage and moving the recovery date that much closer. As far as the book goes, it is hard to give specific examples of the poor writing. It is more a general sense you get as you read. You start to notice after a while how the guy relies heavily on exclamation points and underlining and italics to get his points across. It wears on you to the point of distraction. However, the book does have a nice, neutral smell to it, kind of like water chestnuts, which I never realized smelled.   Brendan Gardiner is currently on assignment.