Newt Gingrich's grammar skills (or possible lack thereof)

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his co-author, William Forstchen, have just released their latest novel, Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th. As this review in yesterday's New York Times notes, the editors of Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Forstchen's book could have taken more of a hands-on approach. Try to get your head around this passage from the book:

James nodded his thanks, opened the wax paper and looked a bit suspiciously at the offering, it looked to be a day or two old and suddenly he had a real longing for the faculty dining room on campus, always a good selection of Western and Asian food to choose from, darn good conversations to be found, and here he now sat with a disheveled captain who, with the added realization, due to the direction of the wind, was in serious need of a good shower.

Here's another head-scratching passage:

The boys had money in their pockets to burn and fresh in from the West Coast the obligatory photos with hula girls, sentimental silk pillows for moms and girlfriends, and ridiculous-printed shirts had sold like crazy.

I don't mean to say that authors should slavishly follow grammatical rules. After all, some great writers break the rules to yield unique and effective prose. For example, Cormac McCarthy uses occasional sentence fragments to burn images into the reader's mind.

But, as a member of an e-mail listserv to which I subscribe remarked, Pearl Harbor reads as if it were written by "Hemingway with head trauma."

Today's multiple choice quiz

Today, I received the following note:

Just as a reminder that as of May 1, 2007 the residence of [name of apartment complex] are no longer aloud to park in the parking lot to the north of the apartment building. The ICI parking lot.

Thank You

The foregoing was written by--

(a) My eight-year-old niece;
(b) Borat; or
(c) The temporary property manager of our apartment complex.

If you guessed (c), then you are (unfortunately) correct. Is the Hoosier State's brain drain problem worse than we estimated?