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“Checkout” Girl Bags a Bestseller

Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur.

On the Web: ‘Checkout’ Girl Cashes In With Best-Selling Memoir

Anna Sam, a cashier in France, has become a literary sensation and in the process has parlayed her experiences in the supermarket into a humorous memoir, whose English title is Checkout: A Life on the Tills.

Sam first began writing about her experiences in a blog, Cassiere No Futur, where she provided a daily account of the goings-on in the world of a cashier. The blog took off and soon attracted a large readership, followed by substantial media attention. Not long after, publishing houses were offering her book contracts.

The most salient fact about her blogging experience, from my point of view as a teacher, is not that she landed a book contract, but that she found her work ungratifying until she began to write about it. Her blogging in a sense revealed her world to herself as well as to her readers and thus validates what I’ve read in countless books on writing: You never really know anything until you write about it.

The store is packed, shoppers rush to and fro — their grocery carts squeak and rattle. A voice over the intercom barks out the latest sales promotions over a backdrop of jangling Muzak. The general brouhaha intensifies. The store is approaching its maximum sound threshold. The squalling of a brat tips it over the edge, opening the passageway to this other dimension.

Listen to some French “Checkout” Girl music.

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William Strunk and the Original Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.

William Strunk, Jr. (1869 – 1946) was Professor of English at Cornell University. One of his many students was E.B. White, the famous children’s author, who said about Strunk: “At the close of the World War, when I was a student at Cornell, I took a course called English 8. My professor was William Strunk Jr. A textbook required for the course was a slim volume called The Elements of Style, whose author was the professor himself. The year was 1919. The book was known on the campus in those days as ‘the little book,’ with the stress on the word ‘little.’ It had been privately printed by the author.” White also wrote of his former professor, “He was a memorable man, friendly and funny.”

The Elements of Style is the classic reference text for clear writing and is generally considered a must-have for any student or writer. In this most revered of writing books, Strunk identifies the necessary qualities of proper American English style; and he does it all with wit and grace. Compelling and timeless, this book is simply the best of its kind. A masterpiece in the art of clear and concise writing, and an exemplar of the principles it explains.

This book, printed as a private edition in 1918 for the use of his students, became a classic on the local campus, known as “the little book”, and its successive editions have since sold over ten million copies. In his first edition, Strunk describes the book as follows: “It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention … on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated.”