Book Report As Promised

I finished Lynne Truss's book, Talk to the Hand (The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door). She is such an entertaining writer. In the introduction, Truss warns the reader that the book is not a handbook to good manners. In fact, the bibliography boasts a generous list of more than 20 references on manners, etiquette, civility, class and social order which suggests that the book has been written -- many in fact.

Since Truss is a British columnist, I was prepared to tolerate countless references to barbaric North Americans when comparing right & wrong ways to behave in public. I was sure I would endure many stereotypical references to fine English manners throughout the 200-page novel. You can guess that I was pleasantly surprised then, when Truss all but blamed Britain's stiff upper lip for tolerating, if not condoning, the continued social misconduct of its citizens. In fact, she offers a sample of dialogue overhead in a French shop as an example of the ideal formal exchange between customer and customer service. Imagine, the French teaching the rest of us how to be polite!

The ongoing argument seems to be that manners, when used as an indicator of class will, in turn, promote snobbery and condescension. Some suggest that this breeds contempt and perpetuates discrimination and class struggle. Following this thinking, I can only assume that some genius decided it would be easier to dumb-down manners than to break down barriers. I wish that person had consulted my grandmother first. She would have told them to include etiquette in public school curriculum to collectively raise our expectations rather than lower them.

Truss, noted as being the "queen of zero tolerance," helps us understand why such an approach would not be successful in its observance to manners. Philosopher Julian Baggini states that we have "failed to distinguish between pure etiquette, which is simply a matter of arbitrary social rules designed mainly to distinguish between insiders and outsiders; and what might grandly be called quotidian ethics: the morality of our small, everyday interactions with other people." Arbitrary social rules, it has been argued, reasons that "good manners" means "our manners" and therein lies the rub. Let me illustrate using two real-life examples:

1. If you join my family for dinner, the expectation is that you chew with your mouth closed -- whether you do or not, the expectation exists and is enforced by nagging and cool stares. Serving dishes and tools will be provided to help guests dress their plates without risk of cross-contamination OR plates will be dressed in the kitchen and presented to guests at the table. Double-dipping is strictly forbidden and punished by an immediate ejection from the table -- this may sound harsh but we only get the flu once every 10 years or so and I can't help but think it's due, in no small part, to this rule. Each individual will return his/her dinnerware to the kitchen to assist cleanup -- a member of the family will extend his/her guest this courtesy as appropriate.
2. If you join another unnamed family (as I have), you may find yourself eating a meal as people sing, leave the table to dance or watch TV, and even to hoist half of him/herself onto the table for no apparent reason. In this particular household, sitting is considered optional with standing, leaning or any combination thereof, equally acceptable. Condiments are served largely in squeeze bottles encrusted with the dry remains of what appears to be yesterday's offerings. The meal is mercilessly, though unfortunately, concluded with haste by the sounding of a monstrous belch fueled by gulps of air ingested during noisy, open-mouthed voraciousness. The race is to the sofa rather than to the kitchen. The last man sitting is responsible for cleaning the table in a perverse, and reverse, variation of musical chairs.

Two very different meals, both acceptable in their own environment. While you cannot sing at my dinner table, it is a welcome addition to the meals of others. Belching is largely frowned upon at my dinner table, though I have friends who consider this to be one of the highest compliments a guest can offer at the conclusion of a meal. Blowing your nose with one of my linen napkins may get you kicked off my guest list, while another hostess may offer her napkin to a needy guest at the conclusion of his/her sneeze. It's arbitrary. Do you see what I mean?

Rather than serving as a guide to manners, Truss focuses on the "six areas in which our dealings with strangers seem to be getting more unpleasant an inhuman, day by day."

In Chapter One, Truss expresses her longing for social exchanges that involve the words "please," "thank you," "excuse me," and "sorry." On page 61, she says, "Politeness is a signal of readiness to meet someone half-way...and that is why it's so frightening to contemplate losing it. Suddenly, the world seems both alien and threatening -- and all because someone's mother never taught him to say, "Excuse Me" or "Please." Elsewhere in the chapter she describes, in laugh-out-loud fashion, how we feel when we extend a courtesy that is not rewarded with a reciprocal action and/or word of "thanks." Hilarious.

Chapter Two provides a humorous analysis of the newly reconstructed (or is that deconstructed?) customer service industry. In fact, last night I received a call on the telephone. When I picked it up, a recorded voice said to me, "Please hold for an important message, a customer service representative will be with you in a moment." And then it repeated continuously as my potatoes boiled over and my roast dried out in the oven. I hung up after a minute or two because, contrary to the opinion of my caller, I have other things to do besides hold for a caller who is too busy to talk to me. Truss talks about how consumers have become responsible for navigating their way through menus by phone and computer that are less-than effective and which, often, misdirect us in the end to less-helpful consumer representatives. "Can you transfer me to that department?" you ask. "No," comes the dreaded reply, "you'll have to hang up and call this number." I secretly envision the call coming in to the gent in the next cubicle. It makes me nuts!

In Chapter Three, Truss speculates that we were "better off before the term 'personal space' escaped from sociology and got mixed up with popular ideas of entitlement." She uses the examples of private phone calls in public, iPods, and lovers rolling around in a passionate embrace in the long, green grasses of the local park. A friend of mine once confessed that some Saturdays she doesn't even change out of her pyjamas. She dashes to the car in her slippers and pyjamas and visits the local drive-through for breakfast or lunch. Her car is her bubble. I'd personally be too afraid that my bubble would malfunction or run out of gas and force me to duck-walk in ditches back home because of my poor choice of wardrobe. The problem we face in Chapter Three is the old adage of being between the Rock (the offending behaviour) and the Hard Place (offending behaviour required to address the offending behaviour). Is it rude to correct rude behaviour? These days it's not just rude, it's dangerous.

The Universal Eff-Off Reflex is addressed in Chapter Four of the book. This is where Truss describes the "British-US divide" in a conversation she had with a New Yorker on the offensive behaviour of an acquaintance. Using the traditional English reserve, Truss tolerated numerous insulting remarks from a tiresome acquaintance. The New Yorker directed her to take the offender aside and say, "...cut it out, you're being an Effing jerk, and it's not funny." The "Eff-Off reflex" Truss suggests, is relatively new to manners and largely results from us being driven to directness. Its overuse has caused it to become less-offensive than it once was, though I'm not certain that's a matter to celebrate.

In Chapter Five, Truss talks about Booing the Judges and gives the example of a recent heavyweight fight in London. As the announcer pointed out celebrities Paul Simon and Michael Douglas in attendance, the fans booed. They booed! Only Jack Nicholson and Keith Richards received warm applause. What yardstick were they using to measure worth? Why would they measure worth to begin with at a blood-sport? Booing the Judges makes me think first and foremost of bad-boy John McEnroe whose antics served as entertainment for global sports enthusiasts. His apparent disregard for rules and authority helped boost the popularity of what was long considered to be a stuffy old tennis match. After all, everybody watches if they think a fight will break out!

Finally, Truss wraps her book up in Chapter Six -- Someone Else Will Clean it Up. Here she talks about our complete lack of accountability. Truss quotes doctor-writer Theodore Dalrymple who wrote, "When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behaviour, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics or the subjunctives of French verbs." Self-deception is a dangerous liberator of accountability. I recall reading references for parents that cautioned me against confusing "bad behaviour" with "bad children." As argued in chapter six, I think that if a kid keeps making "bad choices" doesn't the risk increase for him to become a rotten apple in the barrel of society? How many bad things does a kid have to do before his parents hand him over to a therapist? And what if, for Pete's sake, it's all due to bad-parenting? Wouldn't that be like an admission of guilt?

All in all, the book is both entertaining and thought provoking. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion and breezed through its 200-pages within a couple of days. It made me consider all of the models of behaviour that my children are exposed to through the course of a day -- teachers, TV shows, literature, Internet, video games, family and friends.

When I went to school, I didn't know any of my teachers' first names and I most certainly never addressed them in that way. (My kids call their gym teacher Mr. T and, no, that's not his name. It's Thomson. It's not even difficult to pronounce. Why Mr. T?) The Internet was a distant dream to a scant few and TV didn't show kissing or profanity. PG meant parental guidance which didn't also mean an uncomfortable explanation to a vague (but not vague enough) reference to a sex act. If you wanted to play a video game you had to choose between PONG and PacMan and my friends' parents were all addressed as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So.

Today I compete with role models like Bart Simpson, Stewie Griffin and Harry Potter (who, incidentally, doesn't know his own limitations or respect the boundaries established by his professors at Hogwarts) though admittedly, the last example is the least threatening. I know that for every 30-minutes they spend with a smart-alec, they need 30-minutes of re-training or de-programming (depending on the way you look at it).

At this moment, I am in the fortunate position of being able to supervise my children's after-school activities and re-direct as necessary. I am, right now, also in the fortunate position of being able to spend the time I need with them to manage the re-training/de-programming of which I speak. This is a powerful and priveleged position because, I believe now more than ever, that the diminishing role of the family is a chief cause of many of these effects. We rely on our teachers and TVs to raise our children and instill our values without any real investment of our time. With both parents working, single parents stretched twice as thin, and children self-studying social skills, is it any surprise that our outcomes are flawed? No, it certainly is not.

I urge you, buy the book. If for no other reason, you can hand it to your kid and ask them to read it when they get home from school...right after the Simpsons.