Saturday, August 18, 2012

‘Ascent of the A-Word:’ The Beauty of the Indispensable Vulgarity


Aug 17, 2012 - The Book Beast

The word asshole has become the go-to term for jerks when the word jerk just isn’t enough. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg gives the A-word the biography it so richly deserves.

rise-of-the-asshole-jones
John Molloy / Getty Images

We are taught that there is no such thing as a Theory of Everything, and that we should beware of anyone nutty enough to claim that you can reduce reality to its gist with one handy explanation-philosophy-catchphrase. But now comes Geoffrey Nunberg with Ascent of the A-Word, a marvelous book that explains so much so well that it’s tempting, really really tempting, to claim that Nunberg has explained everything.

“When Barbara Walters announced the 2011 version of her annual list of the 10 Most Fascinating People,” Nunberg writes, “it was headed by Steve Jobs and included Donald Trump, Simon Cowell, Herman Cain, and the Kardashians, along with Derek Jeter, Katy Perry, Amanda Knox, Pippa Middleton, and the actors who plays the two gay guys on Modern Family. I make that five out of 10 who are assholes.”
Oh, yes, and anyone anywhere who has ever indignantly, pompously posed the question: Do you know who I am?

Nunberg’s not so much concerned with specific individuals as he is with a condition, a way of being and behaving, and how we react to it. His subtitle puts it nicely: “Assholism, the First Sixty Years.”
A noted linguist and former chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, Nunberg examines the word’s history (born in World War II, entered print for the first time in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead), the words it supplanted (cad, bounder, heel), and the very special place it occupies in the culture. An impolite vulgarism that has rudely elbowed its way into polite discourse without losing its air of impoliteness, asshole fills a gap. Your mother might not use the word, might frown if you do, but if someone cuts her off in traffic and you call that driver an asshole, chances are she’s not going to call you out.
Full story at The Daily Beast

No comments: