Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

Source of book: borrowed from the library

 

Gary Shteyngart is a somewhat unique author. His books vary wildly in setting, but all seem to have the same kind of protagonist: a man who is fundamentally problematic in some way, but who the author manages to humanize and make oddly sympathetic. 

 

In Super Sad True Love Story, which is dystopian science fiction and a wickedly prescient satire of online life that seems even more relevant than it did when I read it in 2012, has Lenny, a salesman at a life-extension company who will never be able to afford its products, so he deals with his mortality by fucking a much younger Korean-American girl. 

 

In Absurdistan, a sendup of the George W. Bush-era foreign policy - Halliburton, “nation-building” and the other stuff that turned out badly - there is Misha, a Russian oligarch and gangster. 

 

For this book, Lake Success, the protagonist - anti-hero really - is Barry Cohen, a hedge fund manager. And yes, the book is, among other things, a razor-sharp takedown of the whole hedge fund culture, finance sector, and the “finding yourself road trip” genre. Oh, and it also is filled with references to The Great Gatsby and Hemingway. 

 

Shteyngart’s writing is hilarious. But dark as hell. It hurts to laugh, but you do. I am also struck by how incredibly spot-on all three of these books are. Shteyngart is incredibly perceptive, and nails the details, and more importantly the spirit of what he satirizes. 

 

At first read, he seems absurd and over-the-top, but here in the Trump Era, I am not sure that is possible. We live in ridiculous times, with casually narcissistic behavior the norm, not the exception. 

 

In this book, written after Trump’s first election, the threat of that event looms over the characters. 

 

Barry Cohen, as I indicated, is a hedge fund manager. He came from working-class roots, with a mother who died young and a father who kind of checked out after that. With pressure from his father to become “successful,” he overcame both his background, and what I would classify as autism spectrum, to rise in his profession and make a shit-ton of money. 

 

And yes, hedge fund stuff is pretty horrible in about every possible way. And Shteyngart knows it, even if Barry (who is a lot like the author in other ways…) doesn’t really. 

 

As a college student, Barry was in a relationship with Layla, a hippie liberal sort. While Barry got along well with her parents, the relationship fizzled, in no small part because of Barry’s commitment to the jet-set lifestyle and socially questionable investments. 

 

So instead, he ends up marrying Seema, a second-generation Indian immigrant. She is a decade younger, a lawyer, and similarly over-achieving. And she is beautiful. They buy an entire floor in New York City, his company swells to billions in value, and they have a son. 

 

All is not well in paradise, however. Their son, Shiva, is non-verbal and is diagnosed with autism. One of Barry’s key investments goes belly-up, cratering the value of his fund. And now the feds are looking into potential insider trading. 

 

After a disastrous dinner party with their slightly less wealthy neighbors (he is a bestselling author, she is a physician), in which Barry gets drunk and goes off the rails, a fight between Barry and Seema leads to a series of decisions on both of their parts. 

 

Barry runs away. And by that, I mean that he takes a suitcase with a few clothes - and a selection of his prize watch collection (because, autistic), and tries to disappear. And, after he finally tosses his cell phone and credit cards, he mostly does. 

 

With Barry completely AWOL, Seema has an affair with the downstairs neighbor, runs back to her parents, and tries to reinvent her life without Barry. 

 

Barry’s journey takes him first to Layla’s parents, where he finds she is divorced and living in New Mexico; then to Atlanta and a quick visit with a former employee; out to New Mexico via Greyhound; and eventually to California, where he tries to find closure at his father’s grave. And yes, this whole sequence is hilarious and a total sendup of a certain genre. Also, of course Barry never comes to a place of self-awareness. Not really. Even years later. But whatever - this is actually more of a true ending than most Shteyngart protagonists get. 

 

Seema’s story is also wicked satire of the “Eat Pray Love” genre. Of course she doesn’t find lasting love in her fling. And running away from her child doesn’t solve anything any more than Barry’s flight does. 

 

It is no surprise, though, that Seema has to eventually do the expected thing as a woman, and return to her child. Albeit with the same nanny raising him, and her parents chipping in. (Her dad is a great character - probably the one character you can love without reservation.) 

 

Barry gets soaked in the divorce from Seema, but gets off with a slap on the wrist for his financial shenanigans, and manages to become a rich fuck once again. To be fair, he eventually leaves the hedge fund management business, but his attempts to reinvent himself are both futile and hilarious. Again, the whole book could be seen as a satire of the upper-middle-class “self-improvement” narrative. 

 

There are other great satirical moments. The “fitness” obsession. The “magical negro.” The “nerdy people find each other.” Racial politics. Ignorant and uninformed MAGA voters. And yet everyone is humanized in some way. Even Barry, who is mostly a terrible person. He is pretty much the platonic form of the line from Gatsby: 

 

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

 

I laughed through the whole book, but often felt bad about laughing. 

 

While I can’t entirely capture the feel of the book through quotes, there were a number that were too good not to share. 

 

There was a Greyhound counter, but its gate was shuttered and there was no note about when it would reopen. “Socialism,” Barry said aloud, even though he knew that Greyhound Lines was a Dallas-based subsidiary of the Scottish company FirstGroup, and not a service offered by our government. He had drunk twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Karuizawa whiskey that night. He could make mistakes.

 

Come on, we ALL know people like that. “Socialism” being “anything that inconveniences me.” 

 

Barry began to suspect something about our country. That we were, at heart, heavily regimented and militaristic. Despite our cowboy ethos, we were really all under orders, and anything we said or did in protest could be construed as “talking back,” and we could all be thrown off the bus. 

 

Watching right wingers cower and boot-lick and fawn over Trump certainly raises this issue, doesn’t it? 

 

And this one, which is part of a recurring discussion of Seema’s quitting of her legal job. 

 

Marrying an accomplished woman and taking her off the job market was a way to telegraph success among Barry’s peers.

 

The book has SO MANY watches in it - Barry is obsessed for most of the book with expensive watches, but no Rolexes, which he considers gauche and common. His favorite seems to be the Nomos company, but I quickly got lost among the weeks of exactly what all of these were. I googled the first few, and then gave up. I have a Seiko that I am fond of, but it was a gift my brother gave the groomsmen at his wedding nearly 20 years ago, and would cost all of $600 or so now. That’s the fanciest one I have ever owned, and likely will ever own. If it quits, I will probably find one very much like it. 

 

[A joke a long since retired legal colleague made in the court hallway was about the convention of naval aviators who got drunk at a conference. The housekeeper called the front desk and complained that the aviators were all drunk and were running around naked. The front desk asked how she knew it was the aviators. She said, “they all have tiny dicks and huge watches.”] 

 

The satire of the ultra-rich is really hilarious. I have to share this exchange. 

 

“I want him to go to Ethical Heritage for K to six,” Seema said. “It’s such a diverse place.”

“Is that true?” the doctor asked.

“Some of the dads aren’t even hedge-fund guys. They’re just doctors or lawyers.”

 

There is a line in the flashback to when Seema met Barry that is excellent. 

 

A man that rich couldn’t be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of twenty-first-century America? 

 

Spoiler: Yes, yes, it is. Rich people really are that stupid. 

 

I guffawed at this passage too:

 

Seema always felt better about being the child of immigrants when she hung out with Mina, her first-year roommate. The girl had no plans before, during, or after Michigan. She world in graphic web design, which these days was simply a catchall category for anything not involving finance or escorting. Then again, her parents were so rich she didn’t even have to grow up Asian. 

 

I shouldn’t forget the hilarious account of Barry (and the other students) in the creative writing class, and the way their stories were entirely predictable. 

 

“So does that make the stories good?” She positioned her pen for the answer.

“In a sense,” the professor said. “The best fiction is the fiction of self-delusion. It contrasts the banality of our self-made fictions against the hopelessness of the world as it really is.”

 

The jabs at American culture hit home every time too. 

 

Barry hated gun violence, but felt it was a cost priced into living in America. There was a chance - a small but not-insignificant chance, a “three-sigma event,” as the quants in the office would say - that if you lived in our country, someone would shoot you or your family. Japan had earthquakes, Australia brush fires. America had guns and people willing to use them on one another.

 

And this one, about Barry’s father, who eventually goes total MAGA:

 

Barry was a moderate Republican, and his father was a moderate Nazi. They were a moderate family. That’s how it went.

 

That one hit really close to home. I was for years a “moderate Republican,” I guess. I listened to Rush Limbaugh, but didn’t really buy into the worst of it. I left the party when they shut down the government because they wanted to cut millions of people from health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. After that, I was able to detox better from my political upbringing and embrace a more empathetic way of thinking. My dad went the other direction, and “moderate Nazi” isn’t an inaccurate way to put it. 

 

Later in the book, Shteyngart captures the essence of Trumpism in Barry’s dad and his new wife:

 

“I’m so sorry about your son getting autism,” Neta had said. “Did you give him vaccines? I’m sure that’s what did it.” 

“I told him not to get the vaccines!” his father hollered from his perch beneath a plum tree. “I sent him the link about how the Somalian Muslims were spreading it through their doctors in Minnesota.” 

 

Here is another perceptive line, from Barry:

 

“You want to know the first rule of running a billion-dollar-plus hedge fund? Don’t sweat the metrics. We’re not really about the numbers. Do you know what we are? We are a story. Hedge funds are a story about how we’re going to make money. They’re about being smart, gaining access, associating with something great. You. You are smart enough to make others feel smart. You are bringing your investors something far more elusive than a metric. You’re bringing them the story of how great you’ll be together.”

 

Substitute “hedge fund” with politics, and you have Trump’s appeal to MAGA voters. It has nothing to do with reality, or anything measurable that Trump has done or can do for them. It is all about the story, the “you will be great because I am great.” For his base, this is why no amount of disappointment in the results shakes their worship of him. 

 

I have also come to understand that this is at the heart of Evangelicalism too. “You are great because God is great.” It sells a good story, even as it fails to provide any benefit to society. 

 

Although much of the book is humor and satire, there are some dead serious moments, and some that are achingly true and sad and human. One of these is when Seema has the perfectly normal feelings about having a profoundly disabled autistic child. She feels terrible because she feels a deep loss. 

 

Seema knew she had to let go of the idea of a perfect, “normal” child. To find strength. To develop, as one book urged her, a sense of adventure and wonder. But what if she wasn’t qualified to be the parent of an autistic child? What if the fact that her nanny almost lost an eye did not inspire adventure and wonder, but anger, helplessness, and shame? What if she was, in some horrible, selfish way, just not a great person? 

 

Another one of those moments comes between Seema and her parents. It turns out her dad is really good with Shiva, which is both a relief and a source of jealousy for Seema. 

 

“Dad,” Seema said.

“I know,” her father said.

“You’re reinforcing stereotyped behaviors.”

“Shhh,” her father said. “Look at him.”

“Okay, but some of his therapists will object. I’m just saying. We put a lot of time and thought into this. And he’s the one who has to live in the world. It’s fine at home, but how does it look to others?”

Her father picked up Shiva, the child docile and happy in his arms. “I never told you how much of myself I had to give up when I came to this country,” her father said to her.

“That’s different,” Seema said. “Being Indian is not a disability”
“I’m glad you were born in 1987 so that you can say that.”

 

That’s fantastic writing. In general, I think Shteyngart captures the awkwardness of conversations, particularly in families. 

 

Here is another bit that I really liked:

 

His mother-in-law sat on a little stool in front of the fireplace, staring down at a patch of herringbone floor pattern as if she herself had the diagnosis. The hatred she felt for him was comical. Barry had never hated another person as much as she hated him. He probably couldn’t even muster that much dislike. His whole life had been about making friends. 

 

 I hate to end on a downer, but the last line I noted was in the aftermath of the Trump election. Shteyngart captures perfectly what I felt that day. We are now 10 years into the Trump Era, and my kids have had a decade of their lives - their formative years - dominated by this disgusting, evil, destructive man. 

 

He sat on a Union Square Park bench next to some high-school kids wearing all black and eating burritos. They reeked of hormones, onions, and pot. They were white and Asian and a little alternative, maybe goth. All of them had buds in their ears and were both present and not, which seemed like a good place to be on November 9, 2016. Barry imagined them growing older like siblings, being there for one another. Who would do the same for Shiva? Would Barry?

These kids would already be in college by the time Trump left office. If he left office. No matter what they did or whom they loved or who they became, Donald Trump would dominate at least a part of their lives. He would try to drag them down to his level. That’s what he did. 

 

It makes me furious that a decade of my own life has been so dominated by this horrible piece of shit. Why we gave him so much power is unfathomable to me. But it comes down to that ability to sell a story. 

 

“Vote for me and you will be great, because we will together brutalize those people you hate so much already.” 

 

I guess that’s all it takes. I really thought we were better than that, but we really aren’t. We sold our children’s future for a bit of masturbatory brutality against brown people, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people. 

 

Perhaps the most depressing part about this book - and the world we live in - is that the wicked do indeed prosper. There are some consequences for Barry he loses his marriage and becomes a spectator in his son’s life - but there are far fewer consequences for the Trumps of the world. They can destroy and shatter and brutalize, and they will likely go to their graves without ever truly experiencing any consequences for their actions. That sucks. I wish it were different. I hope to do what I can to make it different in the future. 

 

Even with that downer of an ending, this book is really a good read, and is excellent satire of the world we inhabit, even when - particularly when - it sucks. 

***

This blog is written by a real human person, not a plagiarism-fueled AI bullshit generator. 

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This book was our selection for this month for the Literary Lush Book Club. Unfortunately, our meeting got scheduled on Memorial Day weekend, so I couldn’t attend the discussion. 

 

I have read a couple of Ann Patchett books, and enjoyed them, so I was looking forward to this one. 

 

I have to say that because of my expectations, I found I was a bit disappointed by the book. It was her first big hit, and the online information I found about her and her books seemed to indicate that Bel Canto is regarded as her best book. 

 

I do not agree with that assessment. Although I have more of her books to read, I very much think that Commonwealth was the best of the ones I have read, and that Taft is better than this one. 

 

To be clear, this isn’t because Bel Canto is a bad book. I think it is good. Just not as great as the others. I’ll try to explain why I felt that way about it in this post.

 

First, the setup. The book was inspired by the Lima Crisis, where a birthday celebration at a diplomat’s home was captured by a militant terrorist group. As in the book, the women were released, but the others kept hostage for a couple of months, before the Peruvian military forces ended the standoff. A hostage was killed along with the terrorists, and the way things went down resulted both in a massive coverup and a botched investigation into potential human rights violations by the soldiers. 

 

The rough outlines of the story and the real events are pretty similar. However, the framing of the incident is significantly different.

 

In the book, it is Katsumi Hosokawa who sets the events in motion. A wealthy businessman, he has had a lifelong love for opera, and has become obsessed with English soprano Roxanne Coss. 

 

The unnamed South American country the book takes place in wants Hosokawa to build a factory there, and, failing in all other attempts, finally convinces him to come and talk about it by throwing a birthday party for him - and paying Coss to sing at it. 

 

The hostage situation, of course, disrupts the party, and Coss becomes the only woman kept as a hostage - because of her high value. 

 

In the book, then, we have two months of this situation, but the hostages and their captors grow closer as time goes on. Roxanne sings to keep her voice in shape, and this beautiful music is at the heart of the transformation. 

 

As in real life, of course, it ends badly, with all of the captors dead, as well as one of the hostages. (I won’t spoil that part.) 

 

For me, there are a few sources of disappointment in the book. And again, do not mistake my disappointment for an evaluation of the merits of the book. It is well written and interesting and I definitely didn’t hate it. 

 

The first disappointment was one that my wife (also part of the club) noted: the book takes a rather distanced approach to the characters. Throughout the book, we get glimpses into several of the characters, but never enough to feel you really know them. The use of full or surnames accentuates this. The only characters consistently referred to by first names are the youngest of the terror group - teen boys and girls in over their heads. 

 

I found this particularly disappointing in light of my expectations of a Patchett book. Both prior ones were very interior, and gave genuine insight into complex characters. I really like that kind of book, obviously. 

 

Another related disappointment is that the book seemed to rely more on plot than on character. The crazy events were front and center, and tension about how it all would end seemed more important than figuring out the characters beyond the “how do they (predictably) respond to a crisis?” 

 

Finally, although I appreciated some of the themes (see below), it felt a bit heavy-handed, rather than Patchett’s usual light touch and nuanced portrayals. 

 

As for the themes, Patchett appears to have aimed to humanize the rebel forces, and inject some nuance into our view of third world politics. She largely succeeded - and indeed it was some of the Japanese diplomats in the real-life version who worked to uncover the unpleasant facts about the final raid. 

 

Governments do not like to admit that those who fight against them often include women, children, and desperately impoverished. It is easier to just claim they are all violent, evil men who should be exterminated. 

 

The book also brings out that when people are denied democratic solutions, they tend to resort to violence. And yet that violence doesn’t solve anything either, usually serving to entrench the brutal power they were hoping to topple. This is perhaps a great lesson in our own times, about the power of non-violent resistance. 

 

I also found a few of the sub-plots to be interesting, and really wish they had been followed up on more. For example, the young priest who stays behind to minister - a book about his story could have been fascinating in Patchett’s hands. 

Further bonus points to Patchett for getting the music right - that is important to a musician.  

There are a few lines I noted as particularly worth quoting. 

 

The first really hit home for me, because all four of my biological grandparents were missionaries to Catholic countries. I wrote a bit about that here. From my point of view, trying to convert Christians to some other sect of Christianity is…questionable.

 

The older priest (eventually released) finds himself irritated at the Mormons encroaching on his parish. 

 

The gall of sending missionaries into a Catholic country! As if they were savages ready for conversion.

 

That sword cuts both ways. The indigenous peoples weren’t savages before the Catholics came either. 

 

The young priest is more self-aware, and indeed fills a necessary role of spiritual care in the book. I love this bit though:

 

Father Arguedas adopted a “translator optional” policy in regard to confession. If people chose to confess in a language other than Spanish, then he would be happy to sit and listen and assume their sins were filtered through him and washed away by God exactly as they would have been if he had understood what they were saying. 

 

Late in the book, there is some sneaking around to fuck, while certain of the captors agree to look the other way. Without revealing everything, there is an amusing line. 

 

Thank God [character] had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.

 

Finally, I will note a scene when Gen Watanabe (Hosokawa’s multi-lingual translator) wakes up automatically at precisely the right time. I myself have done that many times. Typically, when I have an early start for a hike or a trip, I can find myself wide away right at, say, three or four AM. 

 

So, there are some good moments in the book. Patchett is a skilled writer. I just didn’t find myself drawn into the book like I have her others. 

Memorial Day Thoughts: The Best Way to Honor Our Dead

War, huh, Good God, y'all

What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'

Say it again

War, huh, Woah, woah, lord, lord

What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'

Listen to me

 

War, I despise

'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives

War means tears to thousands of mothers' eyes

When their sons go out to fight and lose their lives

 

War. It ain't nothing but a heartbreaker

War. Friend only to the undertaker, aww!

 

War is the enemy of all mankind

The thought of war blows my mind

 

War has caused unrest, within the younger generation

Induction then destruction

Who wants to die?

Aww!

 

War has shattered many young men's dreams

Made them disabled, bitter and mean

 

Life is much too short and precious to be fighting wars these days

War can't give life, it can only take it away, aww!

 

Peace, love and understanding

Tell me, is there no place for them today?

 

They say we must fight to keep our freedom

But Lord knows there's gotta be a better way, oh!

 

War, huh, Good God, y'all

What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'

Say it again

War, huh, Woah, woah, lord, lord

What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'

 

~ Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong 

 

***

 

Two statements:

1.      War is always evil, destructive, and unnecessary

2.      Sometimes war is unavoidable.

 

Both of these statements are true. 

 

Another way of putting it is what my father taught me, before Faux News and the right wing media-industrial complex ate his brains and heart: 

 

“Never start a fight. But if you have to fight, finish it.”

 

Unfortunately, other people in this world choose to start wars, and sometimes this means you have to defend yourself and your country. 

 

But make no mistake, war itself is evil, and those who start them are engaging in evil behavior. 

 

Ultimately, what is left behind are casualties. Dead people, disabled people, mentally traumatized people, people left behind by dead soldiers and civilian victims of war. There is nothing glorious or heroic about war. It is the friend of the undertaker. Our homeless veteran population is just the most visible reminder of the destruction of war.

 

That said, yes, of course there are individual heroes within the context of war, and there is nothing shameful about defending one’s family and society from those who would violently harm it. 

 

But that doesn’t change the overall result of war, which is destruction and harm.

 

This is the paradox of holidays like Memorial Day. 

 

We honor our dead, but we also understand that the best way to honor them is to work to minimize those who die in war. 

 

***

 

Memorial Day started out (as an official holiday) as “Decoration Day” - a day when flowers would be laid on the graves of Union soldiers, fallen in the Civil War. 

 

Before it was official, however, it was observed at a small scale throughout the country. 

 

Unsurprisingly, the Lost Cause Myth propagandists loudly claimed that these memorials were a Southern Confederate thing, stolen by the Northerners. This was bullshit, like the rest of the mythology, but gained far too much traction because of the loudness of the lie and the political power of those promoting it. 

 

The truth turns out to be very different.

 

Historian David Blight - a real historian, not a pseudo-historian like the David Barton sorts the Trump misadministration promotes - researched the suppressed story of the first Memorial Day. You can read about that here. It was organized by African Americans to honor the victims of a Confederate POW camp, and give them the decent burial they were denied - about 10,000 people attended. Unsurprisingly, this story was mischaracterized by white supremacists, who couldn’t fathom that black people could organize such an event. 

There is actually at least one picture from the event.  

Memorial Day doesn’t exist to celebrate war. It does not exist to stir up jingoistic fervor. It does not exist to encourage the starting of wars. 

 

It exists to honor those killed in a just cause, a war made necessary by others. 

 

Which is why it was first organized by those whose freedom was bought with blood - including their own. 

 

This is why MAGA voters - the neo-Confederate movement of our time - have no business celebrating Memorial Day. The holiday is all about giving their victims a decent burial and the honor that white supremacists deny those who fight against their evil. 

 

***

 

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I believe the best honor we can give to our dead is to work toward a world in which we do not have war dead. 

 

A world of peace and cooperation is a better world, with less death, injury, disability, trauma, and loss. 

 

The United States hasn’t won a war since World War Two. The reason why is primarily that the United States hasn’t participated in a morally defensible war since then. That could be its own post, of course. 

 

Wars that are not morally defensible are not wars that can be won in any meaningful sense. For the same reason, starting a war cannot be morally defensible. 

 

The pattern we see is that psychopathic men convince the population that a war is somehow necessary or good. See: Hitler, but also a procession of United States presidents who have started futile wars since then, either as proxies for the Cold War or as naked seizure of resources. 

 

We have multiplied our dead, while continuing to lose in the long term and increasingly in the short term. 

 

Trump’s adventure in Iran is just the latest - and most catastrophic - in a long line. An unnecessary war, morally indefensible, and completely counterproductive. 

 

And there are already senseless, stupid deaths. 

 

We can and should be better than this. 

 

Today, I honor those who died in unavoidable wars. And I mourn the loss of those who died in stupid, senseless wars they didn’t start, and had no power to stop. 

 

***

 

I’ll end with a couple of lyrics by Don Henley:

 

O' beautiful, for spacious skies

Now those skies are threatening

They're beating plowshares into swords

For this tired old man that we elected king

 

Armchair warriors often fail

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers clean up all details

Since daddy had to lie 

 

(The End of the Innocence)

 

Moon shining down through the palms

Shadows moving on the sand

Somebody whispering the twenty-third psalm

Dusty rifle in his trembling hands

Somebody trying just to stay alive

He got promises to keep

Over the ocean in America

Far away and fast asleep 

 

Weaving down the American highway

Through the litter and the wreckage and the cultural junk

Bloated with entitlement, loaded on propaganda

Now we're driving dazed and drunk

Been down the road to Damascus, the road to Mandalay

Met the ghost of Caesar on the Appian way

He said, "It's hard to stop this binging once you get a taste

But the road to empire is a bloody stupid waste"

Behold the bitten apple, the power of the tools

But all the knowledge in the world is of no use to fools

And it's a long road out of Eden

 

(Long Road Out of Eden)

 

***

 

Some book recommendations for understanding the history of stupid wars the US has chosen to cause:

 

A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer

Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny

 

 

A Lexicon of Forbidden Language

I have been wanting to write this post for years, but other posts kept taking priority. As any reader of this blog will know, I love words. I love language. I love meaning. And I have always been fascinated by the history of words and how meaning evolves over time and place. 

 

This post was also inspired in part because of my upbringing. As a good Fundamentalist kid, “bad” language was strictly forbidden. And I mean strictly. Sure, in plenty of families, you couldn’t say “fuck” without punishment. But in ours, even the most finely minced of oaths was verboten. 

 

We were, for example, not allowed to say “gee” or “golly” or “crap” or “gosh.” Even “darn” got the side eye. 

 

On the one hand, this made for some fun moments, like my brother adopting “bat barf” as his favorite expletive. And also, unlike in other households, we were not permitted to use slurs of any kind, or lob verbal insults. That was a good thing, and something I have retained in my own household.

 

On the other, policing of language all too often becomes a self-righteous, judgmental thing, encouraging one to look down on others who have different rules. 

 

In any case, the reason I wanted to write this post was to take a look at the varieties of forbidden words, where they come from, why they are used, and why they came to be seen as forbidden, or at least transgressive. 

 

In writing this, I will also correct what I see as imprecise use of language in describing forbidden words - cue Inigo Montoya.

 

Interestingly, people in the past were far more careful in their use of terms, so understanding what each means can actually help in understanding the writings of the past, or in different places. 

 

I also intend to talk a bit about how language policing is often a distraction from more important issues, and explain my thoughts on how I use and experience language. 

 

***

 

First, some words. Depending on your era and place in the world, terms can vary a lot. For example, if you, like me, read old literature from the British Isles, you have run across references “the vilest oaths,” or “curses too foul to even utter” and stuff like that. So what is an oath, and what is a curse?

 

In the neighborhoods I grew up in, forbidden language was “cussing,” while a rung or two higher on the socioeconomic ladder would say “swearing.” What do those mean?

 

In point of fact, all of those refer to specific kinds of forbidden language, none of which are typically the ones we would now be referring to when we say “oath,” “curse,” or “swear.” 

 

To assist in understanding this, I want to take a look at each classification of forbidden language, how it was originally used, and how to understand it. 

 

***

 

Profanity

 

Ah yes, another constantly misused word. 

 

Saying “fuck” is not being profane. Rather, it is being vulgar (and possibly obscene), but it is not profanity at all, or even close. 

 

Profanity is using words in a profane way. What does it mean to be profane? 

 

Profane is the opposite of holy or sacred. In the non-pejorative sense, anything that is not sacred is by definition profane. But in the sense we mean in language, to be profane is to use something holy in a debased, irreverent, or vulgar way. 

 

So, using words in a way that goes against their holy meaning is profanity. 

 

In the most common usage these days, profanity is found in using the name of God (or gods) and things connected to them in irreverent ways. 

 

So, obviously, “God!” or “Jesus Christ” or “Holy Mother of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” qualify. 

 

So too do “damn” (profane reference to the place of eternal punishment) and “good heavens” (the polar opposite.) 

 

Add in the “minced” versions - gosh, darn, etc. - and that is about as far as it gets these days. 

 

In the past, people were FAR more creative. 

 

For example, did you know that “zounds” is a profanity, and used to be considered a particularly bad one? It is a contraction of “god’s wounds” - a vulgarization of the crucifixion. Same for “gadzooks” - “god’s hooks” - that is, the nails. 

 

If you go back in time, you will find pretty much every body part or element of Christ’s life and death used as a profanity. 

 

I should also mention the typical British profanity, “bloody.” I have had to explain to a lot of Americans why it is a profanity, and why it isn’t just a fun Britishism. 

 

There are some fun wrinkles to this category too. 

 

For reasons I do not understand, “hell” is considered far worse than “heaven” as a profanity. And yet, “God” is universally considered a profanity while “Satan” isn’t. Back in the day, “Beelzebub!” was one of the naughty ones, after all, so what happened? 

 

One final thought here: I was taught as a kid that using profanity was “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” 

 

That was a lie.

 

As I came to understand as an adult, reading Jewish interpretations of the Decalogue, and thinking more carefully about meaning, this interpretation misses the point. The Ten Commandments (the most familiar version, at least), isn’t about idle words or meaningless language sins. It is about specific behaviors that cause harm. 

 

In the book of Ezekiel, this is most clearly spelled out when the prophet condemns the false prophets who justify greed, theft, murder, and general oppression of the poor and powerless by claiming God justifies that evil. 

 

Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says,’ when the LORD has not spoken. (Chapter 22 - the whole thing is worth reading.) 

 

Enlisting the name of God to justify evil behavior IS what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain. And it is also the favorite sin of white Evangelicals. (On a personal note, my mother, who recoils in horror from “gosh,” constantly claims to speak for Almighty God about how everyone else should live their lives. Which is a significant reason we have no relationship.) 

 

In my opinion, then, whether you use words for the sacred in a profane way is really between you and your god. It is perfectly defensible to avoid those words. But expecting non-religious people to do the same is just being an Asshole for Jesus™. 

 

***

 

Cursing and Oaths

 

Ah, here we come to two interesting cousins of profanity. These two are rarely used these days, but you find them all the time in literature. 

 

A curse is just that: a curse. You are calling down horrible things on someone else. 

 

You can find these throughout the Bible, of course. Starting with The Curse - where God curses humankind for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And proceeding through to the Gospels, where Christ curses the fig tree. 

 

As I said, you find curses all throughout literature. Usually with the thwarted bad guy spewing vile curses at the hero and heroine who thwarted him. 

 

Personally, I find curses to be an artifact of past ways of thinking. And by “past” I mean distant past. Even in Proverbs, you find “Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest.” 

 

So, on the one hand, curses are ineffective against those who do not deserve them. And on the other, doing evil tends to bring its own consequences, and adding a curse won’t change that. 

 

One reason I believe curses are ineffective is that if they worked, Trump would have been dead a decade ago. 

 

In fact, the way curses have worked, is that a person known to be cursed would be shunned. And I am definitely in favor of shunning sociopaths. Or maybe putting them in prison. Let’s start with Trump and Elon. 

 

Related here, of course, is the word “cussing,” the vernacular for “cursing” that has lost its original meaning. 

 

The flip side of a curse is an oath. 

 

Again, these are all over the Bible, including this one from Ruth: “Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 

 

In this case, you wish bad things on yourself if you do not fulfil your promise. 

 

When we talk about “oaths” or “swearing,” this is what we mean. Oaths and curses are often combined with profanity, as defined above. 

 

Both oaths and curses have fallen out of style. Except perhaps for the fun of “creative” curses - the best of which, in my opinion, are Yiddish. I should probably use “may you turn into a blintz and be eaten by a cat!” more often in daily life. 

 

I think one reason that oaths have fallen out of favor is that in general, people believe less in curses, and specific divine retribution. In addition, the people who do retain that belief are at least even odds to also take Christ’s admonition against oaths seriously. Their yes should be yes. (In theory at least.) 

 

This is reflected in the law as well. I technically took an “oath” when I became an attorney:

 

“I, (licensee name) solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability. As an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy, and integrity.”

 

I affirmed, as do most people in my experience. And no, there is no need to put one’s hand on a Bible or a Koran or even a copy of Blackstone. (IYKYK)

 

Ditto for “oaths” in court. These days, the clerk will just say “do you solemnly state that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” No need for a formal oath or a reference to a supreme being. 

 

In real life in our times, I really don’t see much that would qualify as either an oath or a curse. There are insults, and threats, and general expressions of contempt, but not really what the people of the past would have understood as curses or oaths.

 

***

 

Vulgarity

 

Here we come to the words that are usually what people mean by “cussing,” “profanity,” and “swearing.” 

 

What they really are is vulgarity. What is considered vulgar? That’s a good question, isn’t it? 

 

It clearly isn’t about the meaning of the word. If I were to say “feces,” “phallus,” “sexual intercourse,” “vulva,” or any number of other words that have forbidden equivalents, they wouldn’t be considered objectionable. So what makes these ones that way?

 

A clue is in the term. “Vulgar” comes from the Latin term for the common people. So, to be vulgar is to be common, low, part of the rabble. Definitely not sophisticated, aristocratic, etc.

 

Another clue is in the fact that you can find all of our common vulgarities in fairly recognizable form in The Canterbury Tales. And you find them used, not by the aristocratic characters, but by the commoners. Read “The Miller’s Tale,” for example. 

 

This led me to looking into what words are the “bad” ones when it comes to bodily functions and body parts.

 

And guess what? The issue is one hundred percent about classism.

 

Sinclair Lewis memorably put it in Elmer Gantry: “the nine Saxon physiological monosyllables.”

 

Simply put, the “bad” words are the ones the commoners - who spoke Anglo-Saxon (aka “Old English”) used. The “good” words were the ones in French (the Norman conquerors - the aristocracy) or Latin (the language of the clergy.) 

 

So, “shit” is bad because the rabble used it. “Excrement” is fine because it is French. Likewise “poop” (from the child word “popo”.) 

 

“Fuck” is bad. “Coitus” (Latin) is fine. 

 

You can go down the list, and the “bad” ones are really just common, non-forbidden terms from an old language that became “vulgar” because the common people used them. 

 

They also are all physiological, as Lewis points out, and humans have weird taboos surrounding genitals, excrement and its organs, and bodily functions. This combination led to labeling some words as bad. 

 

To me, this is, well, bullshit. It is an artifact of classism, and remains so in our culture. Hence why I am not mourning the change toward more common use of these very old words. 

 

***

 

Slurs

 

As I mentioned, one good thing about my upbringing is that I was taught to never use slurs. 

 

And I don’t mean the obvious racial ones. For that matter, my parents did say the n-word out loud when reading from a book that used it (See: Huckleberry Finn) as accuracy to the original - but with obvious discomfort and the explanation that it was wrong to use the word. 

 

We also learned not to use “retard” or “moron” or ableist slurs. Ditto for gendered slurs. And homophobic ones. I give full props to my parents for this - they were ahead of a lot of their peers - and I have duplicated this in my own family. 

 

The issue here is punching down. It is harming humans, reinforcing stereotypes and systemic injustice, and otherwise causing bad things. So don’t do it.

 

This leads me to an interesting observation. There has been a huge shift in what language is considered forbidden in our culture. This has happened during my lifetime. 

 

On the one hand, the “nine Saxon physiological monosyllables” have become a lot more commonplace. This means Fundamentalists have their panties in a constant state of wad simply walking around in our world. But ultimately, what it really indicates is that sex and bodies and bodily functions are becoming less taboo and less forbidden. And also that these particular words no longer serve as an indication of social class. 

 

On the other hand, using slurs has (mostly) become more forbidden. I know that the MAGA crowd is eager to bring back the n-word and other racial slurs, but even this is a reaction to a clear cultural shift.

 

Just as one example, my late great-uncle, who was a good, decent man, was of an age. And in that age, it was fine to call Brazil nuts “n-----r” nuts. His children would never have used that term. My generation find it puzzling that anyone ever said that, because by the time we came around, it was considered inappropriate, and only senile old people forgot and used the term. 

 

I have found some terms have changed too since my childhood, generally as a response to marginalized groups demanding change. Even some longstanding sports team names are finally changing. 

 

This is a good thing, in my opinion. It reflects what I think is a great life adage, which is to never punch down. We should take into account the effect our words have on those with less power than ourselves. 

 

***

 

Note that I haven’t made a definitive statement as to the value of forbidden words, except for my condemnation of the use of slurs. 

 

With the exception of slurs, which are harmful in any culture, the rest are culturally-based taboos, not moral absolutes. 

 

The question of what language is profane depends on religious beliefs. Because power in the Western world has largely been held by purported Christians, our common profanities are all directed in the direction of that power. 

 

In another world, “By Grabthar’s Hammer, you shall be avenged!” would be the profanity (and oath) of choice, perhaps. 

 

Had world events gone differently, perhaps we would be using “scheisse” instead. (Hey, common language root!) 

 

I am pretty sure, however, that fart jokes would be popular in any timeline. 

 

***

 

I know this post is a bit different from my usual faire, but I had fun writing it. And if you didn’t like it, I am all out of fucks for today.