Content area
Full Text
A Short History of Rudeness: Manners, Morals, and Misbehavior in Modern America. Mark Caldwell. New York: Picador, 1999. 274 pp.
The idea of etiquette makes me recoil: vapid social scripts, shorthanding our communication into meaningless niceties as we pass each other in the hallways of our lives. Or rules and accoutrements surrounding formal dinners to indicate one's social position-plates, forks, linen napkins. (Did you know there is a right way to iron linen napkins? So says my grandmother, who has a college degree in home economics.) Perhaps my worst association with manners is the way they encourage women to be self deprecating and small. We learn early to cross our legs and be good little girls.
Far from recoiling, Mark Caldwell delves into the history of manners, their intricacies, contradictions, and continuing usefulness at this millennial moment. A Short History of Rudeness advocates a more balanced understanding of manners in America, this country where people decry the decimation of morals on one hand, yet lead the world in vulgarity and self indulgence on the other. Caldwell intervenes in this polarization, suggesting such Hegelian struggle is a...