I liked Truss' first book about grammar "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" which was hilarious. So when I saw this book at the bookstore selling for a discounted price, I snatched it up. It's a plea to show some consideration to others, especially in certain areas: (1) "Was That So Hard to Say?" ("thank you"); (2) "Why am I the One Doing This?" (e.g., punching doggedly through the automated switchboard); (3) "My Bubble, My Rules" (forcing others to listen to a private conversation on a mobile phone); (4) "The Universal Eff-Off Reflex" (outrage when antisocial behavior is pointed out); (5) "Booing the Judges" (active disrespect for the umpire, the older person, anyone in authority); and (6) "Someone Else Will Clean It Up" (e.g., rubbish tossed out the car window).

It was a disappointment, though. For one thing, this book required more knowledge of British culture than the first book. Also, it didn't have the wit of the first book, and Lynne frequently wandered off-topic in this one. Who among us hasn't noticed that the twenty-first century human seems to have become more insulated, self-involved and less mindful of others? I had hoped that Truss would offer some humorous observations on this subject, along with a few tongue-in-cheek ways to deal, and possibly a bit of insight or thought as to why things are the way they are.

"Talk to the Hand" brings to the forefront how impersonal, impolite and intolerrant we've all become. But there's not much point in raising awareness about something which we're already aware.

Half the time she wasn't talking about manners or rudeness at all, instead making long social commentaries that were both boring and irrelevant. Towards the very end, she says (quite rightly): "We all knew from the very start that this book would end up as a moral homily." She goes on to say that rudeness is a moral issue, and she has a point. But while I have nothing against a discussion about morality, I thought the book would be a funny commentary about rudeness. It wasn't. Truss is echoing Miss Manners, even though she doesn't give credit.

The only redeeming parts of this book were the anecdotes about rude behavior. Those were interesting and amusing and she should have used more of them to spice up the book and prop up whatever argument she was trying to make (if indeed she was trying to make one; I could never be sure).


More of Purplycookie’s Reviews @: http://www.goodreads.com/purplycookie


Book Details:

Title Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door
Author Lynn Truss
Reviewed By Purplycookie

Very enjoyable little book on manners and cultural norms in a humorous way.

The book was funny, and really made me think about how far common courteous has sunk. It was good, with lots of food for thought.

Truss' goal in doing this book is laudable - to address what's become an epidemic of incivility, ill-manners and outright rude behavior, particularly in Britain and America. Ultimately she fails, and she fails for a very simple reason: Truss' breaking-point frustration with the phenomenon places her at odds with her own chosen ideology.

Early in the book she calls herself a "liberal" - and that designation is nearly as big a peeve for me as is misuse of the apostrophe. I harbor this odd notion that the word "liberal," being drawn from the same root as "liberty," ought to denote "an advocate of liberty," not an advocate of omnipotent statism, which is the worldview they've adopted and which... is liberty's polar opposite. As philosopher David Kelly once put it, "If the people who are calling themselves 'liberal' are finished with the word, we'd like it back." But that's a tangential gripe so I'll push it aside for now.

However, her self-identification of ideological type is both ironic and instructive. The demand that we be "tolerant" of behavior that specifically should not be tolerated, is a direct consequence of the skeptical / relativist / subjectivist axis in philosophy, which is what people who call themselves "liberal" implicitly support. "The rules do not apply to me" is a consequence of the deeper philosophic doctrines that "Reality is unknowable," that "Right and wrong are malleable social conventions," and that "No one person's standards are any more valid than anyone else's." Welcome to your brave new world, Lynne.

Truss means well - she dives into the problem with determination; she frequently hits upon points that are vital; she writes with a wit that is distinctly British; and consistent with the point of her book, she refers to variants of the noxious "F word" with "eff or "effing." (This last may not sit well with the Beavis-and-Butthead Pottymouth Contingent, but those would be precisely the people the book is aimed at transforming into civilized human beings.)

So here's the problem Truss immediately comes up against: The sole answer to the conflict of civility vs. incivility lies in ethics (a.k.a. morality,) and self-discipline, and in the question of whether or not morality and self-discipline are being taught to children; Morality, in turn, presupposes absolutes of good and evil, of right and wrong. So a person livid at the deterioration of civility in modern society suddenly faces a huge internal conflict, if that person is also an adherent of an ideology that says that good and evil are subjective social conventions, no one person's version of them is any more valid than anyone else's, and nobody can know for sure in any case. The internal wrestling-match Ms. Truss engages in within these pages, often explicitly, is actually quite funny in itself.

Truss does a great job of anecdotal exposition of the incivility problem, but the minute she takes a stab at analysis, not to mention proposing an actual solution to it all, she runs right off the edge of the cliff where a valid philosophic bridge should be, and floats there in a flailing panic like a pre-plunge Wile E. Coyote.

Like some at the opposite (my own) end of the philosophic spectrum, she conflates empathy with craven altruism. Conversely, and reflexively, she equates self-interest with rudeness, if not open sadism - apparently oblivious to the fact that civility is a function of reason, of self-respect and self-interest (i.e, a healthy ego,) while incivility is the typical province of the "self-less" mentality who feels the need to prop up a flagging ego artificially, via stepping on others. Take note of the contemporary fad of demanding "respect" - as though it's something owed rather than earned - in context of the deficient ego. People with self-respect (i.e., with healthy, self-sufficient egos,) do not typically act like undisciplined sociopathic brats. And while disrespect from others may not be pleasant for people with self-respect, it's not so important to them that they're likely to shoot somebody if it isn't forthcoming.

Put differently, consideration for others is not primarily "social," but a function of a healthy self-respect, stemming from a healthy ego that is accustomed to the process of introspection and therefore of empathy. It is precisely the "self-less" who're oblivious to empathy, because they're perennially obsessed with impressing upon others how truly wonderful they are, when they themselves, deep down, believe they aren't. 'Counter-intuitive but true. At any rate, while Truss' conception of "ego" is completely inverted, the same can be said of society at large, so I cut her significant slack on that point.

Truss runs into another obstacle to this problem in that she continuously confuses "class snobbery" with valid hierarchies. This starting premise necessarily undercuts her attempts to assert rules, because such rules are necessarily based on those very hierarchies. There is a factual and proper subordination in every civilized society of employee to customer, of workplace underling to superior, of child to elder, etc. The trouble with attempting to tackle the civility problem from a collectivist ideologue's worldview is that the collectivist worldview is generally steeped in, again, skepticism, relativism, subjectivism - also contextless egalitarianism. With all rational hierarchical distinctions held as off-limits on the basis of that philosophic quicksand, there's no foundation left for hierarchical distinctions of any kind. Rules of social behavior within contexts in which social hierarchies exist are thusly nullified at their root - hence Truss' dilemma.

Much of this inversion of the deference-hierarchy equation can be laid at the feet of precisely the kind of "liberalism" with which Truss professes agreement. These people have been railing against "class distinctions" for decades, sloppily dumping valid distinctions (such as employee vs. customer,) into the stew along with the rest of the retro-Marxian slop. So...who's to say that clerks are obligated to defer to customers in any way? That kids are obligated to defer to their parents or teachers? Again, welcome to your brave new world, Lynne.

Another gaffe in this book is Truss' mistaken belief that new technologies - such as the computer, the cellphone and other mobile toys - are causal elements in incivility. Again I can cut her some slack on this point because the advent of modern electronics, particularly over the last twenty years, has indeed been a transformative phenomenon for most of humanity, and like every technological leap, it requires that a new set of mores develop alongside the toys. That development doesn't always proceed in tandem, particularly in a world in which technological development has drastically outpaced our ethical and broader philosophical development. But she misses the entire fact that computers, iPads, cellphones and the like are only tools, and are therefore morally neutral. The ethics of each particular user is the determinant, and the task of imbuing ethics into the mind of each particular user is something with which the tools have absolutely no involvement. That's the job of the parents.

Which brings us to the crux of the book, the climactic moment when Ms. Truss was to take the podium and tell us how to solve this mess, and... her ideology won't let her. To her credit, she makes a brief break from her self-imprisonment, only to suffer an apparent loss of heart and retreat to her "liberal" cage. Near the end of the book she writes a stunning paragraph in which she confirms everything I've been saying here:

"We all knew from the very start that this book would end up as a moral homily. I have used every angle I could think of before reaching this point; I have even experimented with a bit of relativism, which probably didn't fool anybody.[Oh?] However, it is time to be plain at last. Rudeness is bad. Manners are good. It feels very daring to come out and say it, but I've done it and I feel better. I have used the words 'bad' and 'good', and thereby committed the ultimate political fuddy-duddiness, and doubtless undermined all my good work. Modern people are impatient with the bad-good distinction; they consider it intellectually primitive. But rudeness is a moral issue and it always has been. The way people behave towards each other, even in minor things, is a measure of their value as human beings."

The very fact that Truss finds ethics to be controversial, the expression of an ethical component to behavior to be "daring," and the very concepts of good and evil themselves to be "intellectually primitive," is an ironic indicator of the root of the problem her book is supposed to be addressing. Society has so thoroughly jettisoned its philosophic underpinnings - at the insistence of decades of "liberal" academics - that to reference any kind of objective standard, especially in ethics, is to be considered at best weird and at worst heretical. If it's ideologically "primitive" to make the faintest reference to the realities of good and evil, right and wrong, then all rational basis for distinguishing between... right and wrong, in any given instance, is wiped out.

Without an objective foundation for logical and ethical judgment, you're going to end up in a bit of a conflict in expressing any objection to rude behavior. After all, if your "liberal" ideology tells you that there's no such thing as certainty, and "right" and "wrong" are just subjective social conventions shorn of any tie to reality, who's to say what is "rude" anyway? The overgrown brat is just "expressing himself," and how "snobbish" it is of you to object!

At the very end of the book, once again safely ensconced in that cage, she seems to throw her hands in the air, issuing a hazy wish for "...a different kind of manners - manners based, for the first time, not on class or snobbery, but on a kind of voluntary charity that dignifies both the giver and the receiver by being a system of mutual, civil respect."

Translated into simple terms, that wishy-washy prescription would go something like this: "Can't we all just get along?"

Jack Nicholson's final scene with the alien leader in "Mars Attacks!" springs immediately to mind here, 'don't know why...

My personal hypothesis is that the breakdown in civility - mirrored in the breakdown of politico-economic rationality over the last two decades - is rooted in what I call the Spoiled Brat Syndrome:

Parents are no longer raising their brats, the brats are raising the parents - and not surprisingly, there isn't a whole lot of training going on in reason, in self-discipline, in self-sufficiency, in self-respect, in introspection, in empathy, in civility.

I have a secondary hypothesis that a catalyst in the phenomenon has been, ironically, periods of relative peace and prosperity: The postwar '50s spawned the disastrous indiscipline-on-steroids that grew up to become the Hippie generation; Reagan's full quarter-century boom ca. 1983-2008 in turn gave us the Hippies' offspring, which have grown up orders of magnitude worse.

The reason I mention peace and prosperity is that when people are happy and prosperous, they're far less inclined to be in the mood for raising their kids in strict discipline, and far more likely to spoil them. When kids grow up believing that they're their parents' pals rather than subordinates; that since their "self-esteem" is paramount and therefore they're just The Greatest Kids Ever regardless of behavior; when their "teachers" are telling them that "Well if two plus two equals five for you Johnny, then that's just fine; there are no wrong answers and no failures here, and we're not enforcing any rigid fuddy-duddiness like absolutes anyway" - the result is someone who believes, firmly, that the rules don't apply to him, that reality will conform to his whims, that he is entitled to whatever he happens to want without having earned it, and that he is essentially King. I think I've just described a largish swath of the contemporary American population, unfortunately.

The antidote is an upbringing in reason, in absolutes, in self-discipline and its corollary, consideration for the rights of others - the recognition that you are probably not King Of The World after all, despite what you may have been led to believe. 'Used to be that kids generally got this vital information by age six or seven; now they rarely get it at all.

So we've got a society of twenty- (and thirty-, and forty-, and fifty-, and sixty-) somethings, each running around thinking he's royalty - that the world revolves around him, and that everyone who is NOT him is a lowly subject who is obliged to put up with any and every whim His Highness may spew at the world around him, and to understand that the rules simply do not apply to His Highness in any case.

As for the rest of us, swimming in this pool of rudeness, we can take one useful lesson from Truss' book: Though we ought not to have to, what all of us must do, as often as necessary and possible, is to police the rules of civility for those who haven't been taught them. Whatever each of us says or does in response to incivility may have no tangible effect whatever on any given creep's future behavior. But if nobody says anything the problem is *guaranteed* to remain and worsen, whereas if you can have inserted at least a kernel of doubt into the punk's head, you will have scored a point for the *possibility* of improvement. And that's the most we can hope to do, short of Draconian laws like in Singapore, where you can get your arse whipped with a cane branch for spitting gum on the sidewalk. [Which brings up another tangent far outside of the scope of a book review: The breakdown of self-discipline and self-control among the population, as a catalyst in the escalation of the hyper-regulatory State and of ever-more-constrictive laws.]

I suppose I'm being a bit hard on Truss: She comes across as an uneasy leftist trying - on the motives of her own annoyance - to dabble with objective standards that her ideology explicitly forbids, and having a difficult time coming to grips with it all. But she IS trying, I'll give her that. The result is worth reading for its humor and for its frequent flourishes of food-for-thought, but not as any kind of coherent solution to the problems it attempts to tackle.

3.5 stars. I have mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed reading the first part. So much fun! Suitable for sticklers like me. (And a snob too, haha) But when I got to the second part, it became quite boring and repetitive.

I loved Truss's first book. Her outrage at the misuse of apostrophes was appealing but also beguiling because it was so over-the-top with tongue placed firmly in cheek. This book, however, was validating (though not funny) when it was right, but worrisome when it became too far-sweeping and crotchety about social classes.

Everyone loves to feel justified in their outrage after feeling disrespected by strangers or the general public, but attacking entire classes of people (the workers, the fans, those rotten teenagers) and defending those at the top (the rich, the famous, your "elders," and the customers at the cash register) risks sounding too nostalgic for the Victorian era of servants. I agree with her thesis that there is a sad tolerance for "the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life" and not enough reverence for the value of trying to be polite for politeness' sake, but I don't agree with all of her reasons for it. When she bashes rude clerks and aggressive pedestrians who readily scream "You rich bitch!" she elicits sympathy. She then loses it when she defends the victims as belonging to a class that should be utterly immune to this unjust behavior brought about by the rabble and blames egalitarianism for what rich folks now must suffer. "Are rich people actually that bad?" she asks.

No, not most of them. But anyone who has worked as a lowly clerk or assistant at a "private box" or "gentleman's club" can testify that yes, some upper class people are still convinced despite egalitarianism that they are allowed to behave selfishly in the presence of someone they consider less successful - and thus, less important - than themselves. You see it frequently, whether they are exploding without restraint at a teacher or cook whose job is difficult enough without their extra emotion, or simply making a driver wait for hours as they stay overtime at an event without any regard for the family of the person waiting on them.

When she adds how abhorrent it is that some older people are actually called by (GASP!) their first names by the younger generation, I wonder if she's secretly wishing to return to the days of "thou" and "you," when hierarchies could REALLY be emphasized.

To me, the solution is not in proving that this new populist rudeness is tossed upon the undeserving but that it should not be enacted toward anyone by anyone. Despite Truss's claims to the contrary, the class-based past in which the servile were expected to kowtow and the rich were allowed to behave as they wished WAS INDEED awful. Her point should be that yes, the egalitarian movement has led to both sides acting without consideration, but the goal should be respect for everyone regardless of status. That's the definition of egalitarianism, after all.

An excellent read,I really enjoyed Truss' style and wit! Someone finally has the guts to stand up for good manners, it was high time! ;)

Fun to read and grump along with.

I have written the review for this book about 100 times in my head, where I documented all sorts of rudeness and such, but it comes down to this - if you, as I, feel like somehow it has become ok and even endearing to be a belligerent a$$hole (as shown by some of the most popular Goodreads reviews and the comments section of the online version of your local newspaper) and you don't think that's a good thing, read this book and realize you aren't alone! Meanness isn't cool or endearing, so let's bring back a little civility to everyday life, shall we?
Very recommended.

Entertaining and made me feel I'm not alone in being a grumpy old woman who is appalled by the bad manners shown nowadays. Although it was written in 2005 so things can only have become worse. Some laugh out loud moments (she has a way with anecdotes) but at times too much research.

This book is an unorganized mess of a rant - I don't even think I learned anything.

This very easy-to-read, entertaining, seemingly desultory discourse has a very serious subject, which can be summed up as an appeal for the virtues of civility, living life socially with others in ways that indicate shared concern for each other. Since making a direct appeal to others for better behavior is very un-English—they still haven’t forgiven E. M. Forster for blurting out “just connect”—Truss must illustrate just how easy it would be to either become a hermit or push a button that erases all mankind. By use of this negative argument—showing just how dire rudeness can be—Truss means to direct us back to civil behavior.

Very lightheartedly Truss illustrates six manifestations of uncivil, unmannerly behavior:
1)tWas That So Hard to Say (the decline in use of courtesy words Please, Thank you, Sorry)
2)tWhy Am I the One Doing This (customer non-service)
3)tMy Bubble, My Rules (encroachment of personal space into public space)
4)tThe Universal Eff-Off Reflex (refusal to acknowledge/consider being in the wrong)
5)tBooing the Judges (the end of deference)
6)tSomeone Else Will Clean It Up (failure to acknowledge one’s part in the common good)

Each of the chapters is loosely organized around the titled concept, sprinkled with ample exasperated anecdotes and newspaper accounts that illustrate the several facets of a given rudeness. At the same time she tries to define what prompts the discourtesy, wondering, for example, just why is it that people seem more reluctant to use courtesy words. Each of the chapters approaches from different directions the same essential point—an erosion of a sense of common good and our individual responsibility to maintain it, itself a misguided assertion of self-worth (“you are not the boss of me”)—and it’s amusing to watch the crazy lady persona that Truss assumes for her several extended rants.

One rant that I would have liked to have heard—Truss would indeed be flapping her arms and slapping the table at the BBC offices—would be on the use of “whatever”. This particular curt dismissal is far more devastating than “talk to the hand,” because its brevity snips short any chance at mutual comprehension and sympathy. Its underlying meaning ranges from “eff off” to a gentler “let’s agree to disagree,” but in all cases its curtness is so stark that it stifles rebuttal, leaving one frustrated not only that one’s side can’t be further argued, but that the other refuses even to consider that there might be common ground.

Behind the lighthearted, entertaining manner in which Truss self-deprecatingly finds herself the butt of rudeness time and again, there is real wonder at the relationship between morals and manners. Is there significance in people being civil to one another? She is not going to rudely tell us how we must behave (we are, after all, free to choose to act in what way we wish), but she does suggest that no matter how muddled public interactions are, they are made better by courtesy. Courtesy and manners indicate a contract and a bond with each other, a recognition that we are all in this together, and that we all owe one another deference at different times for our part in making the common good.