Bull****!

"I was provided with a receipt, and duly and officially accepted as an excursionist. There was happiness in that, but it was tame compared to the novelty of being `select.'"

...

"Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street to inquire ... how many people the committee were decreeing not `select' every day and banishing in sorrow and tribulation."

— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Our coarse age can do no better than scream "bullshit!" at the daily abuse of language perpetrated by management, business, politics, advertising, media, celebrity journalism and those of us who take their cues from them.

How much more elegantly Mark Twain expressed his disdain! One can almost see the sneer in the quote marks he wraps around the word select, and Twain published those sentences in 1869. That must make him one of the first to recognize the calculated appeal to snobbery that select as an advertising adjective embodies.

But the best thing is that Twain both recognized the snobbery and threw himself into it headfirst and with great zest, joining the "select" passenger list for the pioneering trans-Atlantic tourist cruise that became the occasion for The Innocents Abroad. And that, friends, is one of the most enviable tasks a man can take on: to take part fully in what the world has to offer and to make fun of it at the same time.

Of course, Twain himself helped make the passenger list "select," a celebrity by the time the boat sailed, thanks to his lectures and to "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." I shall read with interest to see whether he notes this irony.

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The Twain paragraph marked my second recent discovery that an annoying word, expression or usage was older than I'd thought. (The first was the gratingly earnest Clinton-era "part of the (national) conversation," of which I was surprised recently to find an instance from the 1950s or '60s.)

Have you ever found that an expression or phrase you hated or loved turned out to be older than you thought? While you're at it, why not find some newer grating commonplaces at Patti Abbott's Expressions you could do without?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Americans go to war, Part II (Bouchercon 2013 panels)

Last month I noted a motif common to John Lawton's Bluffing Mr. Churchill (also published as Riptide) and James R. Benn's Billy Boyle: Each features a young American bewildered by wartime London.

Three weeks later I learned I'd be moderating a panel at Bouchercon 2013 of which Lawton and Benn will be members, along with Susan Elia MacNeal, whose Mr. Churchill's Secretary features a young American woman who winds up working for Churchill in 1940.

I'll ask all three authors why they chose to thrust three Americans, all young, into wartime London. In the meantime, I'll ask you: Why do you think Lawton, Benn, and MacNeal made the choice they did? What are the attractions of the innocents abroad theme? What are your favorite stories, crime or otherwise, of Americans abroad in wartime? Why do you like those stories?

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James R. Benn, John Lawton, and Susan Elia MacNeal will be part of my "World War II and Sons" panel at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, N.Y., on Thursday, Sept. 19, at 4:00 p.m.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

John Lawton and James R. Benn: When Americans go to war

John Lawton's Bluffing Mr. Churchill has some fun with Cal Cormack, a young American embassy man by way of Berlin plunged into London in 1941, puzzled by Cockney rhyming slang and staggered by the sight of solitary houses left standing after German air raids. Since other responsibilities keep me from my normal blogging today, I'll bring back an old post about another novel that similarly placed an innocent American in war-stricken London, and I'll ask you what other crime novels or stories have exploited the theme of wartime innocents abroad, whether American or otherwise?

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Yesterday I wrote about neat use of period speech in Rag and Bone, James R. Benn's fifth novel about Boston cop-turned-army-investigator Billy Boyle.

Today I reproduce two passages from the first book in the series, Billy Boyle. The selections are a touching portrayal of war's sobering effect on a brash young American when he sees it up close for the first time.

"We had been briefed in OCS on language differences and how to make nice with the Brits. Don't flash your money around, GIs are paid more than British officers, stuff like that. Me, I couldn't have cared less. The English had had their time in the sun when they conquered Ireland and ran it like their private preserve, killing and starving out my ancestors. If I hurt a few feelings waving around a sawbuck or two, big deal."

But then:

"People parted and formed a narrow corridor as three stretchers were carried out of the destroyed building. Two held blanketed, inert forms. The third carried a person covered in soot highlighted by rust-colored dried blood along a leg and a hasty bandage wrapping a head. A thin female arm rose from the stretcher with two fingers raised in the V-for-victory sign as she was gingerly carried into the ambulance. There were murmurs of appreciation from the crowd, and then they drifted back into the morning routine. Another day at the war. The other two stretchers were left on the sidewalk for a journey to a different destination.

"`Welcome to London,' Harding said as the traffic moved forward.

"`Yes, sir.' Maybe I wouldn't wave those sawbucks around for a while."

© Peter Rozovsky 2010