Mind Your Manners

One of the telltale signs of an older reference librarian is a tendency to natter on about the questions they used to receive back in the good old days, those golden pre-Internet days when we had the answers and you had to call and ask for them.

Just last week I was remembering how it used to be when someone wanted to share their thoughts with an elected official or other important person.  They would phone us and using our protocol and etiquette books we could determine just how the envelope should be addressed including the proper salutation and closing for the letter. 

We could also help with introductions and seating arrangements if, say, the President, a Representative, and your aging mother-in-law all show up for dinner at the same time.

No one calls with such questions anymore.  No one asks for Emily Post.  Perhaps Google is helping sort out who is “excellent” and who merely “honorable” or, perhaps, we no longer care.  Even Miss Manners, who once hoped to save civilization, seems to have given up the fight.

Still, the word “civility” is heard quite regularly these days and the continuing popularity of books like Lynne Truss’ Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door suggests concern. 

On the other hand, Mark Caldwell in A Short History of Rudeness: Manners, Morals and Misbehavior in Modern America argues that decrying the decline of civility (and thereby, the morals and values of society in general) has been a popular pastime since the Middle Ages.

He does not, however, belittle the importance of the topic: “Manners are what is left when serious issues of human relations are removed from consideration; yet without manners serious human relations are impossible.”  His book examines the myriad ways that manners have served to both promote and impede realization of social values and standards in America.

Our freedom to openly share our thoughts about our government, rudely or otherwise, is something most of us take for granted.  Americans today enjoy greater freedom of expression than citizens of any other country.  This was not always true.

In 1919, three men were sentenced to 20 years in prison for distributing leaflets protesting American troops being sent into Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. They were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1918 which made it a crime to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the constitution, the armed forces, military uniforms, or the flag.

The case was appealed.  The Supreme Court upheld the original conviction, but a dissent by Oliver Wendell Holmes cited the First Amendment, for the first time, as protecting speech and publication, and argued “the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas … that at any rate is the theory of our Constitution”. Even so, it was not until 1931 that the Supreme Court began enforcing freedom of speech as constitutionally guaranteed.

Anthony Lewis’ Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a succinct and eloquent account of our nation’s history of struggle with this seemingly simple concept of freedom of expression. As we know, it is not simple and the struggle continues. Lewis presents the conflicts inherent in this guarantee of free speech and a free press and makes clear the complexities and implications of our evolving interpretation.

 If, instead of celebrating your First Amendment rights, you choose to go home and bolt the door, may I suggest a new story collection from J.C. Hallman, The Hospital for Bad Poets as a way to pass the time?  In the title story, a convulsing “emergent” poet is treated with oxygen and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.  The doctor fears “chronic acuteness” and orders tests but the nurse warns him “He doesn’t have any insurance.  Few poets do.”

Hallman’s sly and incisive collection is quite a bit more sophisticated than that description might suggest.  The epigram before the title story, attributed to Nietzsche, may suffice to describe the whole:  “In all things, however, you act too familiarly with the spirit, and you have often made wisdom into a poorhouse and a hospital for bad poets.”

(Photograph from Luigi Crespo, Creative Commons, Flickr.com)