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Lynne Truss is the pundit of pet peeves. She's taken on the ignorance of basic grammar with Eats, Shoots & Leaves, now she bravely rallies against the abysmal state of manners. And while she uses the Jerry Springer-esque phrase of 'talk to the hand' as her title, it's obvious she'd like to have snarkily dubbed it "Learn Some Effing Manners People!"--only she's too polite to do so. (It should be noted that while she's shocked by 6-year-olds using the f -word, she's hopeful that it's so overused that it'll soon sink into obsolescence.) To hammer across her points on politesse, Truss pulls quotations from an astonishing range of sources. Sociologist Erving Goffman is a favorite, but the Simpsons (of cartoon fame, not Jessica & Ashlee), Evelyn Waugh, and W.B. Yeats are also tapped. What her rant boils down to though is unsurprising: modern communication is at the root of rude behavior. Mobile phones and iPods have left us existing in our own little "bubble worlds," she says. "It used to be just CIA agents with earpieces…who regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now it's nearly everybody." These self-produced bubbles make it easy for rudeness to rule. If someone forgets to hold a door or say "Thank you," it's because, Truss says, they're zoned out in their personal space, and will likely be offended if their lack of manners is pointed out. (The ruder the person, she says, the more easily offended.) Truss certainly earns many chuckles throughout her somewhat rambling musings, but her concern about society's decline is serious. To that end, she offers the words of Willy Loman's wife in Arthur Miller's most famous play on modern-day morality (and we all remember what happens in its last act): "Attention must be paid."--Erica Jorgensen
The Lynne Truss Collection
Lynne Truss is the pundit of pet peeves. She's taken on the ignorance of basic grammar with Eats, Shoots & Leaves, now she bravely rallies against the abysmal state of manners. And while she uses the Jerry Springer-esque phrase of 'talk to the hand' as her title, it's obvious she'd like to have snarkily dubbed it "Learn Some Effing Manners People!"--only she's too polite to do so. (It should be noted that while she's shocked by 6-year-olds using the f -word, she's hopeful that it's so overused that it'll soon sink into obsolescence.) To hammer across her points on politesse, Truss pulls quotations from an astonishing range of sources. Sociologist Erving Goffman is a favorite, but the Simpsons (of cartoon fame, not Jessica & Ashlee), Evelyn Waugh, and W.B. Yeats are also tapped. What her rant boils down to though is unsurprising: modern communication is at the root of rude behavior. Mobile phones and iPods have left us existing in our own little "bubble worlds," she says. "It used to be just CIA agents with earpieces…who regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now it's nearly everybody." These self-produced bubbles make it easy for rudeness to rule. If someone forgets to hold a door or say "Thank you," it's because, Truss says, they're zoned out in their personal space, and will likely be offended if their lack of manners is pointed out. (The ruder the person, she says, the more easily offended.) Truss certainly earns many chuckles throughout her somewhat rambling musings, but her concern about society's decline is serious. To that end, she offers the words of Willy Loman's wife in Arthur Miller's most famous play on modern-day morality (and we all remember what happens in its last act): "Attention must be paid."--Erica Jorgensen
A Note from Lynne Truss
Dear Amazon customer and fellow stickler,
The Lynne Truss Collection
 Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation |  Eats, Shoots & Leaves: 2006 Calendar |  Making the Cat Laugh |
From Publishers Weekly
This isn't a book about good manners, per se. Instead, the British author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves sets out "to mourn... the apparent collapse of civility in all areas of our dealing with strangers; then to locate a tiny flame of hope in the rubble." 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). Truss expounds on these themes with fine ire, mordant humor and many examples, but it must be said that the result is not so much a book as a heavily padded magazine article. Not that this will bother the many book buyers who will tuck it lovingly into the Christmas stockings of their somewhat discomfited nearest and dearest.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Talk to the Hand and Look into the Mirror,
By Thomas M. Loarie (Danville, CA USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (Hardcover)
Lynn Truss has written another witty book that will stick well beyond the initial read. "Talk to the Hand" is a good whack to the head. In "Talk," Truss defines and analyzes six areas in which our dealings with strangers seem to be getting more unpleasant and inhuman.Truss highlights the loss of punctuation signaling the vast and under-acknowledged problem of illiteracy in "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves." In "Talk," she addresses the collapse of manners and the vast and under-acknowledged problem of social immorality. In Chapter 3, "My bubble, my rules," Truss goes after the issue of personal space and a person's right to be left alone, unmolested, undisturbed, that is until the arrival of the cell phone! Now, we are forced to listen to another's intimate conversation in restaurants, grocery stores, and even in the john...The tension between public and private space is a growing flashpoint. Have you ever asked someone to move outside with their cell phone? If not, proceed immediately to Chapter 4, "The Universal Eff-off Reflex," and learn about the lash-back reflex of shocking proportions which your are about to receive for pointing out bad manners. According to Truss, you can equate good manners not only with virtue in today's environment but also with positive heroism. "Talk" is a good mirror for all of us to look into.
41 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I bailed by page 86,
By
This review is from: Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (Hardcover)
Familiar with the author's 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves', I saw this small book in our library's new release section. While there are a few thoughtful passages, the book mainly contains inconsistent rants about the decline of polite society. These include a puzzling, embarassing attack on the gluten and lactose intolerant and a passage comparing online banking to 'doing you own dental work' (sic) and 'DIY funerals: the modern way'. Truss laments our lack of 'please' and 'thank you' but then disavows 'the enforced perkiness of American service workers'. She acknowledges the empowering effect of the availability of choices to modern women, then complains that too many choices exist in today's society. My outrage at the $20.00 hardcover list price for 200 pages further contributed to the low rating, especially considering each page barely contains a half-dozen sentences.
50 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dangerously Uninformed,
By Carman (Northern Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (Hardcover)
Congratulations Ms. Truss on managing to offend 1-3% of the population in only the first five pages of a book condemning bad manners! For SHAME!Are you offended that airlines and schools no longer serve peanuts due to the prevalence of peanut allergies? Or that diabetics sometimes must eat in meetings? Or that handicap spaces often take up prime positions in parking lots? Why is it acceptable to poke fun and cry offense from someone else's medical disability? A gluten-free diet due to gluten intolerance is NOT an option. It is a medical prescription that is mandatory FOR LIFE. It is necessary for survival, even if it means playing 20 questions at the periodic unavoidable restaurant dinner, standing for HOURS in a grocery store reading product labels, insisting on accurate ingredient information from food, drug, and cosmetic manufacturers, preparing almost every meal you eat yourself, and in short ensuring your survival in a toxic (and often harshly unforgiving) world. I'd like to see you try this without ever offending anyone! Usually we suffer in silence. The price of not successfully maintaining our gluten-free diet is health issues building gradually from digestive problems to various incurable conditions (such as cancer, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and overall systemic failure). Perhaps you would feel less "inconvenienced" if we immediately dropped dead from exposure like those with peanut allergies sometimes do. Maybe then you and others like you would recognize the severity of our condition. We "inconvenience" others as little as possible, and then only when necessary. The only other alternative for the millions of us afflicted with this disorder is to lock ourselves into our homes...to die.
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More About the Author
Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women's Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.
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