Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners by Henry Alford; Twelve Books, $24.99
Has it really become too much to ask for common decency, a simple please and thank you, perhaps? That's exactly the point in humorist and Vanity Fair /New York Times scribe Henry Alford's Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners, skewering our etiquette and how blatantly absent it has become.
Alford, who is openly gay (should that really count in smatters of decorum?), casts a discerning, critically cheeky eye on our dismissive, self-important world and starts in Japan, "the Fort Knox of the World Manners Reserve," training with two iron-fisted teachers. His 20-day stint in Tokyo brought him up to speed on the protocols of things like head-bowing, the no-tipping-at-restaurants rule, and the prorating of bananas at a grocery.
From there, the book delves into everything from the flatness of e-mail posturing to the loveliness of common gestures. Alford was inspired to write on manners after reading that 18th-century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke considered them to be "more important than laws." So he dove head-first into matters of human (and humane, or lack thereof) nature to "hold up a magnifying glass to unattractive habits that I stumble upon, be they my own or others."
Admittedly something that doesn't come naturally, manners must be taught, he writes. In comical, breezy, and highly addictive prose, he offers examples of the good, the bad, and the ugliest of etiquette mishaps, most notably a section on "Pregnant or Well-Fed?" and a hilarious chapter on "Rude Questions," where a hiker on a Jackson Hole, Wyoming mountaintop called a park ranger on his cell phone to request hot chocolate. There are, however, a few egregious authorial exceptions throughout, such as the writer's insistence on playing a healthy game of "Touch the Waiter," a tasteless tactic sure to piss off even the most good-natured, hard-working server.
Some advice will be surprising only for the truly oblivious: e-mail forwarding can be the "devil's candy" of business communication; self-deprecation can only go so far; when to speak up or shut down when criticizing friends; and the universal importance of the "two pillars of courtesy, 'Thank you' and 'Excuse me.'" What makes the book the most fun is not necessarily the information Alford dispenses, but his witty repartee while doing so. The author has a knack for delivering the kind of snappy wordplay that can make a blog a can't-miss daily habit or a newspaper column something to share on Facebook, a place Alford considers "a high-surveillance area where many of your actions will last in perpetuity." Speaking of Facebook, Alford chimes in on that as well, calling it a hubris-stroking, self-lubricating, auto-congratulatory vehicle for those promoting their own significance, but also warns about the dangers of "de-friending" and the uber-importance of boundary-setting.
Gay readers would do better to investigate last summer's definitive guidebook Steven Petrow's Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners, which gets into the much more specific nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts world of proper queer etiquette than Alford could ever do justice to here. There's also a supremely excellent book out there with the most self-explanatory title ever conceived, called Don't Be That Guy, by comic writer Colin Nissan. This one's an absolute must-have for anyone concerned with not being a dick. Ever.
Alford provides a brisk, amusing glimpse into the world of decorum. There's nothing overtly sobering or condescending here, just some darn good writing produced in such a snarky, cheeky way that it's almost impossible to put down once you've decided to take the plunge. He's no Judith Martin ("Miss Manners,") but please, graciously thank him for his charming stab at social betterment if you bump into him on the street. Just don't forget to say "excuse me" first.