Missionaries and Manners (with apologies to A. S. Byatt, because it doesn’t sound much like Angels and Insects and isn’t remotely as good)

I first became obsessed with manners while I was a missionary in Hong Kong, back when it was still British. It was this same trip that stripped all use for organized religion from me. Since I realized I didn’t believe in God, I needed something to occupy the part of my life that religion never did, and manners fitted the bill.

I worked at English language camps under the auspices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Honk Kong. We helped our campers become comfortable with the English they learned in school, so that they could perform well on some horrible test that determined whether or not they would go on to college, another year of high school, or work at a fast-food franchise. Presumably we were supposed to convert them from their heathenish ways to the light of Luther’s one, true church, but somehow I just couldn’t be bothered with that part. Maybe it was the fact that I was coming to realize I had never believed it myself. Maybe it was the smug assurance of some of my campers-the ones who’d already lost their heathenish ways-that my Jewish friends were going to hell and that I would be joining them since I wasn’t working to convert them.

Anyway, disillusioned and disgusted, I was wandering through a mall in one day in Hong Kong (yes, I know, so American. We won’t get into the time I scoured the entire colony looking for cherry-flavored Pop Tarts), and found an English-language bookstore. For all that it was my Damascus Road, I can’t even remember the name of the store. There I found the British version of P. J. O’Rourke’s Modern Manners: Etiquette for Very Rude People. I’d read a review of it before I left and was thrilled to find it. I discovered later that the British version is far more offensive than the American version. I find this fascinating, because in the US, at least, pretentious, insecure sorts adopt a British accent to sound posher. The problem with that is there is only one really posh British accent, the received standard BBC one (the old one, before the Beeb went to seed and let anyone read the news). The rest suggest collections of figurines and lawn ornaments, or, in the case of Scottish accents, speech impediments. The equation of British to upper class is an erroneous one if you consider Prince Harry. He’s arguably at the top of the social heap. He’s also a complete yob.

Modern Manners is a both burlesque and satire. It is burlesque in that much of it consists of saying horrible things about worse kinds of people. It is satire in that it contains a didactic element. Both appeal to me on a visceral level. Modern society is quite boorish, and frankly, I’m surprised there aren’t more shooting. Crimes of passion are so passé, but a few crimes of etiquette might make the world a better place. “I’m sorry, your Honor, but the deceased simply would not stop discussing his anal fistula on his cell phone. I could hear him from four tables away.” “Case dismissed.” A few aesthetic executions and we’d all be much more civil to each other.

At this time, I was unaware of O’Rourke’s history with National Lampoon, and he became to me the guiding mandarin of disdain of a coarsening world. It also provided an escape and safety valve because I was miserable as a missionary, and felt that the world was going to hell and that I was helping. I was in Hong Kong during the Hungry Ghost Festival, wherein the observant put out offerings to placate the spirits of people who descendents have forgotten or abandoned them. Like converts to Christianity. There I was, ostensibly to wean people away from the faith of their ancestors in a country that had been civilized since my ancestors were running amok in German forests wearing poorly cured pelts. It seemed that I was trying to separate people from a faith that had served them for millennia, when I couldn’t stand my own, which was only a paltry four centuries old. I hadn’t yet encountered the term ‘cultural imperialism,’ so the best I could do was ‘cultural barbarism.’

Actually I loathed everyone I worked with that summer, and the dark emotional tone I developed is still with me to this day. Manners became my refuge, as well as my sword. That one of my fellow missionaries stuck chopsticks in his nose and pretended to be a walrus while at table at the Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Aberdeen on the night of the Hungry Ghost Festival was just the icing on the shit-cake. To this day, I am a stickler for (reasonably) correct form at the table, and chide my son for standing at the table to eat, even if he is currently the correct height.

It was from Modern Manners that I realized that manners and etiquette are the gentle art of making people at ease, and also a form of sublimated aggression. Both of these appealed to me, too. All manners are meant to do is grease the social wheels, to smooth the interactions between people. There is always someone who, for whatever addled reason of deliberate ignorance or ideology or narcissism, chooses to throw sand in the works, and that’s when things get dicey. Think of your reaction to acts of intentional rudeness. They leave you nonplussed, unsure of what to do or say or think. When surprised, most of us react with the monkey brain, and monkeys throw their feces when provoked. Manners are important because they keep us from assaulting each other, and etiquette is the instructions or blueprint. Once internalized, you can go about other, far more important things without worry.

O’Rourke naturally led me to other mavens of etiquette, including the grande dame, Miss Manners. She’s a hoot, in an understated and dignified way, and proof that you can ream someone out without raising your voice unpleasantly. If I’d continued in the academic world, I would have turned the focus of my research to the history of manners, even if Norbert Elias did it in the 1930s. That, or dictionaries. If you think about it, etiquette books and dictionaries are essentially the same thing, and people have the craziest notions about both.

In some ways, manners are the ultimate democratization of class in this country. Anyone can act in a dignified way. You certainly don’t need manners modeled at home, although it helps. I sure as hell didn’t have it. You can be who you want to be, and since money and class have long since divorced, you can be as genteel as you want even if you’re a pauper, and these days, who’s not. It’s called self-fashioning, and if Stephen Greenblatt is to be believed, it’s been going on since the Renaissance. More practically, every drag queen of your acquaintance practices this art. We’ve no more need to be who we were born than we need of bolshevism or Ayn Rand or atonalism.

This is essentialist, I admit it, in that it assumes that good manners are universal. But within a society, even as heterogeneous a one as modern Western society, manners can be essentialized. In fact, they must be. If we all make up our own rules and get offended when those rules are violated, social anarchy will reign. Sometimes I think it already does. But there needs to be a collective agreement. Belching after a meal, so I was told while in Hong Kong, shows appreciation for the meal. Belching after a meal in the United States tells everyone that you were raised on a barnyard or a fraternity house. Eating noodles with chopsticks is a challenge, which is why, at least where I was, it was acceptable to bring the bowl closer to the mouth. Do that in the West, you’ll rightly be thought a beast. I do not argue that good manners are necessarily universal. They are quite contextual, but within a given context, they must be universal.

They’re also what keep us from killing each other in the streets and restaurants. Oy vey, the restaurants. I have to admit, I love watching people struggle with forks. Such a simple implement, yet so mishandled. I know it’s not as old as the knife, but they’ve been in use in the middle classes and above since the Enlightenment or so. It’s time, people. Stop grabbing it like you’re going to stab someone, unless that’s what you’re planning. I recently watched someone at a restaurant mishandle his fork. It was fascinating. It also looked like his hand was cramping.

Forks bear the brunt of misperceptions about manners. There seems to be a collective memory of the Victorian era, when forks proliferated like flies on rotting meat. No sooner would someone robber-baron’s chef create a dish, than some tame silversmith would create a new implement for it. It was social exclusion, nothing more, used to keep the nouveau riche in their place. Anyone caught fumbling with strange implements was summarily ejected from dinner. It was manners used to differentiate and discipline, rather than put people at their ease. I saw a museum exhibit of silverware designed by Tiffany, Charles not James. It was beautiful and exquisite as art. As tableware, not so much. Just a hint: if you find yourself confronted by a table bristling with flatware and, apparently, a neurotic host, just start at the outside and work your way in. Manners do not mean which fork to use. No stable person worries about that, and if you encounter someone who does, back away slowly. When you’re clear, run to a good, divey restaurant where you put your elbows on the table. It’s more comfy that way.

In fact, the best part about manners is faking it. There’s always some insecure person out there obsessed with ice-cream forks (yes, there are ice-cream forks, or used to be, and I’ve no idea why anyone would use a fork on something like that), and if you act like you know what you’re doing, you’ll drive this person crazy. He will extend this effortlessness on your part to other areas, and it will fan the flame of his insecurities to a blazing inferno. Could there be anything more delightful to watch?

Back in my A-list days, I must confess, I too used etiquette to discipline the boorish. When you invite someone to dinner, he is, in effect, under your protection, at least socially speaking. When he’s cornered verbally, the kind host comes to his defense, even going so far as to abandon subtlety. “Look! There’s a flaming scorpion crawling towards your genitals!” will derail even the most determined of political pontificators. If that’s too much, just pick words out of the offender’s soliloquy that he’s mispronounced and use them correctly yourself. Don’t worry, as everyone mispronounces words all the time. This is because people are afraid of dictionaries and develop their vocabulary from talk radio, chat shows, or God forbid, scabrous blogs in the internet. In this, manners are akin to the mastery of physical violence in the martial arts. They must only be used for peaceful ends, but should you need to commit social violence, you have the skill.

I’m obsessed with etiquette, I think, because nowhere else is human performance on such meticulous and subconscious display, and, crucial to all anthropology and sociology, the subjects don’t even realize they’re being studied. People can mean so much while doing so little, as opposed to religions, where people seem to do so much that means so little.