PAMELA, who lived in the house opposite, was the second girl I fell in love with. I was 13. Greatly daring I sent her an anonymous Valentine card. Days later we met at the bus-stop and she thanked me formally for the card. It wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for.
I WAS 18 before I first cleaned my fingernails. Previously I hadn’t seen the point.
A MIDDLE-CLASS woman in a swanky area of Pittsburgh was eager to discuss the British royal family. Mentioned the unmarried name of the Queen Mother (Bowes-Lyon) as proof of her interest. I apologised for my ignorance, saying I was anti-Monarchist. She gasped audibly as if I’d admitted being a homosexual Marxist. Who didn’t clean his nails.
I BOUGHT a trilby, perhaps thinking it would make me look manly. Caught an indirect reflection of myself in a shop window and saw only cherubic sleaze. I may or may not have thrust the trilby into a sidewalk trash-can, I can’t be sure.
I TRIED to read Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness because he’d been born in Poland yet chose to write in English. It wasn’t sufficient justification.
IN THE USA I ordered frog’s legs because they sounded sophisticated. The delicacy of the bones sickened me.
I HAVE a middle name, a mere four letters and not at all unusual. It made me feel ashamed and I have sought to hide it.
I had to google "trilby." I think you overreacted to your "indirect reflection."
ReplyDeleteColette: I'm always astonished when Americans admit to ignorance of fairly commonplace words in English. When I arrived in the USA I already had a working knowledge of the US vocabulary, derived from movies (later from TV) and, more particularly, contemporary US fiction. Given the context how would you have reacted to the phrase "snap-brim fedora" which describes a man's hat popular pre- and post-war in the US and which I've always treasured.
DeleteIf we compare the US and British middle-classes it is fair to say that the former have had a better formal education. This doesn't mean they are necessarily better educated, only that they went to uni. My experience is that middle-class Americans are at least aware of Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens and Austen, but mainly because their works have been turned into movies. But when it comes to post-war UK authors (Amis, Murdoch, le Carré, Lodge, Toibin, Burgess, Powell, O'Brian, Huxley, Orwell, Greene, Waugh, etc) the familiarity dies away. Yet I - hardly a good example of the well-educated Brit - have read Updike, Pynchon, de Lilo, Robinson (Marilyn not Roderick), Tyler, Leonard, Chandler, Heller, Roth, etc, as well as the elderly classics like Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Twain, Lewis, Faulkner, Dickinson.
Sounds as if I'm boasting and - to an extent - I am. US writers' agents and publishers often recommend that certain words and other references in UK fiction intended for sale in the USA are "translated" for the average US reader. No such concessions are ever contemplated in the reverse direction.
I was rather proud of "cherubic sleaze", wondering optimistically whether it was the first time on earth the two words had been conjoined. Overreaction? I looked like a young guy, somewhat overweight, that I wouldn't trust.
Are you astonished that I was ignorant of the word, or that I admit to it?
DeleteColette: Both I suppose. In fact the expression "admit to" is less an act of confession and more a fancy way of saying "say". In Britain, that is. Suppose I'd used "reveal" instead. Would that have triggered a similar question?
DeleteYes.
DeleteMy domestic science teacher kept control of her class (all girls, boys were not given the opportunity to learn cooking and how to care for your dishcloth in those days) by randomly picking one person to make teacher's pet and another whose life she would make a total misery. The theory being, presumably, that pupils could see how very badly treated they would be if they didn't behave - and it seemed to work. I was the unlucky one and failed to grasp that it wasn't personal.
ReplyDeleteThe next year, in the needlework class, she did exactly the same but for some reason had forgotten what a complete idiot I was and picked me for teacher's pet. I hated her even more for that.
Jean: None of my teachers had the foresight or the wit to come up with such an ingenious scheme. During my passage through secondary school I dawdled in the stream my father was wont to call "the scugs' form". All of us were caned raw, sneered at, and generally regarded as incorrigible. I might well have emerged from school as mentally defective if I hadn't thought the treatment I received was standard practice. Joining a newspaper signalled the start of my true education and it was completed (on the scientific side) when the RAF took me on for two years' military service and forced me to appreciate that electrons are useful and fascinating doodads.
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