Dissed & dismissed.(Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door)(Book review)

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. Gotham Books, 206 pages, $20

For many years now, incivility has been in fashion. Not just in how we behave in public, but especially among social commentators, who see everyday boorishness as a symptom of larger maladies, such as the breakdown of community or moral decay. All sorts of damage are said to follow from our bad manners and disrespect toward others, ranging from crime and outbreaks of social violence to gridlock in government and lowered business productivity.

Now joining this chorus is the British writer and broadcaster Lynne Truss. As a sequel to her surprising bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, about growing carelessness for the rules of punctuation (another type of incivility), she has written a sharp-eyed and witty diatribe about rudeness in modern life, especially in her own country, where the problem is apparently so severe that Prime Minister Tony Blair has seen fit to propose a new government program to prevent it and foster greater "respect," But, as Truss makes clear, the prospects for its success are slim, since today's incivility is the price we are paying for making self-fulfillment the ultimate purpose of life.

Every account of contemporary rudeness invariably seems like an inventory of the author's pet peeves, and this one is no different. Among those that particularly bother Truss are the declining use of common courtesies, such as saying "please," "thank you," and "excuse me," and new technologies, such as automated telephone "help" lines and the Internet, that reduce the likelihood of needing to be courteous at all. Cell-phoning in public or wearing low-slung clothes also attract her displeasure, as do expressions of resentment at being criticized for such behavior, especially what Truss calls "the universal eff-off reflex" well known to anyone who has honked a car horn at an inconsiderate driver. Those who seek to uphold rules are more likely to be booed than cheered for interfering, Truss notes critically, while those who act disagreeably on television or elsewhere are apt to be admired for their audacity. And she unhappily concludes that fewer and fewer people seem willing to acknowledge responsibility toward anyone else in society, or even for their own conduct.

All this, Truss contends, is the result of individualism run amok. People are behaving badly toward others because they are too absorbed in pleasing themselves. They cannot even imagine how their behavior affects those with whom they come in contact. An egalitarian culture makes matters worse, she writes, by insisting that one person's wishes and feelings are as good as another's (except, of course, those which cross the boundaries of political correctness). And by placing childhood self-esteem ahead of self-control, "enlightened" parenting has given no help either. If once we understood that living together required making compromises, today, Truss asserts, we live in an age of "social autism" preferring to deal with one another at a distance rather than personally, to talk "to the hand" rather than "to the face" the former being an expression drawn from that avatar of incivility, The Jerry Springer Show.

Much of this would command hearty assent from others who have examined the state of public conduct in recent years. For example, a January 2002 poll by Public Agenda, a research organization founded by Daniel Yankelovich and Cyrus Vance, found that 79 percent of Americans thought lack of respect and courtesy was a serious problem, and 73 percent that it was worse now than in the past. Among the chief irritants: bad driving, public use of cell phones, bad language on ...