His entry begins:I am a curious fellow in both modern senses of the word: I feel driven to learn new things, and I am a cultural outlier. This is reflected in my reading.About A Slap in the Face, from the publisher:
I currently have bookmarks in perhaps a dozen books. The one closest to completion is Kauai’s Geologic History: A Simplified Guide, by geologists Chuck Blay and Robert Siemers. It is poorly edited and proofread; on page 75, for example, one finds the following sentence: “The”. Then why am I reading it? Because I don’t have the same literary standards for geologists as I do for, say, novelists, as long as they deliver the geological goods. Blay and Siemers do deliver: the book is dirt cheap, nicely illustrated, and chock full of information about the volcanoes, canyons, and beaches of Kauai. Great stuff, if...[read on]
Insults are part of the fabric of daily life. But why do we insult each other? Why do insults cause us such pain? Can we do anything to prevent or lessen this pain? Most importantly, how can we overcome our inclination to insult others?Learn more about the author and his work at William B. Irvine's website.
In A Slap in the Face, William Irvine undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of insults, their history, the role they play in social relationships, and the science behind them. He examines not just memorable zingers, such as Elizabeth Bowen's description of Aldous Huxley as "The stupid person's idea of a clever person," but subtle insults as well, such as when someone insults us by reporting the insulting things others have said about us: "I never readbad reviews about myself," wrote entertainer Oscar Levant, "because my best friends invariably tell me about them." Irvine also considers the role insults play in our society: they can be used to cement relations, as when a woman playfully teases her husband, or to enforce a social hierarchy, as when a boss publicly berates an employee. He goes on to investigate the many ways society has tried to deal with insults-by adopting codes of politeness, for example, and outlawing hate speech-but concludes that the best way to deal with insults is to immunize ourselves against them: We need to transform ourselves in the manner recommended by Stoic philosophers. We should, more precisely, become insult pacifists, trying hard not to insult others and laughing off their attempts to insult us.
A rousing follow-up to A Guide to the Good Life, A Slap in the Face will interest anyone who's ever delivered an insult or felt the sting of one--in other words, everyone.
The Page 99 Test: A Guide to the Good Life.
Writers Read: William B. Irvine.
--Marshal Zeringue
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