Naughty boys in nasty schools

[venta]

Last night I finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Or, as I consistently think of him, "no, not that David Mitchell". Black Swan Green was actually a birthday present from spindlemere last year, but a housemove got in the way and caused it to hide for a while.

The book is written from the point of view of a thirteen year old boy, in the early 80s. It's also written in the language of a kid of the early 80s which, despite my having been only six in the year the book was set, was still the language of the playground when I went to school.

Starting to read it is a bit of a culture shock. You can't, he writes, do this because it'll make you look gay. You shouldn't do that because it'll make you look a total spaz. For all I know, kids may still think that doing your homework is gay, but the world I live in mostly regards "gay" and "spaz" as words which aren't acceptable to fling about as generic insults. Reading it causes a series of minor mental flinches.

Remarkably soon, though, I found myself settling down into the world of thickos and duh-brains, and didn't bat an eyelid at the use of "skill" as an adjective. Being permitted to slither back to adolescent language is something of a guilty pleasure, actually. It's language appropriate to the era, which means it's somehow ok to laugh at the fact that wearing a woolly hat is gay.

Very occasionally - usually when I'm concentrating on something else - obsolete junior school phrases work their way into my sentences. The ones I regard as obsolete are usually either offensive or (as you might say) would make me look like a spacker in this day and age. Relaxing into that environment was surprisingly enjoyable; I have yet to decide whether I should regard this as a bad thing. If I unexpectedly start calling people gaylords or bumboys, you will let me know, won't you?

I'm curious, though, as to whether the author deliberately made the proprietor of the corner shop Welsh (well, his name is Rhydd, nationality unspecified) to avoid tackling what a bunch of teenagers in the 80s would have called an Asian. Possibly he just didn't want to pander to the cliché - fallen into by most things set in the 80s - that all corner shops are run by Asians.

One of the bits of blurb on the cover of the book says that the Times thought the book was "luminously beautiful". Which strikes me as total nonsense. The writing is fantastic, and the narrator does have flashes of really beautiful language. The book, on the whole, though, is grubby. Grubby and angry and awkward in the way that being a teenager is - Mr Mitchell is brilliantly convincing writing as a thirteen year old. He's caught the way social complexities in school life are way more involved, and important, and even life-threatening than an adult can possibly understand. The narrator's use of language changes subtly in different situations; it's very cleverly done. I'd defend the writing against all comers, but "luminously beautiful" it ain't.

Anyway, it's a book well worth reading. I commend it to you.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

didn't bat an eyelid at the use of "skill" as an adjective

I would, because even at the time the canonical usage was "skillful". Usage example: "Hey, check out my skillful new trainers!"

(Rather less canonical was the local use of the word "bone-ish" as the opposite of "skillful". I'm not sure anyone even had any ideas about what it might mean except that it wasn't good.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Not where I went to school; your new trainers would have been skill (in Bournemouth in the early 1980s).

Right up to the point where it turned out that skill was a bum disease, at any rate.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

In which case - for the benefit of the crowdsourced linguistic map we're about to produce - my data point comes from Cambridge, early to mid 80s.

[venta.livejournal.com]

My data was Darlington, mid-late 80s.

From observation of younger persons in the late 90s, I can report that anything good in Darlington c. 1998 was "minted". If it was very good, it was "double minted".

I remember thinking good grief, I bet we sounded this ridiculous a decade ago :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it was definitely "skill" round our way. Or "skillish". Definitely never heard anyone say "skillful", though. As in: "I've got a skill(ish) new game for my Spectrum".

I'm trying to think what the opposite of "skill" was. Nothing springs to mind, though I think you're right that bone-ish wasn't widespread!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Specifially with respect to clothes, the opposite might have been "molly".

"Have you seen those trainers? They're dead molly."

Or possibly "raggy".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Where do you stand on "epic"?

The kids in the book use "epic" to describe something superlatively good, but that's not one I remember much. I think of that as being a much more recent thing, either to describe something protracted, or in the context of "epic fail".

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Certainly it's in far wider usage now, but it must have turned up by the late 80s because when Faith No More released The Real Thing the use of the word Epic already made sense.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

At a guess being a similar age (born '74), it would probably do the same to me, though i can easily regress language wise back to that era or at least close enough to mid 80s with reasonable clarity. Oh and it would have been a paki shop, even though you nievely didn't really know what that meant or quite why it was a racial slur.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I know I had friends at school who talked about 'going to the Paki shop' or 'getting a Chinky' (Chinese takeaway). I have a feeling I was a precocious little brat who always vocally disapproved of the usage, though. I got beaten up a LOT.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Yeah know that one too.

The jokes back then were not particularly pc either. Lots to do with Eitheopians and drowning black men (which incidentaly never made much sense back then)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I know it would have been a Paki shop. I was just hypothesising that he didn't want to get into more risky territory by having his characters call it that - I think even a book set in the 80s is likely to offend more people saying "Paki" than saying "spaz".

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Oh and Joey.....AKA Joey Deacon.

We really were 'orrible little buggers !

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

We didn't use 'skill' at my school - something good was 'lush' or 'mint'. Something bad was 'bogus' or 'naff'.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Bogus....Thats a bill and ted'ism !!!

Also Narly, though your getting far later.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

No, we had 'bogus' before Bill and Ted, definitely.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I associate "bogus" with one person in particular - he always used it in conjunction with "untriumphant". Eg "Come out this evening, don't be an untriumphant bogus dude."

Use of "dude" also suggests to me it may have been Bill and Ted-inspired :)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

An online friend of mine from the US recently used 'spaz' on her blog,and then was really surprised when she got an email from an English person complaining. Apparently it's not offensive over there - they don't even know where it comes from. They also say handicapped instead of disabled. It's weird, they're hypersensitive about racial terms, but don't seem to be bothered by disability-related terms the way we are.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware there was an issue with "handicapped" either. (Although I was with spaz.) Where do the USA stand on "brainstorming"?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was vaguely aware that "spaz" is OK if you're American, and had wondered if it might be parallel evolution from a different root. I have a vague idea you can buy "spazz sticks" in the US, which are some sort of lip balm.

I hadn't really noticed that "handicapped" specifically had fallen out of use here. To me that seems like a fairly non-offensive phrase (but I can believe that for various reasons beyond my awareness, it isn't).

The interesting thing is that the most common users of non-pc terms relating to disability tend to be... the disabled. "I'm not bloody vision-impaired, I'm blind", as my parents' next-door neighbour is fond of saying.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Its odd. Common usage words for something negative, seem to change as people percive the negative connotations of the word to be the bad thing.

Handicaped/Disable/Less Able Bodied

Heck, Spazz is a derivation of Spastic, which was once a medical definiton, both being non-pc words.

We almost seem to think that the words we use will make the condition less of a problem.

Alas the real problem is more deep seated in the human mind, in that we are designed to group items together as it is a way of reducing process overheads, thus it is in our nature. The name of the group will always end up offensive as people like to be treated as inderviduals.

We exasibate the problem when it comes to things we are scared, don't understand or don't like, thus racial banding. We percieve them as different from us.

[killalla]

This is really interesting to me, because obviously all of my small kid time slang was totally different, being late 80s America, but even more than that Hawaii, since we had a local creole (Pidgin) and different racial classifications, which were more or less polite depending on context. Having lived here so long, I sometimes forget how much that environment influenced my speech.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I sometimes forget how much that environment influenced my speech

... how much is that? Most of my small kid time slang I don't think I use much any more. Do you still use phrases from then (and us hapless Brits don't realise you're being hugely offensive ;)?

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Skill, Mint, and Mintox were all in heavy use in southern suburbs private school Perth, Western Australia circa 1985.
Spaz yes, gay no.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I've not read that one. There is plenty of un-PC language in other grit lit stuff though (John King, Irvine Welsh, Niall Griffiths, etc.).

I really enjoyed Mitchell's _Cloud Atlas_, and would heartily recommend it.