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.)

[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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.