[ Back to LQ | Metro | Metroactive Central ]

The Four Letters of The Apocalypse

The new book The F Word ($12.95 paperback; Random House) has nothing to do with 'fratricide,' 'finances' or 'football'

Reviewed by Richard von Busack

It is instead a compact glossary to the most useful four-letter word in the English language, with numerous citations showing how it arose from the unprintable-of-unprintables to the verb-adverb-adjective-noun-obscene-gerund that paid for playwright David Mamet's Cadillac and keeps Showgirls screenwriter Joe Eszterhas on Morals Czar William Bennett's s-word list.

This noble old word even appeared, as editor Jesse Sheidlower demonstrates, if not in Shakespeare, in the margins of Shakespeare. His studies further suggest that the all-purpose lingual unit was unleashed on the general vocabulary when it was deployed by soldiers to describe a century of worldwide war.

The F Word is a rival to Octavio Paz's essay in The Labyrinth of Solitude about the importance of the verb chingar in everyday Mexican speech; here as in Mexico, the word is used to epitomize the common person's luck and chance of happiness.

The text includes artist Ross MacDonald's visual conceptions of such entries as Bumfuck, Egypt, fabled as the world's most remote city, and of the "fuck-you" lizard, the Asian gecko known for its cheery greeting.

In other words, What a fuckin' great book!

[ Books Index | Metro | Metroactive Central | Archives ]