Bawdy and jive, well-researched but underanalyzed.
From 17th-century cant to modern-day music slang, an erudite miscellany that tracks centuries of playful mutations endured by the English language.
Chapters divide the book thematically with each covering one morsel of the slang lexicon, such as the Shakespearean “Beast with Two Backs” and its other naughty euphemisms. Décharné (Capital Crimes: Seven Centuries of London Life and Murder, 2012, etc.) boasts an impressive library of sources, such as Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), and devotes the majority of his efforts to pinpointing the first printed occurrences of various words. These publications are valuable but inherently problematic, as a word’s popular usage may not always line up with its first printed date. As the author writes, “the trouble with slang, and language generally, is that it doesn’t stay still; meanings shift and mutate with the passing of time or the coming of new associations, and yesterday’s plain speech can become today’s double entendre.” From Grose to Samuel Johnson, Décharné arranges a rich array of Georgian and Victorian vulgarity. Regarding the modern era, the author cedes a large portion of the book to popular music and its associated lingo, from the Beatles to N.W.A. These are some of the most inspired moments of the book, but they outweigh the historical sections and suggest that most slang as it is currently known began in a recording studio. While it's interesting to learn about the origins of band names like the Pogues and the Buzzcocks, one can't help but feel Décharné’s career as a music writer seeping through as he inadvertently shows how thin the line is between etymological history and pop-culture trivia. The author sticks to his role as archivist and rarely gives his own thoughts on why people are drawn to slang: sociological analysis is often glossed over in an effort to delight with more strange words for R-rated things. His exhaustive research is at times exhausting and frequently reduced to mere lists of words and their definitions.
Bawdy and jive, well-researched but underanalyzed.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-464-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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