Daily Blague

Because I read it, for the most part, in transit, I took a while to get through Thomas Blaikie's slim but heartening book about behavior, To the Manner Born: A Most Proper Guide to Modern Civility (Villard, 2005). Title notwithstanding, Mr Blaikie is not really very interested in being proper. He lays out his credo, appropriately enough, in his Introduction:

This book is a guide to modern manners. I say: Let's have manner based on common sense and reason; manners that bring people together rather than drive them apart; manners that make people feel comfortable and confident.

And then he proceeds to apply this thought to areas of modern life in which trouble arises. He couldn't, for example, care less about how to write a thank-you note, as long as you're agreeable about it, and everything except acceptances of wedding invitations and condolence letters can be sent by e-mail. In fact, he thinks that we just ought to forget about writing thank-you notes on most occasions: not imprudently, he saves this bombshell for a later chapter, which is subtitled "A Major Rethink." Mr Blaikie is also not interested in which piece of silver you use at dinner, as long as you use it to move food unobtrusively from the plate to your mouth. He does not care, in short, for any prescriptions that do not directly conduce to the general pleasure and comfort.

If there's one thing that Mr Blaikie insist upon, it's paying attention. Most of the lapses that he bullet-points occur not because someone doesn't know what to do but because someone simply isn't thinking.

Continue reading about To the Manner Born at Portico.