Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That?

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Regular contributor to the New York Times and Vanity Fair, Henry Alford is the author of three acclaimed works of investigative humor. His new novel, Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That?, was released earlier this week. But Alford doesn’t just tackle the guy clipping his toenails on the bus. He challenges things like asking a cab driver where he’s from and posting baby pictures on Facebook -- and ultimately concludes that manners are more important than laws.Here's an excerpt from his new book.You need spend only 24 hours in my beloved New York City to unearth the city’s essential truth: People really know how to spit here. These ain’t no dainty, Catherine Deneuve–type loogies we’re talkin’ about, yo—these are liquid blow darts. This shit’ll mess you up.Also: Looking for a fun little fistfight, or to be casually body-checked? Need compelling evidence that “rabble” does not require more than one rabbler?We got you covered.Which is why I’d traveled almost 7,000 miles from my home to Japan.Japan, the Fort Knox of the World Manners Reserve.…Fruit and its ImplicationsAll this graciousness does not exist in isolation, however. If the key word for the Japanese mind-set I’ve alluded to is adherence, this adherence can cut both ways. Consider the conversation I had with a Tokyo cabdriver one night. When he broached the topic of how much magazine writers and book authors get paid, I delicately steered the conversation away. He brought it up again, glancingly; I glancingly skittered away. Then he asked me outright how much money I make a year. Here, the energy and sense of mission that in other circumstances might be directed at an elaborate bowing ritual was instead directed at a series of questions you’d expect to hear from your accountant. Or consider my banana episode. One night, in a grocery store near my hotel in Ueno, I saw some delicious-looking bananas for sale. But because they came in bunches of twelve or fifteen, I snapped four off a bunch. I took them to the cash register.A faint look of horror passed over the face of the cashier, a skinny, fastidious guy in his 30s. He pointed at the fruit and asked me something in Japanese. I pantomimed snapping the four bananas off from the larger bunch.“No. Cannot. Sorry,” he said, shaking his head with what seemed more vehemence than necessary.“Sumimasen,” I apologized.He got the attention of his fellow cashier. Look what the round-eye has done. He has attempted to assert an alien system of portion control.The other cashier shook his head, too, and started talking excitedly. The cheek! Americans: always defiling time-honored and traditional banana configurations!I assumed that the next moment in this chain of events would see my cashier either pro-rating my bananas, or asking me if I wanted to buy a larger bunch.No.Instead, he stowed the four pieces of fruit on a shelf near his register for safekeeping. Bastard bananas. Bananas conceived out of wedlock. Banana untouchables.I happened to have a rubber band in my pocket at the time. And so, producing it, I pointed at first my bananas and then the bunches for sale, and pantomimed a tying motion.“Not necessary,” the cashier said. Pointing at the eight bananas from which I had so brutishly severed the four, he added, “We will make the price of other bananas lower.”And, presumably, incinerate my four bananas in a cleansing ritual at dawn.More from Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That? next... Continue Reading

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