I seek out travel guides written about the United States. Americans are like this, like that, not like this. The first one I saw, I think, years ago, was a Lonely Planet guide in a student pub at Nuffield College, in Oxford, England. Travelers were to know that Americans were often touchy on politics but vocal about religion. In the countryside, they worshipped guns; in the cities, punctuality. A single restaurant meal could feed a small family, for which Americans tipped absurd amounts of money. Peanut butter was something that children ate with delight, not horror.
I picked up a similar book this week, published in 1970, at a used bookstore in Hollywood, a guide to Southern California for British readers, compiled from interviews the author conducted on the street in the late 1960s. A glossary is provided to translate the locals’ lingo. An excerpt:
BLOW THE MIND: Astonish; excite; derange. Often through drugs or by some violent impact upon the senses.
COOL: Calm; smart; wise; aware; admirable.
DO YOUR OWN THING: Pursue your own interests and inclinations despite convention. Go your own way.
GO DOWN: To perform fellatio or cunnilingus.
GROOVY: Good; desirable; excellent; admirable. One of the most persistent slang terms, deriving from ‘in the groove,’ a phrase with a similar meaning associated with popular music of the forties.
MAKE IT/MAKE OUT: Achieve an objective, e.g. financial, social, sexual.
NITTY GRITTY: Truth; reality.
RIM: Analingus.
SCENE: Where things are happening. ‘To make the scene’: be where it’s all happening. ‘Good scene; bad scene’: good or bad occasion. ‘Not my scene’: That which does not interest one.
TURN ON: To use drugs; to induce a drugged, or drunken, state. To become excited or enraptured by someone or something.
Regrettably, the author is more on the uptight side of the scene when it comes to the nitty gritty, turned off by Americans on the whole and Californians specifically. Though his snark can be charming. “The people themselves are an important element in any claim to glamour, and it is here, perhaps, that the claim is most false – at least, within the dictionary definition: ‘magic, enchantment… alluring beauty or charm.’ In all honesty the people in the streets of Hollywood can rarely be said to add glamour to their environment.”
What is this? A weekly newsletter by Rosecrans Baldwin consisting of (very) short essays about beautiful things. Any books mentioned can be found in this Bookshop list. Rosecrans’s next book, Everything Now, is available for preorder.
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