Country Matters: A Personal History of Swear Words

By Richard Crasta

In this humorous and playful short book arguing against censorship of language and recounting his own evolution from repressed prude to libertarian, freewheeling slinger of juicy-Lucy words, the author suggests that sexual words, slang, and wordplay are "to be celebrated as joyous, vital, funny, juicy, the very essence of life. Man is a neutered animal without them; polite language is effete, artificial, and an unspoken admission of one's total and abject submission to the System." 

Still, in the large and growing-ever-larger vocabulary of naughty words, there is a hierarchy, which is explained with humor and wordplay in the book's central essay, "What Do You Call It? A Gentleman's Opinionated Guide to the Basic Words."

This hierarchy is personal, and has nothing to do with political correctness. The only truly "bad" words, the author suggests, are monstrosities like "birthing," "interfacing," and "modalities."

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Invisible Man Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393920984

Richard Crasta

Richard Crasta is the India-born, long-time New York-resident author of "The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel" and 12 other books, with at least 12 more conceived or in progress. "The Revised Kama Sutra," a novel about a young man growing up and making sense of the world and of sex, was described by Kurt Vonnegut as "very funny," and has been published in ten countries and in seven languages.Richard's books include fiction, nonfiction, essays, autobiography, humor, and satire with a political edge: anti-censorship, non-pc, pro-laughter, pro-food, pro-beer, and against fanaticism of any kind. His books have been described as "going where no Indian writer has gone before," and attempt to present an unedited, uncensored voice (James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Philip Roth are among the novelists who have inspired him.).Richard was born and grew up in India, joined the Indian Administrative Service, then moved to America to become a writer, and has traveled widely. Though technically still a New York resident, he spends most of his time in Asia working on his books in progress and part-time as a freelance book editor.

Book preview

Preface

Though this edition of the book was published in late January 2021, I have been fascinated by forbidden words ever since my childhood, when I knew zilch about anatomy or swear words.

But as my tongue, pen, and penis sought liberation in my seventeenth year, I started poking at the edges of taboo words. And yet, I had to be careful, defensive, sly, until 1998, when I proudly dedicated the American edition of my novel the Revised Kama Sutra (in which I used the pen name, Avatar Prabhu) to the Yoni Goddess. In other words, the Pussy Goddess: or the Cosmic Pussy that is the Goddess and Supreme God of the Universe. All this I did 20 years before Nicolas Cage’s Netflix documentary celebrated pussy.

On my novel’s dedication page, the Yoni Goddess shared honors with Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and Mahatma Gandhi. How much higher can a pussy get?

This book is dedicated to those who explode with thought orgasms at the joy of words, and especially the joy of the English language, which Shakespeare celebrated with scores of double entendres and puns, as in Hamlet’s question to Ophelia: Do you think I meant country matters? (Once I realized that the great Shakespeare delighted in using sexual puns, as in Lady, may I lie between your legs?, all my moral objections to so-called bad language—which usually was sexually celebratory language—vanished.)

What follows is that long-suppressed (by me, and by the System) and unpublished essay on words and the linguistic fascism practiced on common people by the arbiters of language.

For more on my personal history of swear words, and also those buried deep in the bowels or quaint of The Revised Kama Sutra, please read the Epilogue.

What Do You Call It? An Opinionated Gentleman’s Guide to the Basic Words

What’s in a name? And what’s in a word? Just a variable combination of letters often decided by some old men who compile dictionaries? Then why are we afraid of mere words? Why is our society at war with words that are often the natural language of the common people? Why do we classify words into such categories as polite words, base words, naughty words, taboo words, and politically incorrect words? And why are we so uneasy with fundamental words: words describing the fundament, the fount of joy, and the source of human existence?

And why did I say fount of joy, and not pussy?

Because all my life, I have wanted to be thought of as well-mannered, gentlemanly, and well-spoken; I want to be liked by women (to be hugged and preferably