From The Daily Beast
‘Ascent of the A-Word:’ The Beauty of the Indispensable Vulgarity
By Malcolm Jones
We are taught that there is no such thing as a Theory of Everything, and that we should beware of anyone nutty enough to claim that you can reduce reality to its gist with one handy explanation-philosophy-catchphrase. But now comes Geoffrey Nunberg with Ascent of the A-Word, a marvelous book that explains so much so well that it’s tempting, really really tempting, to claim that Nunberg has explained everything....
A noted linguist and former chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, Nunberg examines the word’s history (born in World War II, entered print for the first time in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead), the words it supplanted (cad, bounder, heel), and the very special place it occupies in the culture. An impolite vulgarism that has rudely elbowed its way into polite discourse without losing its air of impoliteness, asshole fills a gap. Your mother might not use the word, might frown if you do, but if someone cuts her off in traffic and you call that driver an asshole, chances are she’s not going to call you out.