Word: majorov
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...subtle title of How to Be have. The first and only socialist book of manners, it contains a refresher course in gentility for the comrades, who have long been taught as part of Communist dogma to regard all high manners as decadent. Its author is a Prague psychiatrist, Milena Majorová, who reminds her readers at the outset that "human beings are not polar bears -they are not satisfied with merely a female of the species and enough food...
...Majorová leaves little to the imagination in outlining how the proletariat should act at home, in offices, restaurants, trains and even on luxury liners. "Don't yawn when you are bored," she urges. "Just say politely, 'Sorry, this subject is so distant from me that I do not follow your argument.' " As for loud belching, that is "the peak of tactlessness-but if you do it, say quietly 'Pardon me' and don't go into further detail on how it happened." Though she lives in a country where bourgeois dress was long shunned...
...Comrade Majorová is also concerned about some of the polar bears who turn up on crowded Czech trams and in train compartments. "People in dirty work clothes should not get on public transport, because they will soil other people's clothes," she writes. "In the train, don't fall asleep on a stranger's knee." Nor should comradely formalities be overdone. Don't, for instance, shout the reverent Communist greeting, "Honor to labor!" to a friend who is sunbathing on the beach: such enthusiasm, she warns, "could appear ironic." More important, when greeting a woman...
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