‘On Cussing’ and the writer we lost
Katherine Dunn, best known for her cult favorite ‘Geek Love,’ died in 2016
In general, I am not a fan of posthumous book releases, but I am making an exception in the case of “On Cussing” by Katherine Dunn.
Dunn, who died in 2016, was the author most famously of “Geek Love,” a novel about which I have enthused in this space multiple times. It’s the story of the Binewskis, a circus “freak show” family created by father Al Binewski by exposing mother “Crystal” Lil Binewski to radioactive isotopes to alter the genes of her gestating children.
The novel is narrated by Olympia “Oly” Binewski. Oly is an albino hunchback dwarf and the least “special” of the bunch — at least when compared with conjoined twins Elly and Iphy; Arty the Aqua Boy, who has flippers for hands and feet and performs in a tank; and little Chick, who appears normal but possesses telekinetic powers.
Some of you are reading that description and thinking this isn’t the book for you. Fair enough, but for others it’s become a treasured classic. I am one of those others.
“On Cussing” is derived from a lecture Dunn gave at the Pacific University Masters of Fine Arts Program in Writing, and it’s been published by Tin House with a foreword by filmmaker and Dunn friend Gus Van Sant. Proceeds from the book will go to scholarships for female writers.
Cussing is Dunn’s overarching term for various sub-forms, including obscenity, profanity and vulgarity. The book explores how cussing works, what it does to our bodies when we hear it and the various purposes behind cussing.
As a fan of both Dunn and cussing, I am an ideal target for this book. Much to Mother Biblioracle’s chagrin, when my writing is not constrained by the dictates of a family newspaper, one may find cuss words sprinkled liberally throughout my work. (In all other ways my biggest fan and supporter, Mother Biblioracle did ask why there had to be so many swear words in my novel, “The Funny Man.” The protagonist is a stand-up comedian, Mom. It’s the lingua franca.)
A liberal use of profanity does not mean careless use of profanity. “On Cussing” is perceptive about the utility of cussing as a tool to vent or threaten or even bless the recipient of the swear. A single cuss word can have amazing flexibility, as demonstrated in a famous scene in the television show “The Wire,” during which detectives Moreland and McNulty utter variations of the F-word to convey their reactions to finding a missing bullet fragment at a crime scene.
Although public cussing has become much more common — whether on cable television or from the current occupant of the White House — for me, the near ubiquity of these words has done little to diminish their power from when I first heard them uttered on a grade-school playground. Dunn’s book provides insight into why this will always be true.
It’s important to remember that not cussing isn’t confined to George Carlin’s seven dirty words. Some cussing is literal cursing, as in an example Dunn uses: “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”
Personally, I doubt the existence of both heaven and the devil, and yet the curse had me pondering for a good 10 minutes the impact of what it would be like to be on the receiving end of it.
Dunn was famously working on a novel about boxing for years. She never completed it, which suggests this may be the last we hear from her.
And to that I say: (Expletive deleted). John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”