The first "asshole" in print was Norman Mailer's in The Naked and the Dead, which appeared in 1948 and channeled the language of World War II servicemen. Geoff Nunberg charts the life of the word to its ubiquitous present. Over time, the word has acquired a unique definition an asshole is not a cad or a rogue or phony, though assholes may be all of these. And because it is a dirty word, a vulgarism that we pretend does not belong to us, it passes by without self-conscious explanation or affect. It's a very pure reflection of our times and collapsing culture precisely because we pay so little attention to it. Until now.
