Mae West vs Mailer (damnit, just read the whole article!)

For many years, the filthiest word in English was “fuck.” Even the dauntless Partridge had to use “f*ck.” (In Norman Mailer’s 1948 war novel, “The Naked and the Dead,” the G.I.s use “fug.” In what may be an apocryphal story, Mae West, meeting Mailer at a party, said, “Oh, you’re the guy who can’t spell ‘fuck’!”)

- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

Classic lingo-nerd-fest on English and its uses, Bosniak smack-talk, and one use of 'conciseness' where it ought to have been 'concision'.