Why Jack Reacher Doesn't Cuss

A few words from Lee Child about writing and profanity

Hello, hungry people.

Just the other day, my lovely wife asked: “Why I have been cussing so much lately?”

Truth be told, she added an expletive in there, but I’m trying to avoid profane language at Bob’s Diner (for today anyway) so I sanitized her quote.

But we both knew the cause for her increased cussing: ALL THE AWFUL STUFF THAT’S GOING ON OUT THERE AND HOW IT SEEMS TO GET WORSE EVERY DAY AND HOW ELSE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO VENT OUR ANGER FOR GOODNESS SAKE?

I wrote that in ALL CAPS because that’s the preferred typography of the guy excreting most of the awful stuff, the same guy who, last week, dropped the F-bomb on live TV.

This was supposedly the first time a president has said that word in public, not counting the time Joe Biden, unaware that the microphone was on, told President Obama that passing the Affordable Care Act was a BFD. Or the time George Washington told his father: “F**k yeah, I chopped down that cherry tree.”

***

There’s a whole lot of profanity here on Substack.

Indeed, one of my favorite newsletters (The Alt Media) could not be written without cuss words. Vast tonnages of cuss words. So many cuss words that after reading it I have to go wash out my own mouth with soap.

One explanation for why so many Substack writers go overboard with profanity: Many of us are reformed journalists. We once worked at newspapers. Newspapers had—and still have—strict rules prohibiting cuss words, the worst words anyway, and we’ve just been getting all that pent-up profanity out of our systems.

Hmmm, maybe that’s how newspapers could try to reclaim their millions of lost subscribers—by ditching those quaint Victorian rules about profanity and running headlines that cuss up a blue streak. But I’m afraid that horse has already left the gosh-darn barn.

***

Yes, everyone seems to be cussing more these days — except Jack Reacher.

Like so many others, I’m a big fan of the books by Lee Child (now co-authoring with his brother Andrew.) As badasses go, he’s the baddest. Reacher, that is. Not Lee.

Lee, a longtime acquaintance, is an urbane, gentlemanly fellow who, aside from a tussle with a cab driver in New York City a few years back (a whole ‘nother story) does not at all resemble the human wrecking ball that is Reacher except when it comes to a rapier-like sense of humor applied with great frequency and deftness.

He’s funny as hell, in that reserved Brit style that seems to make it all the more funny and effective.

You would think that Reacher, given the gnarly situations in which he consistently finds himself and being the ultra-tough guy that he is, would occasionally let loose with an expletive or two. Because that’s what too many tough-guy heroes do.

But Lee won’t let bad words spew forth from Reacher. When it comes to talking trash, Reacher is a choirboy. Refreshing? Heck, yeah.

This is especially evident in the dialogue of the Reacher books. There are plenty of occasions, when facing off against an opponent who’s verbally insulting him, that Reacher could toss off a few choice words of his own. Most writers would go that route. Just because they can.

But instead of letting his hero wallow in the mud-slinging, Lee employs what has become a trademark line:

“Reacher said nothing.”

Restraint is a powerful thing.

***

Given the current cussing climate, I checked in with Lee to ask why he chose not to let cuss words come out of Reacher’s mouth. He emailed this:

“As a longtime cusser myself, working and living in a cuss-heavy environment, I, like other authors, am forced to recognize that cussing is not just an occasional bad word, but an endless poetic stream of them, verb forms, noun forms, adverb forms, adjective forms, all in the same short sentence. And then again in the next, and so on. Thus, unless the book is to be two thousand pages long, the author will choose, select, and curate, which gives the included words undue and unrepresentative weight. So I chose to use none, rather than an unrealistic selection.

“Also, I understood that in the military, the officer class never cusses in public, leaving that stuff to the enlisted men. Honor, tradition, etc. I was always conscious that Reacher is a knight errant, hence a knight originally, i.e. an officer, so that his cuss-free narrative would help characterize him.

“And third, I was aware that plenty of readers don't like to see that stuff written down. Which has been borne out in practice. I have had literally tens of thousands of letters and emails thanking me for ‘not using cuss words.’ I have literally never had a message asking me to put them in. So purely commercially, I feel it was correct to omit them, and the first two reasons make me feel a little less meretricious about the decision.”

To which, I can say nothing.

Except for, you guessed it, Today’s Poll:

Sorry, I’m no Jack Reacher. See you next time.