The Downward Spiral by Whitney Foutz Of all the literary opportunities offered by the Virginia Festival of the Book last weekend, I chose to spend an afternoon discovering the hows and whys of writing a book about toilets. The title of Julie Horan's speech, "Researching the Porcelain God," immediately captured my attention, giving me visions of magnificent toilet-deities. Horan's presentation of her book, The Porcelain God, left me with all the practical knowledge of toilet-related innovators, etymology, and social evolution I will ever need to know. Horan's career as a flight attendant introduced her to commodes of all nationalities and first sparked her interest in toilets. When she returned home with tales of world travel, Horan found that her friends and family were more interested in her descriptions of exotic toilets than her photographs of the Taj Mahal. Horan then began to think about history and social evolutionfrom a more common standpoint, through mundane objects, such as the toilet. After all, Horand contends, civilization really began not with the first written word, but with the first toilet; once man learned to manage his waste, he could settle down in one place. Horan presented a brief outline of the toilet's history, beginning with the great public latrines of Rome. For a hefty fee, immodest Romans would sit for hours in elaborate, mosaic-tiled toilet-houses discussing politics and social events. During the medieval ages, castles came equipped with troughs leading into the surrounding moat. This sea of filth was an integral part of the castle's defense. The esteemed Sir John Harington, godson of Queen Elizabeth, is credited with inventing of the first flushing toilet. Apparently, the queen was intimidated by the audacity of Harington's design and banished him from court. Fortunately for us, Harington was finally able to convince Her Majesty to allow him to build her a toilet, which she grew quite fond of. Horan went on to explain that for the people of Elizabeth's day, the chamber pot was the receptacle of choice. Chamber pots came in myriad of fashionable designs; a popular style in England during the early 1800s was a flashy little number with Napoleon's visage on the inside. The common method for cleaning a chamber pot was simply to empty it out the window onto the street. Pedestrians unfortunate enough to be caught under such a window could sue the perpetrator. King Louis XIV used a close stool, a chamber pot with a cushy velvet seat, for his daily business; he liked to conduct meetings with government officials from "the best seat in the house." image courtesy of Julie Moran In early America, the privy, or outhouse, soon rose to prominence. At nearby Michie Tavern, the privy came equipped with ropes hanging above each seat for drunken patrons to rescue themselves if they were unlucky enough to fall into the dark hole. Today toilet afficionodos can visit this stellar three-seated privy. Fearless "nightmen" were paid high salaries for cleaning out cesspools. The creative juices of the Industrial Revolution, however, spurred the invention of the vacuum wagon, a more pleasant alternative. The great British toilet innovator of the twentieth century, Thomas Crapper, introduced porcelain, friendlier than chilly cast iron, as a new toilet medium. American soldiers during World War I noted Crapper's trademark on British toilets and began referring to a visit to the lavatory as "going to the crapper" or "taking a crap." Horan described one of her biggest challenges in writing The Porcelain God as finding polite words for, well, shit. Julie Horan's book has taken her to "The Oprah Winfrey Show," local news, and recently, a plumber's convention in Fredericksburg. "The plumbers loved it," she said. I loved her speech too; I'll never look at a certain aspect of my daily life the same way again.

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