Journal Club
A few years ago, I made one of those pros and cons lists, weighing up whether I should stay in my tedious but stressful job, or whether I should leave and do something more interesting. The worst thing on the “leave” list was “might have to come back with my tail between my legs asking for my old job back, if nothing else works out.” In contrast, the worst thing on the “what happens if I stay” list was “may have a stroke as I’m so stressed.”
This is from one of our columnists in New Escapologist Issue 18.
Michael C is an academic who wades into the real research on our fanciful-sounding Escapological claims.
In the latest instalment of his Journal Club column, he asks if workplace stress is really bad for your health.
Hint: it is.
But the short and fascinating journey Michael takes us on is a fun one.
Proper Job
Further to yesterday’s post about Jay Griffiths, the Idler asked Jay in 2015 if she’d ever had a proper job:
I’m so glad you asked that! I was talking to a friend about this recently because she is living in a shed (and I’ve lived in a shed and the winters are brutal). We agreed that we’d endure anything rather than give ourselves over to The Man and get a proper job.
Well said.
(I don’t know if that friend is Catrina Davies, but it definitely and obviously is.)
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Take Flight
This was the calling, the vehement, irresistible demand of the feral angel — take flight. All that is wild is winged — life, mind and language — and knows the feel of air
These quotes come from Wild (2006), a travel book that proposes a rewilding of the heart, by Jay Griffiths.
Escapological? Yes:
I was following that wild call, familiar to us all: the young, the old, the sad, the curious, the footloose and all who yearn just to bugger off for a while.
She then explains that the footloose appetite is “an ancient need, made heroic in the past,” exemplified by the wanderings of knights and shamans.
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Limping
The book begins with a spectacular fall. Our protagonist has escaped prison. She has scaled the wall (we do not witness the clamber, only the fall) and then dropped thirty feet to freedom. The cost of freedom, it becomes clear, is a broken ankle, the titular astragalus bone. After an initial triumph of escape artistry, she must conduct the rest of her getaway limping.
This is from a review of Albertine Sarrazin’s Astragal (1965) in New Escapologist Issue 18.
That’s right, we review old books as well as recent ones!
The idea is that good artworks, perhaps especially books, are forever. We don’t have to live on the razor’s edge of the present, no matter what other media would seem to imply. In books, all history is our playground. That’s the whole point of writing things down really.
Rediscover the lost escape classics in our hot new issue by ordering your copy today.
Imagine an Exit
Rob Grant has died. He co-created Red Dwarf, my favourite TV comedy sci-fi thing of the 1980s and 90s. As well as the TV series, there were some fab novels.
The second novel was called Better Than Life and involved a virtual reality game that made your wildest dreams come “true” but trapped you inside them. In the real-world, meanwhile, your biological body withers and dies.
While the three main crew are trapped in the game, Kryten, the ship’s service robot, attempts a rescue mission:
In theory, leaving BTL was simple. All the player had to do was want to leave. All the player had to do was imagine an exit, and pass through it, back to reality.
Kryten had imagined his gateway easily enough, but as he was about to pass under the pink neon ‘Exit’ sign, a cafeteria materialized to his right. In the window was a handwritten card which read: ‘Dishwasher wanted.’
The cafeteria was deserted, but in the kitchen, stacked ceiling-high, were several huge towers of dirty dishes piled around a sink. Now, what kind of sanitation Mechanoid would he have been if he’d ignored those greasy, food-stained plates?
I’ll just wash a few, he’d thought. Reduce the pile a bit.
Eight months later, he was still there, still washing, still surrounded by stacks of dirty dishes. Finally he realized he’d been duped – the Game had found his innermost desire – and he’d scurried off, ashamed.
Mechanoids weren’t supposed to have desires.
It’s all there, isn’t it? The need to feel useful. The job that traps you. The technology that needs your attention. The vampiric theft of your life force. The door being open all along – so long as you want to see it.
Rest in peace, Rob Grant, whose name means to take and then give.
A great old Red Dwarf line is that “death isn’t the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn’t screw your career up the way it used to.” Well, oddly enough “stiffie” Grant’s got a book coming out in July.
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I Look for Exits
I look for exits. I mean, if you can get in you must be able to get out. I think to myself. How do you open a door that won’t open? Do you kick it down? Break it down? Set fire to it? Locksmith? Wishful thinking? Secret codes? Magic words? I can’t help feeling there’s something I ought to do.
From On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, the seven-volume literary time loop sensation currently sweeping Europe.
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