Alain de Botton in Issue 5
The strangest thing about the world of work isn’t the long hours we put in or the fancy machines we use to get it done; take a step back and perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the work scene is in the end psychological rather than economic or industrial. It has to do with our attitudes to work, more specifically the widespread expectation that our work should make us happy, that it should be at the centre of our lives and our expectations of fulfilment. The first question we tend to ask of new acquaintances is not where they come from or who their parents were, but what they do. Here is the key to someone’s identity and esteem. It seems hard to imagine being able to feel good about yourself or knowing who you were without having work to get on with.
Alain de Botton kindly granted us an interview for Issue Five. We posted a little excerpt at the School of Life blog.
Issue 5 is now available to pre-order at the shop.
Event: “Robert Wringham and the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum”
As a piece of performance art, I am making myself available to the public, every Wednesday noontime for the next three months.
As if at the whim of a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, I will appear at Glasgow’s Kibble Palace between 12:00 and 13:00 every Wednesday until the end of May.
You’ll find me sitting near the statue of “King Robert and his Monkey”.
According to the plaque at the foot of the statue, “[Robert] was an arrogant king who was deposed by an angel, stripped of his robes, and forced to assume the role of a jester, with only a monkey for a friend.”
Come and meet me. The words “Hello, Robert” will activate me and, I’ll do one of three things:
1. I’ll casually talk with you until 13:00 (or until you leave);
2. I’ll read a single random passage from Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (the book from which I take my name);
3. I’ll tell you a short anecdote about my monkey, whose name is Daniel Godsil;
4. I’ll walk you around the main circle of the Kibble Palace, telling a made-up lie about the history of each statue. (This is the star prize. Not many people will receive the honour of this variation).
I’ll also have copies of New Escapologist with me if you’d like to buy one.
This supernatural occurrence is unsanctioned and has nothing to do with Glasgow Botanic Gardens or Glasgow City Council. Tell your friends.
Issue 5 cover
The keen-eyed among you have noticed the cover image of Issue 5 at the shop.
Well, here it is. It’s our first ever departure from the established ’emergency exit’ masthead.
The really keen-eyed among you will notice the lack of a page number for the Alain de Botton interview in the bottom right-hand corner. That’s because this image is actually a draft mock-up. It gives an idea of how the cover of the fifth issue will look though. I hope you like it.
The cover price is yet to be confirmed. To ensure your copy for £6, pre-order it here.
An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 23.
Bleedin’ ‘ek, I’m only back in ole’ Blighty!
Yes, I have returned to Britain, and Samara will join me in a month’s time, after her stint at the Scope Art Show in NYC. We’re going to live here for six months, ostensibly doing the same things we were doing in Montreal, but with the company of our Glasgow chums instead of the Pepsi-drinking weirdos of Montreal.
I flew from Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Birmingham International on Friday. I found myself unable to sleep on the plane. To occupy myself, I watched Inside Job on the inflight entertainment system and, while trying to sleep, deranged myself with questions like ‘How many airplanes have I been on?’ (I think it’s 47).
I’ve been at my parents’ house in Dudley for a few days, but I spent the whole of Monday in Glasgow, viewing eight different apartments. In the past, I’ve usually viewed two or three flats before committing to one, but since I’d made a special trip this time, I’d lined up a day of bumper-to-bumper viewings. After a run of pretty crapular ground-floor studio apartments, I finally found a decent tenement flat north of the Botanics. I move in on Monday 7th.
Being back in Glasgow was a breath of fresh air. (Not literally, of course. It smells of chips and arses). I think it is my favourite of all cities. If money weren’t an issue, I’d live in Glasgow over anywhere else in the world. I feel very at home among those sandstone tenements.
What on Earth is Coca-Cola?
A weird thing happened today. Reading a book, “Coca-Cola” and “Coke” struck me as truly odd words. There’s something disgusting about the somersault into which your vocal chords are forced when saying “Coca-Cola Coke”, as if you are choking.
I then started to doubt whether Coca-Cola even exists. I know it’s probably the most recognised brand in the whole world, but it has been so long since I’ve seen anything about Coca-Cola or thought about Coca-Cola (much less drank any of it) that another part of my brain questioned whether it was a real thing.
Why did this happen? I see three possible explanations:
1. Coke has become such a ubiquitous brand that we now no longer notice it. It has become like the sky or the concrete of the pavements we walk upon. The marketing ‘event horizon’ between maximum visibility and complete invisibility has been crossed.
2. I spent the last year in Monreal, Quebec: one of the few places in the world where Pepsi consistently outsells Coke. So true is this fact, that “Pepsi” or “Pepper” has become a mild ethnic slur for French Canadians.
3. My Escapological drive to avoid television and advertising in general has been a success. Being absent from offices where people drink Coca-Cola bought from vending machines (or “Coke machines”) and talk about Coca-Cola as if it were the only thing that gets them out of bed in the morning, is an unanticipated effect of my change in working practices.
I don’t specifically have anything against Coca-Cola. Though I usually drink water or beer in its place, I don’t find it bad to drink. As advertising goes, a high-budget Coca-Cola advert isn’t even that bad. I just haven’t thought about it in such a long time and this, I think, is a little indicator of (and testament to) the Escapological effect of waterproofing yourself against marketing and moving in a slightly different circle to the typical worker-punter. It works to the extent that I questioned the very existence of the most ubiquitous product ever promoted.
Issue 5: contents
I must apologise for the delay on Issue 5, especially to new subscribers who eagerly anticipate this issue as their first print edition. Our notion to upscale to three issues per year, instead of two, may have been a trifle ambitious.
So what’s our excuse? The house staff are extremely busy. Our arts editor, Samara, is representing her company at the prestigious Scope Art Show in New York City; typographer Tim is in Vietnam; and Sub-Editor Reggie is enjoying the London success of his concert musical, Master Flea. Alas, these absent savants are all-important in the finishing stages of a print production. After my edit, it falls to these brilliant and elven creatures to commission the artwork; re-edit, proof-read and typeset the text.
But who cares about lateness? With some excellent writers, illustrators, a new cover format, and an interview with Alain de Botton, Issue 5: The Bohemias Issue may be our best work to date. At an estimated 115 pages, it is certainly our heftiest. A couple more weeks is all we ask.
To tease you a little further, dear reader, here’s a preview of the contents:
Since it’s such a hefty issue, we may have to increase the cover price slightly. If you pre-order now though, you can secure your copy for £6.
GmBH online
One of our kind stockists, GmBH, has recently moved into online trading. Our third and fourth issues are among their stock, as well as lots of other counter-culture, arty and small-press magazines. Worth a look.
How to access any book ever written, for free
These days, I rarely buy books. They’re too much of an encumbrance for my new travel-light philosophy. Even back in my book-buying days, I managed to avoid buying a single boring academic book for my university studies. How? Because I know how to use a library properly. People are sometimes mystified by this. “They never have what I want!” is a popular complaint.
Understanding how to use a library will counter most claims that libraries are too limited in their stock. Most of them are well stocked by expert librarians whose purchasing choices are informed by clever online “current awareness” systems. Tiny parochial libraries might have modest stocks due to funding limitation but even these can work to your advantage if you use them as portals to the Interlibrary Loan system.
Use the catalogue, not the shelf. Whether you’re looking for a specific book (Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre) or have a more general request (“Something about Bad Faith“), the online catalogue is the best place to start. You can probably access this from your home Internet connection or by asking a library assistant to search on your behalf (even over the telephone) or from specially-designated terminals in the library building. The catalogue will show you precisely where the book is located and whether it is currently available for you. If the book’s already on loan, you should be able to reserve it, usually at no cost.
Ask a librarian for alternatives. If the library doesn’t own a copy of the book you want, make an official recommendation to a librarian. If the book sounds like it might be useful to people more generally, the librarian might buy a copy for the library, which you’d be able to borrow on arrival. If they remain skeptical, ask whether you can acquire it via Interlibrary Loan. There is a cost attached to this process, which they might ask you to pay. It’s up to you whether you pay this or visit a different library. Sometimes, a librarian will be able to search other libraries for you using a database like WorldCat or COPAC.
Be a member of several library systems. Your public library will be part of a wider network of libraries, to which you will also be able to borrow. For example, if you’re a member of Dudley Public Library in the British West Midlands, you’ll also be a member of the various branch libraries scattered around the borough. Your library card will work in any of these. It’s worth getting a library card, if possible, for another neighbouring public library system too (i.e. Wolverhampton Libraries as well as Dudley Libraries), though whether you can do this will depend on the geographical location of your home.
If your national library (such as the British Library in London or the Library of Congress in Washington) is within commuting distance, I recommend getting a [free] library card to this. Your national library will be the best-stocked library in your country (and if it’s a copyright deposit library, which it probably is, it will have a copy of almost every book published in the last couple of centuries).
Many universities also offer a low-cost membership scheme to members of the non-academic public. You can probably get an annual subscription to your local university for a sum of money. Check their website for details. Remember that their remit is to cater for students and researchers though, so don’t expect them to have copies of the latest Stephen King paperback (though they actually do sometimes).
The more library cards you collect, the greater access you’ll have to the world’s literature. I never felt so rich as I did when contemplating the value of the books to which I’ve had free access in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library or Montreal’s Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
Of course, you don’t even need a library card to use the library. If you can’t get borrowers’ rights in a public library, you can still use it as a reference collection. Feel free to stroll into any public library in the Western world and read as many books or periodicals as you like while on the premises. I’m not a member of Westmount Public Library or Atwater Library in Montreal but they’re among my favourite places to spend time when I’m in this city.
If all else fails, use eBay like a lending library. Buy it, read it and immediately relist it (getting your money back in the process).
This article originally appeared in Issue 4 of New Escapologist. I’m posting it in honour of the current library situation in Britain, but if you enjoyed it, please consider buying a copy of Issue 4 or one of our other publications.
Save the libraries
800 public libraries are threatened with closure in the UK. A terrible thing for Escapologists, who often use public libraries a base of operations. To all of us – Escapologist or otherwise – public libraries are invaluable.
Ages ago, in the Idler, I wrote:
A good library can be a comfortable oasis amid the hubbub of an otherwise busy city and the best sort is host to everything the urban flaneur holds dear: peace and quiet, dog-eared books, crackly old jazz records, fascinating characters lurking in every corner and haphazard furnishings liberated from innumerable closed-down gentleman’s clubs. Today’s library directors are forced to go the extra mile to make these oases all the more appealing: these days the daily papers are laid out ready for you; access is granted to the digital delights of the Internet; librarians are getting younger and more attractive and it’s all absolutely free. Many public libraries are even installing coffee and tea facilities for their punters. No wonder Ray Bradbury described these as “birthing places of the universe”. All we need now are on-site tobacconists and somewhere to get some shut-eye and we need not ever bother going home.
I really don’t want the libraries to go. There are at least an encouraging number of people coming forward to do something about it. Activism is happening everywhere, from Twitter campaigns, to celebrity action, to full library occupations and shelf-runs.
Let’s show the authorities that we still love our libraries. Most of the threatened libraries will have special events coming up and petitions to sign, so do pop into your local library and ask how you can help.
I know some of our readers are librarians. If your libraries (threatened or otherwise) would like to stock New Escapologist, get in touch and I’ll send you some complementary issues.
How TV ruined your life: Aspiration
It’s effectively a shopping channel of stuff that could have been yours, if only you’d been born in America and learned to rap instead of sitting on your arse in Taunton watching Cribs.
