The Inner Exile's Handbook
Television was invented to bring the world into the living room. It kept the promise, and then quietly reversed the direction.
Somewhere between the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the eleven-songwriter pop single, and the form that demands a certificate the government already has, a reasonable person may conclude that the world has stopped making sense.
It has not. It is working exactly as designed. That is the bad news.
The Inner Exile's Handbook is a book of essays about how the modern nonsense actually operates - and what a private citizen can do about it, which is less than he hopes and more than he thinks.
In twenty-six short chapters, it examines the industry that turned other people's grief into prime time; the spreadsheet that killed the introduction to every song; the political filter that selects not for talent but for availability; the fear economy that has never once announced a problem solved; and the language invented so that nobody has to say who did what.
And then it turns around and proposes something small: switch off the noise, read thirty pages, choose four people, do your work well, laugh at the rest - and laugh at yourself first.
This is not a rant. It is not a manifesto, it will not fix the century, and it makes no promise to change your life. It is written from the stands, with a glass in hand, by a narrator who is merciless with institutions and generous with the people caught inside them.
For readers who enjoy sharp, quotable non-fiction; who suspect they are being sold their own attention; and who would like to be talked to as adults.
One saved room is more than most people manage.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
