New Escapologist

From the ongoing publishing sensation Dungeon Crawler Carl: “Let’s get the Hell out of here,” I said. I plotted out a quick escape, leading us into unknown territory. * Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

After our online shop crashed and burned this afternoon, it seems to be back in action. Let me know if you try to buy something and it explodes.

Thanks to Reader M for sending us this meditation on “doing nothing.” It’s significant because it was written by David Allen, someone who has devoted a career to encouraging productivity in others. He’s the guy behind Getting Things Done or GTD: All this fuss and bother about personal organization and information management and knowledge work and AI and the increasing stress levels of our culture. It’s enough to… what? How about pruning my Japanese maple this afternoon, with a fabulous bottle…

“The weekend mindset is an invention overdue for radical reinvention,” writes freelancer and Zoom jockey Richard Morgan. Most people’s Saturdays, it seems, are as busy as any weekday, while Sundays are no longer sacrosanct. The weekend was once the week’s well-earned dessert but its ice-cream has long been melted by the burdensome breach of busyness. The slop we now have can perhaps be refrozen, but it will never again be the confection of yesteryear. Besides, if we’re gradually learning to…

Reader H shares with us this letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his father, as seen in the 2021 documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time. Aged about 28 and working at General Electric, Vonnegut Jr. writes to Vonnegut Sr.: I sold my first story to COLLIER’S. Received my check ($750 minus a 10% agent’s commission) yesterday noon. It now appears that two more of my works have a good chance of being sold in the near future. I think I’m on my way. I’ve deposited my first check in a savings account, and,…

“Head of Female Worker Seen Over Office Cubicle, Standard Oil Company of California, 1976–77” by Chauncey Hare. * Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

A decade ago, we celebrated the story of a guy who sued his workplace for boring him half to death. I found myself wondering what came of him. Did he win his case? Did he find another job? Did he take his winnings and live on a yacht? The myth-busting website Snopes has part of the answer: a court in Paris ruled that Frédéric Desnard’s employer had subjected him to “moral harassment” and bullying, including deliberately subjecting him to “bore-out” at work. And: Mere boredom was far from the…

Friend Fabian writes to tell us about a German law allowing for a prisoner’s right to escape. Sure enough, Wikipedia explains: Escaping from prison isa criminal offense in countries such as the United States and Canada, and usually results in time being added to the inmate’s sentence … In Germany and a number of other countries, it is considered human nature to want to escape from a prison and it is considered as a violation of the right of freedom, so escape is not penalized in itself (in the…

August Lamm, the anti-tech artist we interviewed in the still-just-about-available Issue 18, has a new book out called You Don’t Need a Smartphone. And you know what? You probably don’t need a smartphone. Personally, I’ve made peace with having one, but it repays to rethink these things. The considered life and all. In August’s latest newsletter, she explains that publishers no longer send authors on book tours, so she’s decided to cross the USA on her own terms and at her own expense. For a…

Friend Joe sends us this painting, “Back to Nature,” by Robert Storm Petersen or “Storm P.” Look at those anonymous grey trudgers! Petersen was a pipe-smoking Danish humorist whose writings and cartoons regularly portrayed vagabonds as philosophers. Our kind of guy. * Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

In the moment, not quitting in some ways feels heroic, like you’re martyring yourself to your own capacity or grit. In fact, you’re actually limiting yourself, because you’re not walking away from things that are failing. A little bit of Escapology from Lindsay Crouse who quit her job this year and has published a book called The Case for Quitting: Staying [as opposed to escaping] is a decision, too. I’ve heard people say: “I really want to quit, but I can’t.” I think you have to ask yourself:…

I love Devi Sridhar. Yes, I fancy her but that is BESIDE THE POINT. Her recent book How Not to Die looks like self-help at first, but is in fact a brilliant call for radical change in public health (and for an expansion of what that means). It’s not entirely our fault, as individuals, that we’re unhealthy or suffer a low quality of life. It’s that public policy currently nudges us away from making the obvious healthy choices when it should be doing the opposite. And we shouldn’t be at risk of…

Thanks to contributor Andy for sending us this: * Strike back by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously mocking your useless workplace to our Workplace Woes desk.

Here are some choice cuts — with a bit of a through-line — from The Day the World Stops Shopping (2021) by JB MacKinnon: On the free will that comes with minimalism: Classical economic theory holds that consumers know what is best for themselves and act rationally in their self interest, a perspective that remains influential today. Paradoxically, it is anti-consumers, not mainstream ones, who come closest to this ideal: they are more likely to make active, informed choices … are less swayed by…

Big thanks to our distributor, Ra & Olly, for taking Escape Everything! to the GLUE Bookfair at London’s ICA this week. * New Escapologist Issue 19 is available to order NOW! NOW! NOW!

Every so often, I have to seek the recent data to back up my perennial claim that nobody really likes to work. The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report finds that 90% of UK workers are unhappy. * Strike back by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously grassing up your useless workplace to our Workplace Woes desk.

From an unmade Star Trek episode written by Jeff Lint, related to us by Steve Aylett: Lint describes a series of hypervivid visuals to be superimposed over Kirk’s sweating face — he undergoes a sort of 2001 Stargate experience unachievable by weekly television budgets of the time. McCoy sees the treacly release of enzymes in redemption orgies of polarity breakdown, all matter flushing with an eternal blush of realisation. Spock, eyebrow raised, watches fiery loops reconnecting in escalating…

Issue 20 of New Escapologist is slowly entering production (Issue 19 is still fresh and tasty) and we need some more Letters to the Editor and Workplace Woes. Workplace Woes is an opportunity for readers to anonymously blow off steam about their jobs, past or present. Letters to the Editor is a place to tell your escape story in brief, to tell us about your unusual living conditions, to recommend a book or a film to your fellow Escapologists, to suggest proven money-saving tips, or to say…

Deep inside a book called The Day the World Stops Shopping by J. B. MacKinnon, the people you and I call Escapologists are cited as anecdotal evidence by a professor of Finance called Aswath Damodaran: The idea that a less consumerist society would be better stems from the fact that everyone today knows somebody who stepped off the money-in, money-out treadmill, simplified their life and ended up happier. That’s us! We’re setting the example! We’re making them think! But would everyone stepping…

Today sees the 50th Anniversary of the first broadcast of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. The classic BBC sitcom charts the antics of a middle-aged office worker who snaps, will take no more, and escapes. Reggie was the original Escapologist and I used to watch the series over breakfast when plotting my escape. You can watch watch the series and read the original books by David Nobbs. * New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.

Brushing my teeth last night, I started to wonder about how to continue New Escapologist should it become unsustainable after Issue 21. (See the August newsletter to hear about the financial challenge). One solution is to return to the magazine’s origins and to print it for free on stolen office paper. Alas, I don’t have access to an office or its paper anymore, but it occurred to me (while flossing) that I could ask OUR READERS to steal office paper and send it to me, ideally through their…

There’s another nugget of interest in the article we discussed yesterday: Maybe we greyhairs could learn from younger people, tired of their own daily grind. A few years ago, Mika and Jesse, a millennial couple from Vancouver, moved to Japan and discovered, on the island of Shikoku, an abandoned house –or akiya — that they could move into for $300 [per year]. At least nine million akiya dot the Japanese countryside, the result of changing demographics and the mass exodus of young people to the…

There some depressing stuff in McLean’s magazine — Canada’s equivalent to Time or Newsweek — in a piece called Retirement is Dead. There’s a few ways to read that sentence. Maybe retirement is dead because the whole idea of conventional employment — the conveyor belt from school, to work, to grannification, to grave — is out of date. After all, if you bow out of the rat race with a relatively beefy escape fund while generating a small income through investment or by monetising your creative…

From The West Pier, part of Patrick Hamilton’s Gorse Trilogy: All Ryan wanted to do was escape at the earliest possible moment — to run for his life, in fact — and here was the chance. I like this. It reminds me of Hannibal Lecter seeing the glint of the tiny pin that will allow him to pick the lock of his cage and presumably to slice off the guard’s face to make a mask. Not that I’m saying Escapologists should aspire to be like Hannibal Lecter. Be like Ryan. Run for your life. * New…

RIP the People’s Parton. Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’ Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’ They just use your mind and you never get the credit It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it 9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you? It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet 9 to 5, oh, what a way to make a livin’ Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’…

The reason I post so many quotes from literature is to show that the desire to escape is neither uncommon nor certifiable. On the contrary, it’s perfectly normal and has been with us since, oh, around the time of the industrial revolution. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Here are some diary entries from 1909, written when W. N. P. Barbellion was but 19 years old. He wanted to escape the career chosen for him by his father (“journalism,” which actually meant the transcribing of local…

From a history book I’m reading: He drew charcoal portraits for extra money, but talent didn’t save him from [unpleasant work in] the tannery. After work, he would lie down in a corner of the shirt factory where some apprentices slept. He would hide beneath a sheet and try to ignore the rats as they scurried over his face. In sleep he honed his talent for escape. * New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.

To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version. Reader A writes: Hi Robert, Firstly thanks for all you do for the escapologist movement, I’ve loved reading all your newsletters and magazines since I stumbled across a copy in a Hackney coffee shop. It struck a chord. My girlfriend and I had been asking ourselves if this (corporate London etc etc) is really all there is. We were pondering our own escapes but we didn’t have the words to…

did it even make sense to compose an anti-technology manifesto on an internet-connected device? Would I be able to resist the pull of email, news, and “research” in a time of unbearable stress? No, I needed to write my book the old way. I needed to prove it was still possible. The artist and writer August Lamm — who gave us a great interview in Issue 18 — lives and works without a computer or a smartphone. That’s what her forthcoming book is about and, obviously (or perhaps not), it was written…

I just read Black Bag by Luke Kennard. It is funny and good. Don’t let its Booker nomination put you off. Just give your hands a good wash after reading it and you’ll be fine. The book’s about an actor who must wear a black leather bag over his whole body (except for his feet) after precariat desperation leads him to take work as the subject of a psychological experiment. Anyway, these quotes aren’t particularly representative of the book, but they’re nice as Escapological moments: About a job…