Hello Everyone.
As you can see, we're 89% of our way to funding the project. It's taking longer than perhaps we'd all hoped, but we really are almost there. Rejoice!
The manuscript of the book itself is in a similar condition. A complete draft now exists and I'm currently trawling my notes for last things to include before a final edit. I'm quite happy with it.
As an extra feature for project supporters (that's you, that is) here are a few of the book's "deleted scenes," sections or paragraphs I cut in earlier edits either for timing or because they didn't add enough to justify their existence.
1. Glamorous Assistants
My favourite is a whimsical bit about "glamorous assistants." I originally wanted to establish a sort of magical parlance for Escapology, though it would have to be a running feature of the book if it was to work properly and my attempt to sound mystical didn't feel convincing or sustainable. Here's the cut:
Houdini was supported in a performance by close confidants such as his wife B. and his brother Hardeen, and by stage-hands hired to tighten ropes or to smash the water tank should something go wrong. In life as on stage, an Escapologist will be accompanied by glamorous assistants.
Our assistants are called The Bohemian, The Minimalist, and The Entrepreneur. They'll appear again and again in our escapes. An Escapologist must learn to trust these three assistants, for they truly marshall the way to freedom.
The three assistants help each other. They do not usually disagree. The Entrepreneur and The Bohemian may not at first seem likely bedfellows but they actually complement each other nicely. It's important to approach a business proposition with The Bohemian's spirit of adventure, integrity and appetite for good times. Likewise, The Bohemian is informed and economically supported by The Entrepreneur.
The Bohemian and the Entrepreneur both approve of The Minimalist: the wild and spiritual Bohemian aloof to materialism and The Entrepreneur a pennywise aescetist.
2. Alienation
I like how I include "natural gasses" in the things repressed at work, but ultimately the stuff about emotional repression didn't quite ring true to me. In the final book, there's still a bit about work-related anxiety dreams, which is more interesting and covers a similar point more neatly:
There's alienation to contend with when your work is dull or when you don't experience the result of your labour (either because it's intangible or because it's shipped away for use elsewhere). Perhaps that's really what we're paid for: not for time or expertise but to compensate us for the alienation.
People in service jobs--where the "product" is a sale or some kind of information exchange--suffer emotional repression. Where a blue-collar worker can switch off when she goes home and can fart and swear at work to her heart's content, the office bod must act "professionally" (even when they're not paid as professionals) and dispassionately and unemotionally when at work. We're paid to suppress personal opinions, natural gasses, and real emotions when dealing with co-workers, customers, or clients. This takes a toll on our wellbeing and happiness. We're expected to behave in certain ways and it changes us: it's hard for airline cabin crew to stop smiling when they go home and equally hard for debt-collectors not to scowl.
3. Infinite resources
This paragraph is quite powerfully written by my standards but I'm not convinced of my claim that the resources mentioned are exactly "infinite". Describing them as "resources" also rises to a neoliberal rhetoric I'm trying to avoid in the book:
The resources required to observe the tenets of the good life are almost infinite: there are plenty of free time, health, and friendship to go around. In fact, they're almost entirely self-generated (or at least generated between people), which might account for their inherent value. There is no need to compete for free time, health or friendship. They are attributes to be cultivated, not dragged from someone else's hands.
4. Nadaday
For some reason, these "nadadays" always stuck in my memory. I could probably find somewhere to mention it in my book but it's not really necessary:
In a 1999 Guardian column in which Pascal Wyse would concoct new words to satirise modern phenomena, he came up with “nadaday”: the sort of day that is covered with post-it notes and full of meetings and memos but is, in actuality, worth precisely nothing. That was over a decade ago. Now every day is a nadaday, and thanks to the near-collapse of the entire economy in 2008, people actually feel lucky to have these nadadays. But because of the unhappiness and environmental degradation that comes with nadadays we’re actually down on the deal.
5. Rope Ties
This is a whole section I cut from the introduction. As with the glamorous assistants thing, I initially wanted to give a magical parlance to Escapology and to refer back to the Houdini metaphor wherever possible. In this end, this wasn't sustainable and felt a little strained. But for what it's worth, here's me using Houini's own literary output to explain why I wrote "a book of secrets" and specifically one with this title:
Houdini wrote a number of books and articles with titles like How I Effect My Rope Ties. I always thought that a great title for a book of secrets by Houdini would have been Escape Everything!, possibly set in capital letters but definitely with an exclamation mark. The title contains an hysterical energy and lays out, for all to see, what might be the most powerful secret of them all. You too can escape anything, or rather, everything!
Such a book could have detailed the techniques behind some of Houdini's stunts, but it could also have told readers how to escape more everyday binds. Houdini himself, after all, had escaped poverty, obscurity, and the daily grind as well as the handcuffs and steamer trunks for which he was more famous.
Even before explaining the escape routes, the simple description of such everyday predicaments as traps would be helpful. Traps, as Houdini showed again and again, can be escaped. Such possibilities could have been intoxicating.
Since Houdini never thought of this, I’m giving it a bash myself. I'm no magician, but I'm the proud bearer of information on a number of useful escape tricks. I escaped the job I mentioned earlier and other binds too. As Tom Waits sang in “Raindogs”, I’ll never be going back home.
For a few years I've been editing and publishing a small-press magazine with the rather unwieldy and eccentric title, New Escapologist. It seeks to bring back Houdini's optimism that no set of proverbial handcuffs are uncrackable and no metaphorical jailhouse unbreakable. It encourages the reader to think of today’s problems as traps and, even better, traps that can be escaped. The book you hold in your hands is a direct result of that enterprise: the distilled and exquisite elixir of six years of thinking like an Escapologist.
Under the right circumstances, jobs can be quit, obligations declined, and the hedonic treadmill, if you so wish it, ground to a halt. Let us be like Houdini. Let us study the traps and learn how to escape them, with good humour and a spirit of challenge and adventure.
All for now. Maybe I'll give you some more offcuts as I beaver through my final edit, if they're not too embarrassing.
Remember, you can always contact me by posting comments to these shed posts, by saying hello on Twitter, or by emailing me. You can also join the New Escapologist mailing list if the Shed updates simply aren't enough.
Finally, tell your friends about this book if you think they'll benefit from it. We curently have 333 pledgers and need just 50 more for Unbound to publish the book.
Happy Scarpering,
Rob