21st-Century Yokel
By Tom Cox
A nature book, but not quite like any you’ll have read before
Publication date: November 2017
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The Plight of the Bumble Bees linoprint
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Out Wearing Your Best Tuxedo
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Hair Salon
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Tinner's Rabbits (Celtic Hares)
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The Tickling to Death of Jesus
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God's First Tree
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Shipley on the Beanbag
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Otters
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Name a character
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In Cahoots (The Bear and Shipley)
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Dartmoor Folklore Guided Walk
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George and Friends
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The Assassination of Winnie the Pooh
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21st-Century Yokel is the book that, as someone entrenched in a love of the countryside, I’ve been waiting a decade to write - maybe longer. It’s not quite a nature book, not quite a humour book, not quite a family memoir, not quite folklore, not quite social history, not quite a collection of essays, but a bit of all seven.
People who’ve read my recent books about my cats - which are in truth often about lots of other subjects, besides cats - will hopefully get similar enjoyment from it but get something a little bit broader and more muscular out of it too. It’s the restless, sometimes dark beast I could feel ferociously trying to punch its way out of my last cat book, and in order to give the restless beast the space it needed I decided not to try to sell it on a synopsis and sample chapters, as I had with previous books, but to let it take me where it needed to go, without commercial influence. I wanted it to be what I needed it to be, first and foremost, not what a sales team needed it to be.
The result is a book that explores the way we can be tied inescapably to landscape, whether we like it or not, often through our family and our past, and goes deep into ties of this nature in my own life. It contains owls, badgers, ponies, beavers, otters, bats, bees, scarecrows, dogs, ghosts, my loud excitable dad and, yes, even a few cats. It’s full of local folklore - the ancient kind, and the everyday kind - and provincial places and small stuff, but in a curious way what has emerged from that is something broader and bigger and more definitive than my other work.
I am aware that I could have approached 21st-Century Yokel in a different way: forced it into a neater, more marketable concept, but I felt that would have made for a less natural collection of writing, and one where I challenged myself less, and found out less about who I am. Instead, I think the book has a lot in common with the country walks I was on when I composed much of it: it’s bewitched by fresh air, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless, sometimes foolish, prone to a few detours, but always reaches its intended destination. As a non-fiction writer, all my books are true, but this one is somehow a bit truer, and it’s been by far the most difficult and enjoyable and painful and satisfying I’ve ever written.
Praise for 21st-Century Yokel:
‘Tom Cox is an enchanting companion in this modern romp through treasured landscapes. I laughed and learned on every page’ Tristan Gooley, author of The Natural Navigator and The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs
‘21st-Century Yokel is simultaneously the funniest and saddest book about the modern countryside that I know. But no surprise there, because Tom Cox is THE soulman of British literature’ John Lewis-Stempel, author of The Running Hare
‘A wonderful, witty and moving collection of essays that, together, meander somewhere between nature writing, memoir and quiet polemic. As ever, Tom Cox’s musing and meditations are profound and playful, reflective and seriously readable, riffing on the difficulties of locating bat detectors in Argos one moment and painting heartbreaking eulogies to his Nan the next. A storyteller in entrancing form’ Rob Cowen, author of Common Ground
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Tom Cox
Tom Cox is the author of eight previous books, including the Sunday Times top ten bestseller The Good, The Bad And The Furry and Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain's most inept golf professional, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award in 2007. Tom lives in Devon and writes about - amongst many other subjects - nature, folklore, music and books on his voluntary subscription website, having quit writing for traditional media outlets entirely in 2015. He also hosts a monthly radio show on the experimental rural radio station Soundart and does live rural storytelling tours around the UK.
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I like to climb Yarner Beacon on a clear day, gaze several miles into the distance towards the sea, and try to pick out the location of the footpaths I’ve walked, which, after nearly three years of living here, is almost all of them. I once previously made the mistake of moving to an exciting new part of the British countryside and not immediately investigating every bit of it forensically on foot and I don’t intend to make the same error again. From up here I’m always amazed at the way all the threads connect, their shimmies and jinks and thrusts being disguised when you’re beneath hilltop level, in the thick of it. It could be compared to the moment when, having only previously travelled through London by tube, a person explores the city at ground level on foot and realises the unexpected interconnectivity of the stations, their surprising proximity to one another. So many of the paths here in south west Devon are of a hidden nature: sunken lanes that were already old in Saxon times, created by landowners digging ditches at the boundaries between their properties and piling earth into continuous banks on their own sides. These holloways feel impossibly solid when, as a walker, you’re bracketed by their banks, below the bulk of the land, in an eerily quiet semi-subterranean shale, fern, mud and moss world.
In winter this countryside is a totally different colour to Norfolk’s: reddy brown and green, as opposed to grainy brown and muddy grey. Rich rain-sodden earth and leaf mulch provide the reddy brown; plentiful moss, resilient fern and lichen add back-up greens on the borders of fields and meadows that stay more emerald luminous in the cold months than any other fields and meadows I’ve known. There is a strong argument in favour of every season here: autumn for its crunchy lysergic coppers and golds, its sunlit spiderwebs and sudden forgotten woodsmoke rush, summer because summer here is just dizzying with all the possibile ways it offers to fill your time. But in winter as the land strips itself back it shows you new secrets and you feel like you’re getting a glimpse into something special behind everything else: intangible, ghoulish, a necessary dark pigment on the edge of the land of the living. On a steep rocky holloway leading down from the hamlet of Aish the leaf curtain has fallen back to reveal a ruined barn I never knew was there.
- 14th April 2020 Notebook: subscriber list closing and final manuscript delivered!
I delivered the final edited manuscript of my latest book, Notebook, today. If you'd like to order a special first edition with your name in the back as a supporter, the list closes on April 20th: https://unbound.com/books/notebook/
You can read a little more about the book here: http://tom-cox.com/writing/notebook/In other news, the paperback of Ring The Hill will be published this week (https…
20th March 2020 Notebook: the cover!Hello lovely 21st-Century Yokel supporters,
I’m so pleased to be able to show you Clare Melinsky’s cover design for my new book, Notebook, which will be published by Unbound in September.
I know it’s a very difficult time for many people right now, but if you would like to pledge for a special edition hardback of Notebook, with your name printed in the back of the book, the deadline is April…
4th March 2020 NOTEBOOK AND HELP THE WITCHDear 21st-Century Yokel subscribers,
I know some of you might have already purchased my debut fiction collection Help The Witch, but if not - or if you'd like the book for a friend - I wanted to let you know that I'm selling the remaining hardbacks direct at the moment (after these are gone, only the paperback will be available). All of these are available for cover price plus tracked postage,…
15th August 2019 NOTEBOOK: a new book by meHi,
Thanks again for your support on 21st-Century Yokel. I wanted to let you know about my next book, NOTEBOOK, which has gone up for funding. I'd be delighted if you could help make it a reality. You can read a little bit more about it here: https://unbound.com/books/notebook/
There are also lots of stationery-related pledge reward goodies available.
(Apologies if you already got this update…
9th June 2019 Ring The Hill, the follow up to 21st-Century Yokel, is now complete!Hi everyone!
I thought you might like to know that I am delivering my final edit of Ring The Hill, my non-fiction follow up to 21st-Century Yokel, tomorrow morning, and wondered if you would like to see one of my mum's linoprints for the book (she has done thirteen in total, and the attached is possibly my favourite).
Also, in case you didn't know, for anyone who might be still thinking…
1st April 2019 Ring The Hill: the coverI'm absolutely delighted to be able to reveal Clare Melinsky's amazing front cover for Ring The Hill. Clare came up with a wonderful cover for 21st-Century Yokel but I think she has outdone herself here. If you'd like to find out more about the book - which is a sister book to Yokel, although not exactly a sequel - or pledge for a special edition, you can do so here: https://unbound.com/books/ring…
3rd January 2019 Some background about the artwork in 21st-Century Yokel and Help The WitchHello! I thought those who'd helped fund 21st-Century Yokel and Help The Witch (big thank you to all of you again!) might be interested to read this piece I just wrote, which gives some background to the art my mum provided for the books: http://tom-cox.com/writing/the-magic-room/. I'm also giving away a few of her prints to new subscribers to my site via paypal or Gocardless. The subscription links…
26th November 2018 Ring The HillHi again! A couple of people who pledged early on Ring The Hill mentioned there was no link to signed copies. Just to let everyone know: they are very much available, and this link should work: https://unbound.com/books/ring-the-hill/. There is also the option to upgrade if you pledged for a non-signed one. Look out for a few new pledge rewards on the page in the coming days. HUGE THANKS to everyone…
21st November 2018 NEW BOOKHello. Thank you so much again for pledging for 21st Century Yokel. I wanted to let you know that my new book, Ring The Hill, is now up for funding: https://unbound.com/books/ring-the-hill/. It's another "nature and beyond" non-fiction book, and I hope people who enjoyed 21st Century Yokel will enjoy it in a not dissimilar way. All the best! Tom
24th September 2017 21st Century Yokel Walking Diary 2: Finding The Source Of The River Dart19th September 2017 21st Century Yokel Walking Diary 1: Haldon Hill6th June 2017 Q&A Between Readers, Me And My Local SquirrelLouise King (Facebook): Has the process of writing this new book altered how you experience walking through the countryside?
Tom: It has, especially if I define “writing this new book” as beginning in 2008, when I started to walk a lot in Norfolk, where I was living at the time. I am quite leggy and have always been a fast walker but in recent years have learned to be better at listening…
17th May 2017 Some Thoughts About The Writing Of 21st Century YokelNow I've completed 21st Century Yokel, I've written a piece about some of the creative decisions I made during its creation, and why I chose to publish with Unbound. You can read the full piece by following this link, but here is an excerpt...
As I began to write 21st Century Yokel, I could see other potential commercial decisions ahead of me that had nothing to do with whether or not the book…
These people are helping to fund 21st-Century Yokel.
View moreLindsay Ashford
JULIE RICHARDS
Cat McCabe
Tom Cox
An anonymous donor
John Ferguson
Caroline Chapman
Drew Webster
Gretchen Woelfle
Karen Selley
Stuart Heritage
Haley Michael
Suzanne Bertolett
June Russell
Tom Cox
Danielle Harris
Nat Delaney
John Mitchinson
jason stewart
Isabelle Conneely
Sheryl McGlamery
Mary Costello
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