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A guidebook for cultivating the surprising joys that come from living an off-kilter life
We crave the weird-the quirky, the eccentric, the peculiar, the freaky, the far-out-because it takes us out of our normal habits of thought and perception, nullifies old conceptual maps, and propels us into uncharted regions.
Or to put it more simply: weirdness is essential to an interesting life.
In How to Be Weird, Eric G. Wilson offers fun and philosophically rich exercises for embracing all the weird in the world around us-taking aimless walks, creating a reverie nook, exploring the underside of bridges, making tombstone rubbings, finding your own Narnia, and more.
With brief digestible entries on how to make sense of the random, guidelines on how to defamiliarize familiar objects through meditation, and exercises for locating weird states and phenomena ourselves, How to Be Weird is an invitation to lean into the weird and to live a fuller life.
About the author
Author Bio: Eric G. Wilson is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University. He is the author of books
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, an LA Times bestseller;
Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away; and
Keep it Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, as well as many other books exploring connections among literature, film, and psychology.
Summary
A guidebook for beating the monotony of the everyday by purposefully cultivating the surprising joys that come from living an off-kilter life
It's all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day--moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of thought and perception, surprising us by breaking up our routines and reminding us that there's more to life than the everyday.
In How to Be Weird, Eric G. Wilson offers 99 fun and philosophically rich exercises for embracing all the weird in the world around us--taking aimless walks, creating a reverie nook, exploring the underside of bridges, making tombstone rubbings, finding your own Narnia, and more.
With brief digestible entries on how to make sense of the random, guidelines on how to defamiliarize familiar objects through meditation, and exercises for locating weird states and phenomena for ourselves, How to Be Weird is an invitation to lean into the weird and to live a fuller life.
