December Reading; “The Best Things in Life are Cheap”

It’s the holiday season, which is as good a time as any to think about the things we acquire and what they do for us. Above all of its arguments, I hope this book can function as an invitation to really savor some of the times and experiences you have this month; I’ve been working seriously on the project of having more fun with my work, and I wish us both the best success. To that end, stick around for the full post, and I've got a little poll for  us to share resources.

The Art of Frugal Hedonism

Annie Raser-Rowland with Adam Grubb

Re-reading a book that made such an impact on my early twenties has proven an interesting meditation on change. The book has stayed mostly stable - from interviews, I know that in the re-release they changed some language, updated some statistics, and downplayed the idea that “being frugal will make you thin because you walk everywhere!” However, I find my relationship to frugality has changed. In my first summer out of university, I kept a composition-notebook paper budget, and lived on $7 a day in New York City. I resonated a lot with ideas in the book about diminishing consumption, but also wasn’t really in a position to choose anything else. Almost a decade later, living with modest but consistent self-employment in a vastly more affordable city, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the habits and practices those lean years left me with, and thinking about what it means to choose them, rather than default to them.

This is where I think this book really shines - rather than a moralistic or environmental appeal to consuming less, the authors make the case for diminished consumption as a path to pleasure. The chapters almost function as interchangeable essays, little invitations to new practice; some are practical, some philosophical, some political and a few openly radical, and some may end up a bridge too far for some readers. Much of this ends up aligning with a consistent fascination of my reading lists (see The Gift and other value conversations from Fair Trade and IF WE WIN), and I think this book remains a helpful entry point into considering what you want out of what and how you consume.

RELATED READINGS

Annie Raser-Rowland - The Art of Frugal Hedonism
The Permaculture Podcast

Longtime readers know I’m a shameless promoter of the “listen to 2-3 interviews so you don’t have to read the book” approach to skimming, particularly when you’re interested in a book for its information, rather than the experience of receiving it. Obviously nothing replaces the direct experience of reading it for yourself, but if you’re weighing which book to sink your self and idle thoughts into for a while, then listening to a few people (including the author) frame the contents is a good fasttrack for approximating an idea of the contents of a given book. So I shopped around, and found that this conversation is the closest proxy for all that - a fairly representative sample of what Raser-Rowland’s worldview is and what kind of voice you can expect in the book. However, if you’d like to go off the deep end, I also found a far more candid, less organized, and altogether stranger conversation that goes beyond the contents or thoughts of the book into personal struggles, voluntary extinction, and direct quotes from an interview with a possum - you can find that here.

In both cases, I’m putting a pin to explore later in my ambivalence to Raser-Rowland’s contention in both conversations that “rather than bringing a gift to a party, you can just be an interesting person,” and that “being strange or difficult is a boon to your friends, because it gives them something to complain about.” I find myself … skeptical and unsympathetic, but also wondering why this strikes me so differently from all the readings I endlessly quote on reconsidering how we create value with each other.

JENNY OFFILL in conversation with Brit Marling
City Arts & Lectures

I’ve recommended this conversation before, and I return to it in large part because I simply haven’t heard many other conversations that consider the unintentional large-scale contraction that occurred during Quarantine as an opportunity to imagine a future with less consumption. There’s a flicker of our monthly reading in Jenny Offil’s considerations of the pleasure of a smaller life, and given that I’m so enamored of her writing, that’s more than enough excuse for me. 

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Okay, skill-sharing time: What are some of your favorite simple pleasures? Tell me in the comments, and I'll trade you