the encyclopedia of trouble and spaciousness

Such a posture, she notes, is a form of ‘pre-emptive surrender’.įrom Otsuchi in Japan to Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, via Fort Nelson, Tunisia and the Lacandón jungle, the 29 essays in this volume range across the globe, taking in such varied topics as: women’s rights in 10th-century Iceland the politics of country music the ‘wild year’ of 2011 the impact of San Francisco’s tech boom on the local population and the hidden geographies of the US military-industrial complex. That is a very satisfactory, humane way of transmitting information’, the leader of one alternative-community-turned-cult explained), while a second offers a powerful counter-narrative to that sizeable portion of the left (you’ve probably met some of them) whose members are ‘furiously attached to hopelessness, to narratives of despair and decline, to belief in an omniscient them who always wins and a feeble us who always loses’. Thus one essay examines the macabre degeneration of the counter-culture in late 1970s California (‘I am quite willing to break some lawyer’s legs and next break his wife’s legs and threaten to cut their child’s arm off. Indeed, some of the best pieces in this collection take a hard look at activist failings past and present. Which is not to say that Solnit is, in any sense, a Pollyanna.

And, alongside activism and geography, hope is also a key theme of this book (which, despite its title, is definitely not an encyclopedia). There are some non-fiction writers who are always interesting and informative to read, whatever the topic, but the US writer and journalist Rebecca Solnit is this and something else.Ī wonderfully lyrical writer, she is probably best known among activists as the author of the 2004 book Hope in the Dark, her brilliant meditation on why it’s ‘always too soon to go home.

The encyclopedia of trouble and spaciousness