11:28:13 The Moneyless Man, a book review

If one mashes up Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854) with reality TV, you'd likely get the drift of English Mark Boyle's The Moneyless Man (2010), If that sounds snarky, consider that in one day alone before starting his year-long money fast, Mr. Boyle gives, or agrees to, some 20-odd media interviews. And for twelve months eating mostly nuts, berries, and dumpster-diving scores; Mr. Boyle keeps two links to the outside world: cell phone plus laptop, powered by a hand-cranked battery charger. Without daily blog dispatches of what it's like to live hand-to-mouth, spending not a red cent, would this be so much Descartes' tree falling in a forest without witness?

I don't "buy" into Mr. Boyle's Chicken-Little jeremiad: If we don't stop using money and adopt what he learned from "a year of freeconomic living" (skirting what I saw as doses of freeloaderism), we'll see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: monetary collapse of a consumerist society, irrevocable environmental pollution, climate change flameout, and energy bankruptcy from Peak Oil overshoot.

[book cover]

Still, I did find the narrative voice engaging, with touches of humor.

Sometimes the humor is unintentional: When Mr. Boyle begins his year of living in a donated 14-foot trailer, he has a ladyfriend, Claire. He's known her a week. Somewhere in the months of his foraging and living hand-to-mouth, he notices a fraying in the relationship. Duh?

Or the yawning contrast with the original. Thoreau lived deliberately with Nature and essayed some earned lessons about a life of purpose and challenge. He gave the world enduring literature. More prosaic Mr. Boyle chides the civilized world for wasting water on flush toilets. Why doesn't everyone dig holes for temporary composting toilets and make humanure? Boyle even has it in for babies and disposable diapers.

Mr. Boyle wrings out as much self-promotion for his freeconomy scheme as traditional and social media will grant him. Like any fanatic, Mr. Boyle believes if we discard human progress of the last few millennia--public health advances too--then we'd be living happy, idyllic lives as vegan foragers with the uncomplicated freedom of owning nothing, sharing everything. Everyone's a friend and everyone promises to "pay-it-forward."

Surely, in his personal experiment, a time or two when he shat in the woods, Mr. Boyle might have speculated it could also turn out otherwise: Everyman for himself, and as Hobbes conjectured, life is "nasty, brutish, and short."

The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2010, 206 pp., ISBN: 978-1-85168-781-7.


Read more ...
(click to enlarge image)

The Cat at Light's End

Read Charlie Dickinson's story collection, The Cat at Light's End, as an ebook in these downloadable formats:

.mobi (Kindle)
.epub (most other readers)
.pdf (for PCs)

Also, a flash fiction, "Ylena Thinks Nyet," is at Cigale Literary Magazine.



more posts

11:23:13 The Lost Art of Walking, a book review
11:10:13 The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, a book review
10:23:13 The Biker Angel
10:11:13 No Self-Serve Gas in Oregon
9:28:13 A Street Cat Named Bob, a book review
9:23:13 The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, a book review
9:18:13 Autumn Leaves
8:19:13 The Worst Car Driver & Why
8:12:13 The Gardener from Ochakov, a book review
7:25:13 Le Havre by Kaurismaki
7:20:13 This Ain't California
6:27:13 The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, a book review
5:29:13 My Linux (Mis)Adventures
5:25:13 Southern Cross the Dog, a book review
5:5:13 Russian Tumbleweed
4:16:13 "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster
3:26:13 Camera-rama
3:25:13 Moore's Law
3:13:13 Grocery Shopping 
2:28:13 Razor Blade in Moonlight
1:27:13 Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design, a book review
1:6:13 Alleys
12:9:12 White Bread, a book review
12:4:12 Update on Old-School Shaving
11:12:12 Ten Great Buys at Dollar Tree
11:6:12 My New Russian Camera
10:29:12 Leaf Day
10:2:12 The Russian Navy in New York?
9:21:12 The Righteous Mind, a book review
9:14:12 Revolution, 1989, a book review
8:23:12 Train Whistles in the Night
8:2:12 Why I've Stockpiled Light Bulbs
7:22:12 Old-School Shaving
7:16:12 Злектроника МК-52, computer de minimus
7:4:12 Ivan's Childhood by Tarkovsky
6:21:12 The Unabomber, a modern Thoreau?
6:12:12 Do the gods exist?
6:7:12 My "Retail Therapy"
5:28:12 On Taxes, We Should Go Green
5:17:12 Portland's Trash
5:6:12 The Toaster Project, a book review
4:24:12 No Seconds
4:12:12 Portland's Runaway Utility Bill
4:8:12 The Repossession, a book review
3:30:12 How I Got Published in Mississippi Review
3:18:12 Rothko
3:9:12 The End of Money, a book review
3:1:12 gutenberg.org
2:18:12 Beauty Plus Pity, a book review
2:5:12 Kirk's Castile Soap
1:29:12 Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer, a book review
1:22:12 Thirst, a book review
1:17:12 My IBM ThinkPad 1999-2012
1:11:12 String Beans
12:22:11 Spiritual TMJ
12:16:11 1Q84, a book review
12:11:11 How Portland Became Portlandia
12:1:11 The Fixie
11:20:11 Camus' Insight
11:13:11 Old & Worthy
11:7:11 Life Is Tragic
10:31:11 A Matter of Death and Life, a book review
10:25:11 Dead Letter, Email Fatigue
10:18:11 Reinventing Collapse, a book review
10:11:11 Rereading Pirsig
10:1:11 The Sisters Brothers, a book review
9:26:11 The Great Stagnation, a book review
9:16:11 Coffee, The Affordable Luxury
9:12:11 The Genius of Value
9:5:11 Death and the Penguin, a book review

home