Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life

by Michael Foley

It has always been difficult to appreciate everyday life, often devalued as dreary, banal and burdensome, and never more so than in a culture besotted with fantasy, celebrity and glamour. Yet many writers, artists, film-makers and photographers have celebrated the ordinary life around them, and many philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists and neuroscientists have offered insights into the difficulties and rewards of paying attention to the here and now. With characteristic wit and earthiness, Michael Foley - author of the bestselling The Age of Absurdity- draws on the work of these artists and thinkers, and encourages us to delight in the complexities of everyday psychopathology. With astute observation, Foley brings fresh insights to such things as the banality of everyday speech, the madness and weirdness of snobbery, love and sex, and the strangeness of everyday objects and the everyday environment, such as the office. It is all more fascinating, comical and mysterious than you think.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Self Help, Unfinished, Psychology

336 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2012

About the author

Originally from Killavullen, Co Cork, Michael Foley has written Kings of September, winner of the 2007 BoyleSports Irish Sportsbook of the year. He also ghostwrote Harte: Presence Is the Only Thing, the autobiography of Tyrone gaelic football manager Mickey Harte, shortlisted for the 2009 William Hill Irish Sportsbook of the Year.

Winner of the GAA’s McNamee Award in 2008 and shortlisted for Sports Journalist of the Year in 2003, he is acting sports editor and GAA correspondent for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times. This is his third book. He currently resides in Macroom, Co Cork.

Reviews

[Emma Sea · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I like aspects of the book, this guy's a smug jackass!

In evidence:

In sex women are largely guided by their sensible bodies but men are driven crazy by their feverish minds. Men love to think and talk about sex; women enjoy it while it lasts, if they can, and have little interest in pre-match build-up or post-match analysis. (p. 186)


Yes sir, you're completely right. There's about 3.5 billion women on the planet and none of them think about sex at all unless they're actually being fucked. We don't fantasize about it, read about it, write it, draw it, laugh about it, discuss it, wonder how it went or how it could be better, or plan for the next time.

And women can never have sex with other women, because of course neither party thinks about sex unless they're already having it. It's like an anti-matter Mexican standoff. *shakes head* Very sad.

We all just enjoy it (if we can). While it lasts. Sensibly.

I wanted to talk about how the author discusses at the beginning of the book how he rejects Cartesian duality, and sees humans rather as embodied beings, and then turns around and reproduces the classic men = mind, women = body Cartesian binary! But. I. just. can't.

There shall be no more of my time and energy spent on this man.

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

يبدو أن هناك شيئاً ما يصعب فهمه في الحاضر بطبيعته. فلا يوجد شيء يصعب فهمه أكثر من الواضح ظاهرياً، ولا يوجد شيء تصعب رؤيته أكثر من الماثل أمام العين مباشرة. والحاضر الذي نحياه كل يوم أكثر مراوغة. وقد عبر الروائي جورج بيريك عن هذه المشكلة ببلاغة: "علينا أن نشكك في العادة"
ولكن هذا هو الأمر، فنحن معتادون عليها. نحن لا نشكك فيها، ولا هي تشكك فينا، ولا يبدو أنها تشكل مشكلة، بل نعيشها دون تفكير، وكأنها لا تحمل في داخلها أسئلة ولا إجابات، وكأنها لا تحمل أي معلومات. وهذا لم يعد حتى تكييفاً، بل إنه تخدير. فنحن ننام طيلة حياتنا في نوم بلا أحلام. "ولكن أين حياتنا؟ أين جسدنا؟ أين فضاءنا؟"

إن أحد أسباب هذا النوم هو التصور السلبي للحياة اليومية باعتبارها مملة وكئيبة إلى الحد الذي يجعل من الأفضل إغلاق العينين والأذنين والعقل. إن التجارب اليومية الرئيسية هي الإخفاء والتكرار والابتذال والرتابة وعدم الحدث الذي يقاوم التمثيل والأهمية، وعدم القدرة على دخول التاريخ أو تشكيله في دراما مرضية - وكل هذا يمكن أن يجعل الحياة اليومية تبدو كئيبة وتافهة وبلا معنى وثقيلة وغير مرضية. في النهاية تبدو وكأنها سجن مفتوح يحرم نزلاءه البائسين من الحياة الحقيقية في مكان آخر ويجبرهم على الهلاك، ليفقدوا يومًا بعد يوم هويتهم وإرادتهم، فقد حُكم عليهم بالشيخوخة والموت دون أن يعيشوا أبدًا.

إن هذا الاحتمال مرعب ويخلق حاجة ساحقة ليس للاهتمام بالحاضر ولكن للهروب منه، مؤقتًا على الأقل، من خلال وسائل الترفيه والسفر والحفلات والكحول والمخدرات أو الجنس. لكن الهروب من الواقع لا ينجح. وسرعان ما يعود الهارب إلى السجن، أكثر اكتئابًا من ذي قبل، ومن المرجح أيضًا أن يكون بلا مال، ويعاني من صداع الكحول والإرهاق ويعاني من الشعور بالذنب والعار والخوف والأمراض المنقولة جنسياً.
.
Michael Foley
Embracing the Ordinary.
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Dierregi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most of the other reviewers, I bought this book after having enjoyed The Age of Absurdity. I was expecting the "other side" of disappointment, some witty tips and thoughts on how to be happy leading our ordinary lives.

What I found was endless mentions of Joyce and Proust and how well they managed to describe everyday life. Having tried several times to tackle both authors and failed miserably, I am not in the position of agreeing with Foley. Not necessarily because I think he is wrong, but mostly because I do not share his taste in literature, which takes us far away from lessons on how to embrace the ordinary.

In any case, I doubt Joyce or Proust could be described as "ordinary", nor could their books. Pushed by Foley's words I even tried (again) to tackle "Swann's way", the most accessible part of the "Search", but despite age and maturity, I still find the long, winding sentences and their content excruciatingly boring.

Therefore, Foley's book offered me very little food for thought, sounding more like an erudite essay about past authors, rather than a clever source of reflexion, as The Age of Absurdity was.

I would not recommend, unless you actually read and enjoyed Joyce and Proust and think you gained valuable insight form either or both. But then again, if you actually did, you probably do not need to read this book.

[Mirjam · Rating 1 out of 5]

In sex women are largely guided by their sensible bodies but men are driven crazy by their feverish minds. Men love to think and talk about sex; women enjoy it while it lasts, if they can, and have little interest in pre-match build-up or post-match analysis. (p. 186)

Naw man I think it's just that you haven't been able to satisfy a woman in bed.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comes several years after reading The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy - another 5 star review. Makes me question why I left it so long. Time, I guess.

As the title suggests, this book is all about finding joy in the ordinary. Primarily, by using the works of Proust and Joyce - especially early in the book - but it does settle down into distinct themes. Section 5 is possibly the finest writing -

The City, The Office and the Home. One thing leads to another - the city details Flaneurs, Urban Exploration, Psychogeograpgy and works of other artists - street photographers, street painters. George Shaw from Tile Hall, for example.

The Office - how to get through meetings. The characters you meet. How Office reception areas are designed to subtly belittle you. The joy of the stationary cupboard.

The Home - The only place you can be yourself - a lunatic asylum and sanctuary. Citing showering as an example of being free - singing nonsense to your hearts content.

I can see the reason for some of the negative reviews here - and the quote most frequently represented is crass/trite but only represents a tiny section of the book. A joke/observation that failed to land - which is the risk with any joke.

The final chapter jokingly demands the "Centre for Appreciation of Everyday life" to be created. An art centre showing the works of Mike Leigh, the photographs of Walker Evans, mugs and T-Shirts with the following inspirational quotes;

Nothing is less known than what seems familiar
The ordinary is always the exceptional in disguise
The same is never the same
Anonymity is divinity
Everything happens when nothing is happening
Silence is the eloquent voice of god
Immerse to transcend
detach to engage
Awaken to dream
Be odd to get even
Be secret to be open
SUBVERT THE QUOTIDIAN BY SLYLY EMBRACING IT

So much to thing of there and that is a single page out 330.

The reason for the high rating? - its wise but hilarious and often a "Design for Life". Even the references at the end of the book are worth reading, as many joys live there. Embracing the Ordinary is a book that stays with you long after you've turned the final page. It serves as a gentle reminder to slow down, savor the present, and find beauty in the ebb and flow of everyday life. Foley's writing is a testament to the power of embracing the ordinary and finding profound meaning in the seemingly insignificant moments.

I could read it again, the instant I put it down.

[Martin]

Quotes significant to me:

1)
"Seneca: 'It is characteristic of a great soul to scorn great things and prefer what is ordinary.' Marcus Aurelius was even more positive: 'Manifestly, no condition of life could be so well adapted for the practice of philosophy as this in which chance finds you today!'" [p9]

2)
"Christian devaluation of the here and now and emphasis on the hereafter." [p9]

3)
"...Heidegger supported Hitler and Sartre supported Stalin..." [p10]

4)
"Painters in Holland took the hint and abandoned not only religeous subjects but also historical, military and classical themes to concentrate instead on the profane glory of everyday life, and in doing so ushered in the Dutch Golden Age." [p17]
...
"...Spanish militarism and pomp and the Spanish Catholicism and the Inquisition." [p18]
...
"Where did it go wrong? Oh, the usual. The Dutch began to take freedom for granted and to interpret their good fortune as evidence of superiority - the bourgeois delusion." [p19]

5)
"Both fell in love with servants (Proust with a chauffeur and Joyce with a chambermaid). And both lived with uneducated women who never read their books..." [p28]

Any parallels in my choices of partners!?

6)
"LH wants new experience and RH a new way of seeing." [p35]

[Alistair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did enjoy this about appreciating the pleasures of the everyday .
The champions of the everyday that the writer refers to are mainly James Joice and Marcel Proust but he casts a wide net to also include painters such as Cezanne and Vermeer and to include Nicholas Baker and Alice Munro .The moral of the story is that one should live in the present and not regarding the present as a stop gap on the road to better things or a vantage point to look back at the past .

This not the most original idea but Michael Foley has a funny turn of phrase and is an original observer himself . The book covers different aspects of everyday life such as work , sex , language , humour , status and snobbery .

This quite an easy read and manages to be cuttingly intelligent and wise without descending into the cliches of the American self help genre .

I can recommend " Why Modern Life Makes It So Hard To Be Happy " by the same author .

[Denise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyed this guy talking about his book much more than reading it; far too pretentious and pompous for my liking : (

[Mary Egan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good demanding read. I liked the content and the Irish sense of humour.

[Michael Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having enjoyed The Age of Absurdity I didn't hesitate in reading this book. I found it a bit hard going at first with many, many quotes and references to Proust and Joyce. But where the book really started to work for me was towards the closing parts concerning the Everyday Self and the Everyday Environment. Very well observed and in parts quite fascinating. Time to wake up and dance with the details of the mundane...

[Sevket Akyildiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking.

[Jane Glaister · Rating 2 out of 5]

Smug.

[Jean SJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

a book that write another book content. if u nv read the another book before, is hard to understand this book. i give up after reading 2/3 of the book, can't find the meaning of his topic

[Akhil Jain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reco by How to connect with nature by Schooloflife

My fav quotes (not a review):

"Then you are the Zen Master of the photocopy room, able to suppress photocopier rage even when you need copies for a meeting that has just started and there are three people in front of you and the one at the machine is trying to do double-sided and is repeatedly getting it wrong, apparently unaware of the desperate colleagues behind."

"Both Proust and Joyce became writers by writing about the process of becoming writers."

“Comedy is subjective – what has one person rolling on the floor will leave another as stone-faced as a Mount Rushmore head”

The many laughter theories reduce to essentially three–
1. The superiority theory, which claims that laughter is induced by feeling superior to others;
2. The incongruity theory, which claims that we laugh at the revelation of an incongruity between what was expected and what actually happens; and
3. The relief theory, which explains laughter as the pleasurable discharge of energy bound up in repression.


"David Foster Wallace has written perceptively about the difficulty of getting contemporary college students to appreciate that Kafka is funny."

"A good place to start is Joyce’s story ‘Grace’, a short masterpiece of recognition comedy, where every setting, every character, every line of dialogue and every detail is achingly true to life and also achingly absurd."

"In a paper with the thrilling title Explanation as orgasm, the philosopher and child psychologist Alison Gopnik argues that we have a theory drive analogous to the sex drive and that successful theorising has rewards equivalent to those for the reproductive need, so that understanding can give as much pleasure as a good come. This theory drive is strongest in children who learn to understand the world by developing and testing theories, just as scientists do, and experience intense joy when a theory produces a convincing explanation, the satisfaction of ‘aha’ resolving the puzzlement of ‘hmm’. However, in adolescence the sex drive kicks in and the theory drive dies out. The organism has learned enough to survive in the world and theorising is preserved into adulthood mainly by scientists for professional reasons."

"Marcel is accustomed to receiving a goodnight kiss from Mamma but when his parents have dinner guests. He is sent to bed without the usual lingering intimacy and experiences an anguish so overwhelming that he refuses even to try to sleep and gets out of bed to wait for the dinner party to end."

"The hunger for habit is as strong as, and perhaps even stronger than, the hunger for love. We can survive without love but not without habit."

"One of the pleasures of reading, looking at paintings or listening to music is that these activities can induce a unique form of hyper-alert reverie that is unconnected with the art but could not be enjoyed without it,"

"RH attention constantly requires such reinforcement because it is always being curtailed by functional LH selectivity."

"In the final volume of the tetralogy, Rabbit at Rest, Harry, now fifty-five, is still at it, greedily eyeing the spandex crotch of his daughter-in-law’s swimsuit. Though what stirs him most is not the woman’s youth but her flaws – the ridges of fat at the edges of the tight suit, a vaccination mark on the top of a thigh and, above all, the cracked and chipped nail polish on her toes. Only the imperfections can be heartbreakingly real."

"And why should the sexes not look at each other in wonder and gratitude? I freely admit to being an inveterate voyeur. Looking at women is one of the great pleasures of my everyday urban life and the pleasure is especially keen in spring when the newly exposed white limbs and shoulders are the blooms of the city. Every year I exult in this miraculous blossoming. Never mind the white hawthorn blossoms of Proust. Give me always the living breathing white flesh of women."

"The perfect servant is not the one who attends to all the master’s whims – anyone can do that – but the one who anticipates the whims."

[Venky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Foley is fast becoming a personal favourite. If "The Age of Absurdity" was a pleasant surprise, "Embracing The Ordinary" has been nothing short of a revelation. Inspired by Marcel Proust and James Joyce - terming both the 'high priests of low life' - Foley proceeds to highlight the myriad emotions, opportunities and joys unearthed by the two great authors from seemingly mundane stuff forming part of everyday existence. As Foley himself goes on to say "everything happens when nothing is happening".

The crux of Foley's inspiration takes the shape of two seminal books authored by his idols - 'À la recherche du temps perdu' by Marcel Proust and 'Ulysses' by James Joyce. Seemingly bereft of both plot and panache, these novels posed immense challenges to the reader. Irreverent at some times and irascible at others, some of the passages in both the novels were controversial and vitriolic enough to provoke derision, disgust and despair. Paying scant respect to propriety and discarding mores of convention, both Joyce and Proust packed enough incendiary materials in their tomes to shock and awe. However where the ordinary reader finds repulsion, Foley seeks reverence. Viewing both the works as objects deserving to be deified, Foley writes effortlessly about the attitude of the authors which spurred them on to infer joy from triviality. Ordinary conversations take a hue of delectable delight, spontaneous exclamations are a source of channeling the spirit within and a languorous walk the repository of knowledge hitherto unknown.

Foley's writing is uncompromising and without any inhibitions. Not hesitating to set his deepest, darkest thoughts on paper, Foley to a great extent emulates his heroes by resorting to details which if not downright revolting, surely evoke a squirm of discomfiture. But it is this very thought provoking method that makes us, as readers more curious and thereby wanting to have more of the Foley form of expression. We are also constantly reminded not to get bogged down by the apprehensions of the future or to fall prey to the burdens of the past. It is the present that matters and the encapsulation of the very essence of the present lies in the ordinariness that characterizes it. The more we attempt to disengage ourselves from the welcoming embrace of the present, the more disillusioned we become getting mired into the quicksand of unrealistic expectations. The key, according to Foley is to learn to admire, appreciate and adopt the ordinariness that life bestows upon all of us and to bask in its reflected glory.

The charm of "Embracing The Ordinary" lies less in its narration, than in the invaluable precepts that it attempts to honestly convey. For which, we ought to be thankful to Michael Foley!

[Waander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boek had drie dingen kunnen zijn: een reeks tips hoe het alledaagse te overleven/waarderen, een opsomming van waar de auteur zich aan sterkt in het leven van alledag, of een overzicht van (dode) mensen die het gewone wisten te eren. Het bleek vooral dat laatste, tegen mijn eerste verwachting in.
De eigen bedenkingen en de vele verwijzingen naar kunst en literatuur zijn verrijkend, maar de eindeloze referenties aan de boeken en de levens van James Joyce en Marcel Proust deden het tempo dalen en op den duur de goesting afnemen. 'Een ode aan ...' had een gepaste ondertitel geweest.

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Struggled through a hundred pages or so before deciding this was utterly pointless. Some interesting arguments severely undermined by the determination to smugly ram home at every opportunity how Ulysses and A La Recherche Temps Perdu are the greatest books ever and what's more the author has read them closely. A few mentions of Buddhism, a sprinkling of Flann O'Brien, oh just say something worthwhile will you. If he did I missed it, or gave up early. No loss I reckon.

[Fredrik Harloff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations since his previous book "The age of absurdity" is one of my favourites that really touched me. I was disappointed to find that this book was more of an long stream of recaps from his own readings of his favourite authors, including James Joyce. It just didn't do it for me, apart from making me curious to read some of the literature he refers to.

[Russell Holbrook · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I finished chapter six I realized that this book wasn't for me. I think that the author's line of thinking is so far removed from my own that I can't quite relate to what he's saying. There were a couple of funny parts, though, and I'm glad that a book like this is out there, shouting out the message that there really is a bizarre beauty in the everyday.

[Guido De · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this I ordered Remembrance of things past by Proust and also the book Time and Free Will by Henri Bergson.

[Claude · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sublime and dull alternate.

[Mirjam · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you like to read an over-extended review of the work of Joyce and Proust, you should definitely read this book. I don't.

[Peter Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quirky and at times meandering book. Lots of Proust and Joyce. A provocative, funny and entertaining book.

[Ruth Goossens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fijne levenslessen met veel interessante verwijzingen.

[Lokaal218]

DS. 16/8/2013 ****

[Robin Schoehuijs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zo goed als onleesbaar, door het blijven aanhalen van vreemde schrijvers en stukjes van tekst die misschien in z'n geheel betekenis hadden kunnen hebben

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood, but this one didn't come anywhere near any of his other, brilliant books.