How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency

by Akiko Busch

It is time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, autonomy, and voice.

In our networked and image-saturated lives, the notion of disappearing has never been more alluring. Today, we are relentlessly encouraged, even conditioned, to reveal, share, and promote ourselves. The pressure to be public comes not just from our peers, but from vast and pervasive technology companies that want to profit from patterns in our behavior. A lifelong student and observer of the natural world, Busch sets out to explore her own uneasiness with this arrangement, and what she senses is a widespread desire for a less scrutinized way of life—for invisibility. Writing in rich painterly detail about her own life, her family, and some of the world’s most exotic and remote places, she savors the pleasures of being unseen. Discovering and dramatizing a wonderful range of ways of disappearing, from virtual reality goggles that trick the wearer into believing her body has disappeared to the way Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway finds a sense of affiliation with the world around her as she ages, Busch deliberates on subjects new and old with equal sensitivity and incisiveness.

How to Disappear is a unique and exhilarating accomplishment, overturning the dangerous modern assumption that somehow fame and visibility equate to success and happiness. Busch presents a field guide to invisibility, reacquainting us with the merits of remaining inconspicuous, and finding genuine alternatives to a life of perpetual exposure. Accessing timeless truths in order to speak to our most urgent contemporary problems, she inspires us to develop a deeper appreciation for personal privacy in a vast and intrusive world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, Psychology, Self Help, Audiobook, Nature

Audible Audio

First published February 12, 2019

About the author

Akiko Busch has written about design and culture since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design an the Everyday. Her most recent book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American Rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years. Her essays have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and she has written articles for Architectural Record, Elle, Home, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, London Financial Times, The New York Times, Traditional Home, Travel & Leisure and Wallpaper*, among other publications. In Fall, 2005 she served as a Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She has lectured widely on architecture and design and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday regional section.

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of essays disguised as a book with various feelings on the nature of self identity through our interactions with ourselves and others mixed in with some cutting edge science on invisibility cloaking while starting the book with children creating invisible friends for some obscure Freudian intentionality interpretation and ending with the Icelandic imaginary little people and how healthy that seems for them before having waxed poetically on the discovery of herself while scuba diving.

In between the book are musings that take us to the ‘Invisible Man’ of both H. G. Wells and Ralph Ellison and Plato’s magic ring of invisibility and she’ll go on to tell us how a good redaction can tell us more about who we are than a complete story would and the more invisible we become the more visible the world around appears to be. I bet she mentioned autism five times within her different set of essays and she seemed to not fully understand the invisibility of the alienated who value their solitude while never being lonely in their solitude and always being most occupied with nothing but their thoughts and ideas providing an awe to the universe through meaning in what is an arbitrary universe where chance and time (not choice and chance) reign supreme (oh, wait, never mind, that sentence is just me musing on the world and probably doesn’t belong in this book review).

Heraclitus to Hume are quoted; we never cross the same river and we are always changing. The same sentiment, but said over a 2000 year time period. (I should be careful here; she quotes Heraclitus speaking of nature and how ‘nature loves to hide’, but Heraclitus is famous for his river and Hume is famous for a lot of things including his beliefs on the changing self and our elastic identity formed by our own experiences).

It’s obvious to me; some people will obviously love this book. More power to them. To me it lacked a depth and borders on superficiality and added very little to my understanding of what is true, good or deserving of my attention. I rate books on how they maximize my own utility function not that of others. To me, books are not like the contestant in a beauty contest where the judge in order to pick the most ‘beautiful’ contestant must factor in what the other judges will think; for me, I rate them how they affect me and don’t judge them with the standards of imaginary others. After all, imaginary people are not real.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

SUCH an intelligent book, a beautifully written series of essays examining our relationship with the world, seen and unseen. Busch is a brainiac - her intellectual arsenal is so formidable that every other page sent me scurrying to look up a poet, a scientist, a volcanic rock, a particular coral, a picture book.
"Our most affecting experiences often have to do with a sense of psychic diminishment. The acceptance that each of us is a bead of mist in the weather of the world is what connects us most. The smaller we become, the greater our sense of connection and our sense of humanity. I am convinced more and more that understanding how to disappear is part of understanding who we are."

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am insignificant, and at the same time part of something extraordinary.

Busch's eleven essays are meditations on invisibility, erasure, and humans place in the wider world. While the book is not expressly nature writing - there is a lot of philosophy here too - many references are to the natural world, both flora and fauna. She dives the coral reefs and notes the role of invisibility as power, then she studies the role of the unseen in our literature, film, and music. These are just a few of the many subjects, all fascinating.

[Candace W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really not at all what I thought this was going to be. It was like a collection of essays, the kind of essays I wrote at the last minute in university, where it was a few facts and quotations from studies and smart people, with some "deep thought" sentences to connect them. It just really didn't capture me at all and wasn't what I wanted to get out of this book. Disappointing.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[muthuvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the setup where everyone is under constant exposure in our public and private spaces, making ourselves more visible in our everyday struggles and adventures, lately more even in the digital realms, we seek for a sense of belonging with the things we do and other multitudinous reasons. Delving into all this further, there's a sense of deep psychological affect in what we think we are and with the things that we do which makes believe who we are.

Even going through the mundane realities of everyday life with passion, many of us still dont treat mondays very well. An itch to get lost; to run into the forest and lose oneselves. Or to a place where none knows you who you are and you have the luxury to start life from scratch.

With all this said, we have been conditioned to believe that being unseen in these times as undesirable. That anonymity equals wrongdoing. Here this book with the collection of poetic essays covers what it means to be unseen via art, literature, neuroscience, psychology, Myths and Folktales, technology and VR.

The book offers possibilities not firm conclusions and certainties that finding our place is a matter of losing it first. That People change and Human character is less stable than we think. That the circus of seeking attention in this ephemeral perpetuity that we call life, we are left to feel unseen growing older over time and through rereading Mrs. Dalloway that being unseen may not be a matter of being ignored or dismissed, but of being intuitively present and fully integrated into the world around oneselves. A possibility and a willingness to believe the crowd could be a place to find rather than to lose ourselves. To believe and meditate over the notion that one is insignificant yet a part of something extraordinary.


Listening to it for the past few days whenever I had to vacuum, do dishes or occasional cooking, I found it very marveling how one could fall in love with the book again and again. Perhaps our habit of addressing ourselves in singular means has something to do with it?


"To see a Landscape as it is when I'm not there " ~ Simone Weil


How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a time of Transparency (2019) ~ Akiko Busch

[Cam Mannino · Rating 4 out of 5]

The review in the NY Times that sent me looking for this book recommended that the reader would need to slow down to appreciate it. That was true for me - and very beneficial. I'm a former bookseller and learned years ago to read very quickly because of that. I had to cover a lot of territory to help my customers. So I had difficulty slowing down with this book initially and could only maintain that more leisurely pace with some effort - but I was rewarded whenever I could do so.

Akiko Busch just has a fascinating mind. Here she wanted to explore how being less visible, or even invisible, affects, delights, disconcerts and fascinates humans. This idea of reducing our presence in the world, of course, is wildly counter-intuitive in our era of constant exposure. But Busch seeks out for us every nook and cranny where invisibility is valued and some where it is painful and difficult. That leads her to wander through imaginary friends, virtual reality, architecture that quietly supports what's inside, dementia, the mysterious silence and sense of disappearance when diving under the sea, camouflage in animals and art - and so much more that at times I had to just rest from her flow of ideas.

If you can take your time and wander along with her, I recommend the book. Perhaps make short forays, process a bit and then come back for more. If you can do that, it may turn out to be one of the books that literally opens up new possibilites for you amid the noise and bustle of our narcissistic age.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like I was misled by this title, as well as by the first few chapters. I assumed I was reading about the need to disconnect from social media, technology, etc. What I read was more about the need to disappear but more-so the science behind things actually disappearing.
There was a lot about how nature finds ways to disappear, and some on technology and the AR world. There was not so much a stress on the importance of disappearing, but a detailed account of how things have done just that in the past.
Ultimately I was disappointed as the book was not what I anticipated.
It is well written, has a very journalistic feel, and the facts are there.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Such amazing thorough, in depth analysis- integrating and connecting scientific, emotional and psychological research and thinking!!
Great topic and very original food for thought !

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read - was not quite as deep an investigation into being invisible - wanting to hide - as I was expecting. I guess, I was hoping for a sense of what we hide, what we show, how we show up, our desires to be hidden, etc. It was interesting collection on identity, and how it becomes harder (and so maybe more 'radical' in the current social media world of being seen. But didn't really find any depth on our desires for secrets, being hidden, being unseen. Very eclectic references to art and literature, but didn't quite lead me anywhere that opened my eyes. I agree with the author's view on identities being ever-shifting, never set, so it's strange I felt so unengaged with the content. And sections such as the Iceland unseen people were rather repetitive in making the same point. As if all the anecdotes had to have space, rather than selecting to make the author's point. I found Rebecca Solnit's 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost' more engaging, personal and more deeply thought out on a similar subject matter. I found this book more 'lecture' like as if a point was being taught, rather than an invitation to think through a complex subject matter.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a disappointment! This book has survived 2 of my hold shelf cullings smh. Because of the title I thought this was going to be more of a guide on how to live under a surveillance state, or at least how to stop being so concerned with putting yourself on display. I quickly realized it wasn’t that, but was going to be a meditation on the concept of invisibility. That would have been fine with me tbh. I love to chat about the politics of recognition. Everyone is anxious about being seen. Anyone remember that (annoying) period a few years ago where ppl were obsessed with saying “do not perceive me”?

I love a good meander and ponder on a concept, but this book was written just like my early undergrad papers where I was trying to get to the word count. Every chapter is basically the author listing art projects and personal or scientific anecdotes that aren’t even necessarily supporting an argument. She will have a paragraph describing a project, then another paragraph describing another art project, then a third describing a third, and it moves on paragraph after paragraph introducing a new reference without ever connecting it to the theme or topic. And because each item gets one paragraph, we barely get into what it means or what it’s doing because most of those words are used to describe the project/painting/item. Then at the end of the chapter she will have a paragraph that lists a couple of the works, (as if I can remember any of them bc by that point they’ve all glazed by), as if that’s a meaningful conclusion synthesizing all these works together.

It’s not that there even needs to be an argument. I thought of other books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed. The book of Eels blends memoir and science and art and history, with a clear structure. Every other chapter is a memoir about the author's personal history with eels, and then the alternate chapters discuss Eels in literature or eels in history or eel breeding techniques etc. It’s a well-organized way to talk about one thing, in this case eels, from every angle.

Busch attempted a structure like the one above, but all the anecdotes and examples in each chapter could’ve been placed anywhere and it would barely have mattered. Eels are a concrete thing, and invisibility is a slippery idea, so let me compare it to other works that explored a concept. 10:04 by Ben Lerner is technically fiction but we all know it isn’t really. That book is about the seemingly vague idea of “things being the same except totally different”. It wanders around the idea through experience, art, etc. I was fascinated and couldn’t stop thinking of examples. Drifts by Kate Zambreno (also technically fiction but again we all know) does something similar with the concepts of dailiness and solitude. So I’ve definitely read things that successfully blend anecdotes, art criticism, literary criticism, science facts.

It’s unfortunate because I would have loved to read something on the topic of invisibility, on turning away from the self and how our current age makes that difficult. Also, the title made me think there would be a prescriptive aspect to this book that was not present. I really wish I had abandoned it, because I recognized what was wrong pretty early but thought maybe it would get better but then it continued in the same fashion for the whole rest of the book.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

These thoughtful essays discuss the concept of invisibility from a number of perspectives. At a time when social media and selfies combine with unprecedented levels of surveillance, the concept of not being seen takes on new significance. Busch considers the idea from multiple perspectives, including a thoughtful essay on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and how women tend to become invisible as they get older.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dozen essays. Of these, the introduction came closest to what I expected. Nonetheless, Akiko Busch touches on some interesting ideas throughout.

Visibility became the currency of our time, with success ratified by publicity, writes Busch in her introduction. Other people measure our lives by how they see us, not by what we do.

“Curating identity,” a novel phrase, refers to the self-promotion, personal branding and ability to create several profiles, viewed as commodities. And this cuts to the core of why I abandoned Twitter and Facebook.

The impulse to escape notice maintains our voice as well as our sense of identity, autonomy and propriety, writes Busch. Human endeavor succeeds as interior, private and self-contained. We could consider invisibility as a condition with its own meaning and power.

But do not confuse invisibility with loneliness, solitude, secrecy or silence, Busch warns. Remaining inconspicuous and out of view begins as self-protection then extends to self-reliance.

In the natural world, birds, shells, insects and octopi meld with their environments through crypsis to becomes unobserved and undetected.

Taking cues from the world around us, Abbott Handerson Thayer, a painter and naturalist, applied his theories of shading and countershading to design uniforms of mottled tones and irregular patterns that would bewilder the enemy eye, replacing khaki soldier clothes of World War I. Today we call it camo, for camouflage. As a legacy from my army days in Nam, I wear camo caps, backpacks and umbrellas, but it apparently does not make me invisible on city streets.

As one of her ideas for seeking solace in the modern world, she, James Comey and I share something in common: We put tape on the camera lenses of our computers and smartphones. Just one more safeguard against prying eyes, retaining a bit of invisibility.

Busch writes well. I enjoyed much of this book.

[Juli Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invisibility is a concept I've always been fascinated by, and I was excited to come across this new book by Busch. The author touches on invisibility in many facets, including technology, social media, natural history, etc. The chapters read as loosely connected essays rather than a unified argument. I definitely enjoyed the multidisciplinary approach of this book, and Busch's own fascination with the subject reflects my own. However, I never find Busch's writing to be quite as lyrical as I hope, nor quite as academically or scientifically engaged. This book definitely rested on an unsatisfying middle ground without quite enough poetry or fact. In addition, I thought that there was perhaps too heavy of an emphasis on technology in this for my taste, and I would have loved to see a slightly heavier engagement with psychology, the social sciences, or literature.

Overall, I found this book a pleasant read, but it didn't scratch my itch for this subject as well as I would have liked.

[Etienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so disappointing. A catchy title, but a book that didn't deliver at all. It was totally superficial, anecdotical, pointless, all over the place without a straight line, more like a melting pot of essays, name dropping, quotes, but seriously that wasn't any substance there. It was miles away for the deep philosophical thinking book I was going for.

[William Schram · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is boring. It drags along and meanders to different subjects that seem interesting at first, but it doesn’t seem to have a cohesive theme or idea. It misdirects you at the very first chapter. From the title, I assumed it would be about how people are rebelling against the surveillance state that is so common in many countries today. However, the author decides to open by talking about how we actually see.

So as I said, the author goes and meanders from subject to subject. She tips her hat to one idea and moves on to another. Her prose is gorgeous; I will acknowledge that. She discusses the ideas of invisibility in popular culture with the Ring of Gyges, The One Ring from Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak, and so on. Eventually, she does get to the idea of the Surveillance State and how people are trying to be unseen in a world that craves attention, but by that time I didn’t really care anymore.

[Zosia · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5) I wanted this to be a different book, namely a thoughtful look at the ways we can disconnect from the world. Instead, it was essays about every possible definition and instance of the word “invisible,” whether connected or not. Some, like the chapter on the hidden people in Iceland, were effective, but most felt rushed and generic, especially the tired old chapters about how the internet is killing us, etc. But a super unforgivable thing was how she sloppily correlated Caitlyn Jenner with Rachel Dolezal and intimated that trans people are trying to disappear, just another form of being invisible. This casual transphobia made me stop trusting the rest of the book. And this author knows better - she has nuanced, progressive thoughts on many things. What a shame.

[Denver Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

I savored these essays about privacy, the dissolution of self and the power of wonder to combat the blights of curated identities, data mining and more.

[Max]

Firstly, there are some really beautifully written moments in this book. The essays about childhood invisible friends and the Hidden Folk in Iceland are, I think, particularly beautiful and strong.

However, this book is absolutely hampered by its determination to neither mention nor interrogate the role of capitalism in the rise of social media and the surveillance state, and how human behavior/attitudes toward invisibility are being shaped by this political landscape. Especially when it comes to early comments in her essays discussing how invisibility makes us more likely to commit crimes (crimes which, except for sexual crimes, involve stealing clothes or accessing services and entertainment-- things people generally need but are prohibited from accessing because of capitalism). It discusses people's behavior as if they're intrinsic and not manufactured. Like they're phantoms and not responses to social engineering.

Other times, it reads like a stream of consciousness after a bong hit. It's like lots of ideas come to mind when considering a prompt, but the moment you look closer at the examples with nuance, a lot of the ideas listed together don't make sense. It gives the essays a dreamlike quality (written beautifully, generally!) but also the quality of an old man yelling at a cloud about why people want to watch a director's cut of a film not shown in theaters.

Some gems in here certainly, but overall not for me.

[Braiden Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up, I feel like invisibility was a fairly regular idea presented to me. When I was a kid, it was mostly in the physical sense, where Harry Potter ducks behind his cloak or Bilbo slips on his ring, and where I would slip behind a curtain or under the bed. As a teenager, I started to consider it more from a social perspective. While I would spend time fussing over my Facebook posts (when Facebook was still young and people actually read your posts) to make sure I was visible in the way I wanted to be, I would also dream on long car rides up the coast of just slipping into nothingness with only the feeling of the breath passing in and out of my lungs. Adulthood seems to be only about visibility, though. There seems to be this incessant chatter around increasing your influence, whether through networking, or SEO, or online presentation of portfolio and persona. I feel as though I'm in an episode of The Office, making Jim Halpert faces at the camera. That's what largely drew me to this book.

This book feels like a large collection of essays of nearly every facet of invisibility that one could conceive. At times it can almost feel like she couldn't decide which aspect to tackle, so she might as well write a book, but I think that brought a certain freshness to each chapter.

A lot of it was very poetic, and I really appreciated those parts. Those passages made me want to take off for Walden Pond and start building my own cabin. Honestly, the chapters that you could tell she had written her heart into really touched me and made me consider invisibility as an actual alternative to the world we force ourselves to be seen in.

Unfortunately, not every chapter was so personal, and a lot of chapters read as lists of artists that you'd like to go look up but never have the time for. I started the book highlighting all of the pieces of artwork she mentioned but found that my list became a bit unwieldy pretty quickly.

All in all, I do highly recommend this book to anyone looking to see a bit more of the world around them than they currently allow themselves to. It's definitely a fresh perspective on a valid lifestyle we should allow ourselves to explore more often.

[Kristiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is smarter than I am. It is so thought provoking. Busch discusses how overexposed we are in society, through what we provide in social media content and what is accessible to others in our data. The essays making up this collection discuss invisibility in literature, real life technology and different cultures. It is timely and timeless.

[Story · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to rate this exploration of invisibility. I loved several of the chapters, especially the one about Mrs. Dalloway while others didn't catch my interest at all.

[fire_on_the_mountain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the strength of this work is in it forcing me to expand my understanding of 'visibility' into something much more broad then just 'being seen.' In our multifaceted and mediated world, it's not simply a binary of in/visibility, but all the ways we obscure, muddle, highlight, hide or deemphasize our lives, and what we stand to gain or lose as we do. For that, I am the richer.

But I did have a hard time getting through; while the concepts were interesting, it almost read like the introduction to an exhibit catalogue on what would be an admittedly compelling and moving gallery show. I had to force myself. Luckily, Busch really pulled it all together in the end for me, so I say if you get bogged down, persist; it will be worth it.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exploring the idea of invisibility in nature, art, and science, in search of a more joyful and peaceful way of living in today's increasingly surveilled and publicity-obsessed world, this book was refreshing and eye opening. We’re constantly online and there is an effect this has on us. Really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.

“The overview effect is the term used in space exploration to define that cognitive shift that astronauts experience when they see the earth from outer space. Viewing the blue marble from orbit, they reevaluate life on earth, reconsidering the significance of regional and national boundaries and our status within them, inevitably reassessing the importance we give ourselves; not surprisingly, when photographs of the earth as viewed from outer space were first taken in the late 1940s, they signaled a shift in human consciousness. Immersion in the deep sea seems to offer some corollary, an “underview effect” perhaps. Although it is a view from beneath rather than above, from water rather than from space, and an experience of absorption and connection rather than of distance and detachment, it still enables us to reassess our place in things.” – p. 94

“My mother’s brain tumor diminished her ability to speak, reduced her capacity to express love for her family, and filled her with a confused rage. It robbed her of what we thought of as her identity. But such notions of identity are outdated. Catastrophic affliction is not required for the self to be upended. Even without such grave disruptions to our cognitive wellbeing, we know now that human character perpetually revises itself. Just as our bodies are in a state of constant renewal, with some 242 billion new cells produced each day by the average human adult, so too do the particles of personality that we consider markers of our selves continually become realigned. Identity is sly. We sneak around on ourselves.” – p. 161

[Clark Hays · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invisibilia

How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch, is an odd, meandering book about an interesting topic — what it means to go unnoticed in today’s digital world of selfies and status updates. It’s a very personal meditation on what it means to the author to go unnoticed in a series of essays examining the topic from a variety of unexpected angles. It’s a great concept, but for me, it failed to deliver on the promise of the title or have much of a lasting impact.

The book reminded me a bit ofWalden, by Thoreau, and like that book, it’s maddeningly personal and feels a bit self-indulgent. And while Walden at least brought to life (possibly unintentionally) the transcendental philosophy, How to Disappear never seems to rise above the descriptive, poetic musings of the author.

I almost didn’t finish, but Busch is a talented, lyrical writer, so I stuck with it. And I found power, though fleeting, in lines such as:

“…finding some genuine alternative to a life of perpetual display.”

“I can tell you what invisibility is not. It is not loneliness, solitude, secrecy, or silence.”

“We are, each one of us, less important than we think.”

“Becoming invisible is not the equivalent of being nonexistent.”

“In lessening one’s sense of self, awe enables us to find membership in some broader coalition of human enterprise. It realigns our frame of human reference.”

In an age where we all battle against the siren call of being too visible, of sharing—and over-sharing—our lives with strangers, of struggling to limit the reach of the surveillance economy, and thrilling in the almost guilty pleasure of escaping notice, there is a much more powerful work still to come on this topic. And I hope Busch writes it.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars

This book of essays wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but was still a very enriching read.

From the synopsis, I thought there would be a lot more focus on things like social media and other more obvious examples of transparency, but besides the introduction that wasn't much of a focus. Instead, Busch is interested in the ways that we become invisible, exploring this topic through science, nature, art, and literature. Other writers have written at length about opting out of social media, and I think this book is actually better for not taking that route (but I see that other reviewers disagree). It felt like a more rewarding read because I never knew what to expect from essay to essay.

Busch's writing kind of reminds me of Mary Oliver's, but Mary Oliver for the digital age. While I mentioned that she doesn't dwell on the usual topics of conversation when it comes to technology (social media, data mining, etc.), she does talk about technology from time to time, AR being a recurring reference. She weighs the beneficial and harmful effects of such technology, including one example of a scientist using AR to encourage empathy towards people in war zones and reverting the Korean demilitarization zone to its natural origins. I actually thought she could have dug further into an anti-war reading and would have appreciated more of that perspective. In another essay, she talks about how the natural world inspired early military camouflage, which is now aided by technology.

In one of the strongest essays, "Invisiphilia," Busch describes her experience deep-sea diving and muses on the connection between our physical senses and our sense of self. Her writing is gorgeous here, mirroring the ebb and flow of life. I was particularly struck by the idea that changes in our physical state can "mobilize emotion" in a healing manner, and also evoke a sense of solidarity.

The opposite effect is discussed in a later essay on how neurological changes affect the sense of self. That essay was heavy on science, describing how our personalities are controlled by neurological phenomena that can change abruptly through disease and other ailments (brain tumors, dementia, etc.). Bush talks about how her mother had a brain tumor and was suddenly "not her self," and it's a little alarming to read about how quickly and irrevocably that can become true. It really makes you rethink your perspective. This essay was almost like an eloquent existential crisis on the page.

An earlier essay covers similar ground, looking at memory and how it affects one's sense of self. "Identity is sly. We sneak around on ourselves." I was intrigued by the idea that the brain uses sleep as a time to sort through the previous day's mental activity and decide what should stay and what should go. In other words, our memory is in a constant state of flux, and the way we think of ourselves changes throughout our lives. "The self is a perpetual refugee, always migrating from one state of being to another."

The "Invisible Ink" essay has a weaker premise but leads to some interesting discussions of art. Mary Reufle is a writer I've been vaguely aware of for some time, but I didn't realize she was well-known for her erasure books. As a poet myself, I will admit that I don't have the highest opinion of erasure lit, but Reufle conceives of it in a way that made me curious to check out her take on the genre. A quote from Reufle, "life is much, much more than is necessary" brings to mind modern feelings of information overload and burnout (which perhaps Busch should have taken a detour into the topic of social media to explore further). I would have liked to see Busch delve into the concept of subtext here--she seemed just on the cusp of it by mentioning "reading between the lines," but alas, no queer reading in this text.

I also didn't care much for the essay on childhood invisible friends and such, though there are moments that she builds upon in other essays.

Besides the essay about diving, my favorite was "Rereading Mrs. Dalloway" (is there anything better than writers writing about Woolf?). This essay deals with the intersection of aging and gender and how people (especially women) become more and more socially invisible as they grow old. The Mrs. Dalloway reference is used to explore the shift from being an object to being a subject, and the development of interiority. This shift can often be a welcome change, and she illustrates this point by talking about the 1960s model Veruschka, who went from being highly visible as a model to creating conceptual art wherein she disappeared by painting her body to blend in with her surroundings (camouflage again!).

"The Geography of Invisibility" sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the collection. It's about the "hidden people" of Iceland and spirituality. It was interesting from an anthropological perspective, but not as thought-provoking as other essays.

As much as Busch writes about nature, I would have loved to see more of an explicitly environmentalist take. With so much focus on the prosocial benefits of being in nature, it also would have been nice to see her acknowledge the privilege inherent in these experiences--who gets to experience nature, and how has that experience been colonized?

This book was an immersive reading experience for me, a vessel of intellectual refuge during a busy week. In fact, while reading it I felt a similar sense of becoming invisible, of time stopping or at least pausing. I would recommend reading this one at a slower pace, a couple of essays at a time ideally. I checked it out from the library but I will probably buy myself a copy to reread and be able to annotate and to lookup more of the works of art and literature that Busch references.

As a San Antonio Spurs fan, I would be remiss not to mention that there's a Tim Duncan reference to look forward to :) Timmy is the OG invisible superstar.

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time with this book, reading it here and there around the length of a month or two. It felt appropriate considering its focus on invisibility and the unseen. Like Rebecca Solnit, Busch writes short essays and strings them together using a broad motif. In this case, the book covers a lot of topics connected to visibility and invisibility, and each essay contained references to people, ideas, events, etc that were worth additional research. I found the book lacking in some topics that I would expect to show up in 2017, including indigenous knowledge, a deeper look at surveillance, and marginalization. Still, as a short volume it kept my attention and I'd recommend it to folks looking for a light intellectual foray.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this while I was teaching my daughter to write a paper for English. I explained to my daughter that writing should ideally unpack ideas for you, crack them open a bit, and maybe combine multiple ideas in fresh ways. That is also what I wanted from this book. This collection of essays gave example after example of what other people have said about invisibility but without unpacking or joining these disparate sources in any interesting way. Every time I thought she was going to get to something good, something deeper, she changed the subject. The chapter about the effect that being underwater has on our senses and our sense of self and the chapter regarding Mrs. Dalloway got closer to what I was hoping for, but they still didn't quite hit the mark.

[elif sinem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely dense range of references pulled here for the core idea that invisibility is good - from the fourth chapter on, when it became about water, I thought it generally picked up in terms of prose and depth of thought. A generally very calming, almost life-affirming read throughout.

Though it wasn't quite the aim of the book I still wish the book didn't stop at just "invisibility is good; we move better as group" and connected the dots to the systems that encourage and enforce this kind of individualist, hyper-present thinking and way of life. I didn't get that here at all, which is a shame. As it stands, it kind of reduces the book to a well-made, intellectual's self help book.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one worth spending extra time with -- it's not a book that I could rush through. Busch looks at the benefits of being unseen and of what is unsaid -- and what that means in a world where we focus increasingly on what is seen or shown to others. The nature writing in here is incredible -- and the chapter on words and what is both said and what is left unsaid really made me think. The imagery is thought provoking and Busch made me consider and reflect on ideas and relationships that I had not thought about.