On Purpose
Ten Lessons on the Meaning of Life
Published on 14. September 2023
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-00-858846-5 (ISBN)
Description
Ten essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives.
How do we live fully?
How do we live successfully?
Adrift in an anchorless world, we often worry about where we are heading. What meaning can we hope to find in our modern, secular life? The answer, Ben Hutchinson explains, can be found by looking to writers and thinkers to help us live more purposefully, more mindfully - more fully.
Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Joan Didion, On Purpose proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently.
Engaging, uplifting and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who has lost their sense of direction or wishes to radically transform the way they live.
How do we live fully?
How do we live successfully?
Adrift in an anchorless world, we often worry about where we are heading. What meaning can we hope to find in our modern, secular life? The answer, Ben Hutchinson explains, can be found by looking to writers and thinkers to help us live more purposefully, more mindfully - more fully.
Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Joan Didion, On Purpose proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently.
Engaging, uplifting and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who has lost their sense of direction or wishes to radically transform the way they live.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Ben Hutchinson:'An exemplary essayistic mishmash, part history, part criticism, part memoir. His tone is conversational, though distinctly tutorial, and he is not afraid to adopt the approach of the personal trainer or life coach' Hal Jensen, TLS
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 259 mm
Width: 194 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
588 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-858846-5 (9780008588465)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2023
Fourth Estate Ltd
€6.99
Available for download
Person
Ben Hutchinson is an award-winning essayist, critic and professor of European literature. A consultant editor at the Times Literary Supplement, he is the author of seven books, including The Midlife Mind and Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction. His writing appears regularly in the national and international press.