Existential Politics

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Existential Politics
How to nearly spoil a good book

How to nearly spoil a good book

The perils - and potential advantages - of putting personal feelings into your work

Ben Cobley
Oct 25, 2022
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How to nearly spoil a good book
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These days I find so much broadcast media output jarringly chatty: full of presenters and their guests trying to share in-jokes with each other.

These either work too well because the people involved are on the same page and familiar with each other, so get too matey, or fall flat because they are not and/or are nervous, etc. Even worse for the people involved, excess chattiness can put your job at risk by showing up personal inclinations which go against your other responsibilities in the job.

The BBC presenter Martine Croxall appears to have fallen into this trap in delighting on air over Boris Johnson falling out of the latest Tory leadership race, adding how, “I'm probably breaking some terrible due impartiality rule by giggling.”

Such episodes are now pretty regular affairs, made worse by this habit of informality and chattiness that now infests the broadcast media.

But I think it points to a much wider problem in our public life: of how the boundaries between personal and public (or working) life have become blurred (made worse no doubt by social media). For example, employers now talk insanely about how they want us to ‘bring our whole selves to work’: a utopian idea that can only result in conflict and disappointment as different selves demand opposite things.

I think merging personal and working life can end up spoiling both.

Which brings me onto how you can spoil a good book.

The writer as friend, associate

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