Waste of a perfectly good title.

I get a lot of my nonfiction reading from a pretty basic source: each month my local library system posts a list of new fiction and nonfiction books in their catalog, and each month I scan the list and order up any titles that tickle my fancy.

So imagine my displeasure when Hugh MacLeod's book, with the awesome title Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination, turned out just to be another business self-help book.

And not a very good one at that. MacLeod is the creator of the gapingvoid.com website, and is best known for drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. In this book he adopts a Seth Godin-esque approach to living your dream: be special, dream big, follow your entrepreneurial plan, etc. Here's the basic idea, from page one: "Everybody needs an Evil Plan that gets them the hell out of the rat race, away from lousy bosses, away from boring, dead-end jobs that they hate. Life is short."

Yeah, yeah. We've heard it all before. Does anyone still believe this stuff? Like this? "Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to have an Evil Plan, to make a great living, doing what you love, doing something that matters." p. 1.

In short chapters punctuated by his not-all-that-clever doodles, he holds forth on how you've got to sell not only your product but also your belief system*; how customers have to love your product AND your process; and how you should be overextended doing work you love. It all sounds la-di-da and wonderful, but I challenge you to find someone who can actually make this advice work. (The part about making a great living off the Internet in particular gives me a big chuckle.)

I kept the book in the bathroom for a while, where I read it for giggles, until Mr. CR told me it was depressing him and I had to get rid of it.

*This also puts me in mind of a GREAT quote from the movie Broadcast News, which I recall roughly a million times every day as it is. When Albert Brooks spits out, with such distate, about an anchorman colleague who's more style than substance: "And he'll talk about us all really being salesmen." Such bitterness. Awesome. You should watch the entire movie, but you could also see it here. The pertinent quote is right after the two-minute mark.

Comments

[Laura]

I love Broadcast News! Such a brilliant and underrated film! Thanks for making me think of it.

[Ruthiella]

If making a great living, doing what you love, doing something that matters were that easy, everyone would be doing it. I know I would! Many people who espouse this give themselves as examples…and they are often self-help gurus (Wayne Drier, Tony Robinson…). That is where the money is...taking it from other poor saps in seminars.

[Citizen Reader]

Laura,
I LOVE Broadcast News. There's a line in it for almost every situation in life, including, "Let me know if I can do anything for you, anything at all..." "Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon." HA!

Ruthiella,
Hey, I'd best wait a bit before advertising my services in giving nonfiction readers' advisory seminars, huh? :) I know just what you mean, though. And I've got nothing against the Internets, but let's face it, I'd guess it's put more actual people out of work than it has employed.