Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

An enthusiastic piece of pop anthropology on the one subject that has ousted sex and money from the top of the obsessions league. Jay Griffiths takes the subject of "time" in her teeth and chews at it until it's a far more palatable item. Her exploration of the passage of time includes; our obsession with speed, with overtaking; motorways and their link to fascism; war; Mercury (god of flight) and the mythology of time and speed; Diana and Marilyn Monroe, flawed women who, through their violent deaths, have become timeless icons; history and the heritage industry; the "meanness" of Greenwich Mean Time; the fast language we now have to go with fast food; Aborigine dreamtime; the difference between festivals and pageants; May Day; and the New Year.

Reviews

A fascinating, highly original meditation on time... Jay Griffiths exposes the political nature of the linear, mechanical and global time of industrial culture and contrasts it with the myriad "times" embodied in nature's processes, known to indigenous cultures. Her writing style is rich and rhythmic, reflecting her main thesis. This is a book which needs to be read slowly." Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and Web of Life. "Ambitious... playful, feminine, spontaneous and hedonistic." - The Economist "Like the seminal socialist, feminist and ecological works, Pip Pip articulates what thousands have felt but no-one has been able to put into words. Suddenly, shapeless concerns are brought into focus. Outrage takes the place of confusion, fascination displaces complacency. Cheeky, intelligent, always gripping, Pip Pip re-introduces us to a dimension we've utterly neglected. It will be the opening salvo in a new battle over the human spirit." - George Monbiot, columnist, The Guardian "A wonderfully argued and very moving book" - BBC Radio 4, Open Book "A quirkily thoughtful, original and intuitive account of how we perceive time which offers many alternative chronological considerations. This book addresses themes such as the taming of time by clock-dominated societies, the significance of speed in relation to time, how time is experienced differently according to gender, and how political and fiscal powers manipulate time to their own advantage. There are chapters concerning time and death, time and eroticism, and a final section entitled "Wild Time," where biodiversity, moving at its own pace in unspoilt wildernesses, renders the clock irrelevant... amusing and erudite, fascinating and spirited. Bravo!" - Peter Reading, TLS "Pip Pip by Jay Griffiths is a whirl of a book about time. She considers speeding time and slowing time, stretching time and contracting time, male and female time, poetic time, even wild time and time to enjoy. Any page will get you hooked." - New Scientist "Pip Pip by Jay Griffiths is an irresistibly provocative and political analysis of time in our personal lives. The White Rabbit and the Slacker have different perspectives on the notion of time: this book renders it as textured and ductile, as potentially wild - contrasting nature's time with man-made time. Her wittily enthusiastic thesis is that time has too long been used as a tool to power: as a manifesto, it could cause a revolution." - Iain Finlayson, The Times, Books of the Year

Author Bio

Jay Griffiths is an award-winning writer and has worked for a variety of publications including the Guardian, Observer, London Review of Books, and Resurgence Magazine, of which she is also an associate editor.