Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Honorable Obscurity Handbook Has Arrived!


NOW FOR SALE
Taking a cue from Tillie Olsen's Silences and the works of Alain de Botton, The Honorable Obscurity Handbook is novelist M. Allen Cunningham's gloriously uncynical answer to a publishing world awash in cynical careerism and bottom-line thinking. Part consoling sourcebook, part cultural commentary, part wry self-help manual, and part inspirational anthology, this slim volume is a celebration of the creative spirit. It is packed with insights relevant to any creative worker, whatever their field.

"They're out there. Day and night, in any given locale, they're hard at it. Our novelists and poets, who strive away in shabby rooms, reverse the formula daily: they live in order to work. But their work helps us to live. They win no honors and receive no grants. They hobnob with no famous elders. Yet they comprise, in their dedication and lack of 'prospects,' a force of pure, unpaid human creativity in service to something larger and more lasting than themselves. Their incentive? Destiny. Their inspiration when faced with privation and self-doubt? Bygone literary gods who struggled much the same. Their rewards: How to name them? But they more than mitigate the annoyances of thin wallets, scant praise, nonexistent reputations."
-M. Allen Cunningham, from the intro


ISBN: 978-0-9893023-0-2
Retail Price: $14.00 
218 pages (on recycled, acid-free paper) 
5.5. x 8.5