Tag: writing

Perfect Words #2: Rage

As far as Perfect Words go, ‘Rage’ has a lot going for it. For one thing it’s short, to the point. It’s also an ideophone, one of those words that sound like what they mean – see how Sheen roars Dylan’s famous line: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” and hear the anger, the passion.

Rage Bait: the modern rage?

Oxford University Press has made ‘Rage Bait‘ the word of the year for 2025:

“Where last year’s choice, brain rot, captured the mental drain of endless scrolling, rage bait shines a light on the content purposefully engineered to spark outrage and drive clicks.”

First of all, what a time to be alive; I wonder what this year’s word will be. Second, we see that Rage Bait is in fact described as outrage. The definition above echoes Lenny’s in Natasha Brown’s new novel Universality:

“[an] empty, angry ‘debate’ [that] achieves nothing. Nothing constructive, anyway. Or even destructive. All it results in is empty-calorie engagement. The metrics tail wagging the content dog.”

There it is: the content dog, melting our brains in corrosive content and cortisol. The Machine has watched us closely, and it has learned that outrage is the best way to keep us on a leash.

That’s why our feeds are full of triggering news that make us want to comment nasty things, and forward to our friends so they do the same. It’s not rage; it’s outrage. It’s not activism; it’s ‘engagement’- the EBITDA of the attention economy.

Outrage is both the fuel and the fumes of this new media machine, viral in the dangerous sense of the word: a textually transmitted disease for which there seems to be no cure but abstinence.

Wait – aren’t Rage and Outrage related?

As much as civil rights legend John Lewis is related to the retailer John Lewis, which is not at all.

Rage comes from the Latin ‘rabere’ which means ‘to be mad’.

Outrage comes from the Latin ‘ultra’ which means ‘beyond’. It lends itself to all sorts of extremisms, like football “ultras” and far-right “ultra-nationalists” (hence the bitter aftertaste).

This is where the etymology of ‘outrage’ is enlightening: it illustrates how ‘going beyond’ is all it’s about.

There is no end to outrage, no aim, no finality. The whole point is for each side to one-up each other into oblivion: the “empty-calorie engagement” Universality describes.

Rage is different. Potentially a destructive force, yes, but one that can be channelled into renewal – after a raging fire, nature can grow back stronger.

The case for rage

Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem ‘Howl’ is dripping with rage. It resonated with an entire generation and echoes to this day. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked”: doesn’t that first line still slap us in the face today?

There is always an argument to be made for bitterness and despair, that it’s too late, we are already losing the best minds of our generation, with social media shortening our attention span and Generative AI shrinking our cognitive skills.

But there is a counterargument, best voiced by Maya Angelou:

“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. (…) So, use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

This quote also captures what is at stake in differentiating between rage and outrage, and being generally picky with the words we put in our mouths, because if we are what we eat, the words we use also change us.

We are at an inflection point; much of the news this summer converges towards this realisation. The digital media landscape it has been my job to monetise for two decades has changed. If most of the public debate is going to happen online, we must decide how we want to engage with the platforms and with each other. Will we pour our time and energy into outrage, or funnel our rage into bigger ambitions, dance it, march it, vote it, talk it?

There is no good reason to let it be decided for us. Ours could still be an age of enlightenment.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell

I haven’t yet recovered from Nesting, Roisín O’Donnell‘s fantastic debut novel. It still sits in my chest, not yet digested.

In a few words, Nesting is the story of Ciara Fay, mother of two, pregnant with a third, who decides one day to leave her controlling husband.

From the first scene, as he insists on taking the girls swimming in the freezing sea, we follow Ciara’s precarious balancing act – indulging him, protecting them – and it’s impossible not to root for her.

O’Donnell masterfully executes the “escape” – we have no choice but to feverishly turn the pages, hoping they make it, that he doesn’t catch them. By the time they fall asleep in the car, surrounded by nature, and wake up in the morning mist, we are so invested that it is very clear this novel will be devoured.

The language humbly serves the main character and the story, but in several places it is clear that it is also worth reading for its own sake. This is after all the story of a woman reclaiming her voice, an English teacher who travelled the world before waking up one day married, pregnant, and stuck in a very small world.

Nesting extract

That small world is treated with immense dignity. All the little tasks of motherhood, the struggles of parenting with very little money, of rebuilding a home in a hotel room, are rendered with rough immediacy, without ever tipping over into voyeuristic miserabilism.

The characters that enter and expand Ciara’s world in the “Eden” hotel all feel real. So do her relationships with her mother and sister, and each obstacle she needs to overcome. The husband is perhaps too one dimensional at times – almost as if rather than being a proper character, he was a representation of something bigger and rather ugly.

The theme of birds is nicely weaved into the story. The lone crow symbolising both the husband’s ferocity and Ciara’s emancipation. Sophie’s fierce insistence on holding the falcon. Ciara’s mother’s knowledge of birds and their songs. It offers Nesting a coherent imagery, without ever feeling heavy handed.

I have read this book quickly – in the train, before bed, waiting in line in the bathroom. Needing to reach that final page, to know what would happen to them in the end. I know I will read it again eventually, to fully appreciate the care and craft that went into it.

Finally, in a world where AI likes to pretend it can fill our inspiration cup like real authors can, I very much appreciated O’Donnell’s final dedication. It matters to me that she cares, and I can’t wait to read everything else she writes.

“To anyone trapped in a place that does not feel like home, to anyone who has ever been asked the question, why don’t you just leave, this one’s for you.“

Assembly by Natasha Brown – a quiet Howl

Natasha Brown’s debut novel Assembly packs a punch with just 100 pages of prose clear and sharp as crystal about what it’s like to be Black and British.

So, when that mouth opened up and coughed its vitriol at her, making some at the table a little uncomfortable, she understood the source of its anger, despite being the target. She waited for the buzz of her phone to excuse her and – in the meantime – quietly, politely, she understood him.

In many respects Assembly reads like a quiet, repressed Howl – Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem which howled all in one breath what it was like to be othered in an America.

Brown’s prose is very close to poetry, crossing the formal line many times, like on page 30:

So come on now. Lift left foot and swing it ahead, spring forward. Don’t slow down, don’t stop. Don’t think. Just keep it moving.

Go get on the train.

But here I am,
still
stood, still
at the station.
I really should

The narrator’s nihilistic detachment is framed straight away. Where authors usually dedicate the book to their loved ones, she writes:

This too is meaningless,
a chasing after the wind.

But she has fire in her. There are so many delicious eviscerations in the book but Lou’s was my absolute favourite:

Back at the office, Lou’s not in yet. He rarely shows up before eleven. As if each morning, fresh mediocrity slides out of the ocean, slimes its way over mossy rocks and sand, then sprouts skittering appendages that stretch and morph and twist into limbs as it forges on inland until finally, fully formed, Lou! strolls into the lobby on two flat feet in shined shoes.

So why doesn’t she scream, why doesn’t she stand up to the bullies, why doesn’t she howl? Well *gestures at systemic racism around us* that’s why. On page 56, Brown writes:

Explain air.
Convince a sceptic. Prove it’s there. Prove what can’t be seen.

So Assembly is also a demonstration, through anecdotes that seem cartoonish sometimes (she’s a senior leader but expected to make the coffees and book others’ airplane tickets) but that I suspect are, like in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, all true. Why invent when reality provides so many exhibits.

There are also actual exhibits in Assembly, demonstrating how Black British people are both othered and asked to “quietly, politely understand”. These exhibits are actually formatted as illustrations in a textbook – “Fig 1.”, “Fig 2.” – and give snippets of the thousand cuts bringing the proverbial death. For those, she uses the subject “you” to pull the reader in: you get harassed and can’t say a thing, passed in the queue and asked to “keep the noise down”, and you realise with horror that even howling is white privilege.

Throughout the novel, the narrator talks about her cancer diagnosis, and her decision to let is spread – her refusal to fight it. It’s hard not to think that it’s the result of / the metaphor for that repressed howl.

The ending is subtle. A half-arsed marriage proposal, her suspended answer. In my opinion it came too soon – because I loved Brown’s writing, but also because I’ve been groomed to believe that all heroines should get their revenge. I half-hoped for a Dogville ending: burn the stolen generational wealth, at least figuratively!

But that was not the project. Brown had announced “This too is meaningless” at the very beginning. Hundreds of years of history, thousands of daily cuts prove she’s most likely right. But with her 100 pages, she makes the reader want to howl on her behalf – and that is not meaningless.

Perfect Words #1: Arete [ἀρετή]

One of the reasons I love writing is that I get a real kick out of finding the “perfect word”: when you discuss a concept and someone sums it up into one word, with the right level of strength, even the right sounds that fit its meaning like “furious” or “awe”.

Sometimes these moments can capture meaning, like a photographer snatching a fleeting moment: how the light landed, how it made them feel.

Sometimes they can instead create meaning: when someone frames a concept for you with a new word, be it made up, borrowed from an other language, or simply unexpected.

There was such a moment earlier this week, as photographer Chris Mann and myself were discussing art over coffee, and I got to dust off the ancient Greek concept of Arete from my student years.

Specifically, we were debating the risks and rewards of dedicating time to art. The risk being financial, the reward being Arete.

‘Arete’ is a perfect word because it blends and elevates competence and gift. Its initial meaning is the “fulfilment of purpose or function”, for example a good, sharp knife fulfilling its cutting function, a pianist who took their gift and honed it with practice to become the best pianist they can be, or simply for any of us to “live well or excellently the life that we have“.

What is funny is that I had forgotten about that word but since that conversation I see Arete everywhere.

Yesterday I was taken aside by the swimming coach, as my son was not listening. I already covered in Desapego (another perfect word!) the specific agony of taking your neurodiverse kids to sports activities so will cut directly here to what happened next: instead of complaining, she asked me for tips to get his attention, went back to him and from then on he was focused and dedicated.

It was great to see him do his best but what moved me as I observed the rest of the lesson was to watch the coach work: how she showed the movements to the kids, how she stretched them and rewarded them. It was Arete: she was clearly doing what she was meant to do, with a gift perhaps, supplemented by experience, competence, excellence.

Looking back, I realised that witnessing Arete is one of my favourite things in life: when I saw my friend, composer Raphaelle Thibaut, record at Abbey Road Studios, and snapped this picture to remember how it felt to see her there, the boss in the room, years after she suddenly quit her job at Google because she just had to make music.

Even earlier this year in the middle of a session with Dina Grishin – the career coach who recently helped me – when I told her how happy I was that she had left her old job and decided to pursue coaching. It did not make me happy for her, mind you, or even for myself, who got to enjoy the fruit of her labour. It simply satisfied me tremendously to witness her do what she was obviously meant to do.

So there you go: look around you and take a little mental snapshot every time you notice Arete. Your barista who makes an excellent coffee. The notebook whose weight, texture and dimensions are just right. The teacher that all the kids in school love somehow. Yourself, as you feel in your chest that odd mix of rush and calm when you are in the flow, doing what you are meant to be doing.

In between weird nail art and outrage bait, the algorithm recently pushed me this video of Tom Waits reading Bukowski’s poem The Laughing Heart, which captures in so many words the essence of this indulgent digression, and is therefore probably the most elegant way to wrap it up.

Book Review – The Nix by Nathan Hill

I ordered The Nix from my library after a friend recommended it this summer, and fell in love with the voice straight away: erudite and witty, with the best prologue I have read in a while, and a devastating first sentence:

If Samuel had known his mother was leaving, he might have paid more attention.

The prose in Nathan Hill’s impressive debut novel is sneaky. The language is delicious and reads easily. Humour softens us up. Then daggers are planted deep in our hearts.

As a mother of boys, I find the chronic misunderstanding between the main character Samuel and his mother triggering – and cried like a baby at the end of the first chapter of Part Two:

“And I told you to bring nine toys,” she said. “You brought eight. Next time try to pay more attention.” And the disappointment in her voice made him cry even harder, so that he couldn’t talk, and thus he couldn’t tell her that he put eight toys in the wagon because the ninth toy was the wagon itself.

The story starts when the mother becomes a viral sensation for throwing rocks at a presidential candidate, and the son she abandoned as a child is coerced by his publisher into writing a sensational ‘tell-all’ book about her. As he investigates her past, family secrets are unveiled and old wounds are healed.

It’s a book from a decade ago, but very relevant to today’s tired gender wars, where men and women are expected to keep competing in a never-ending zero sum game where the only winners are those who fan the flames of outrage for social media engagement – and even traditional publishers like The New York Times and The Guardian are taking the (click-)bait.

This makes reading Nathan Hill’s novel now all the more poignant, and imbues the turtle anecdote – which I can’t resist sharing here – with new meaning: perhaps we can emulate Samuel’s journey and build new bridges, rather than widening the gap generation after generation.

Years later, in a high-school biology class, Samuel heard a story about a certain kind of African turtle that swam across the ocean to lay its eggs in South America. Scientists could find no reason for the enormous trip. Why did the turtles do it? The leading theory was that they began doing it eons ago, when South America and Africa were still locked together. Back then, only a river might have separated the continents, and the turtles laid their eggs on the river’s far bank. But then the continents began drifting apart, and the river widened by about an inch per year, which would have been invisible to the turtles. So they kept going to the same spot, the far bank of the river, each generation swimming a tiny bit farther than the last one, and after a hundred million years of this, the river had become an ocean, and yet the turtles never noticed.