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A review by marko68
Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver
5.0
The fact that I don’t quite know how to start this review/reflection is an indication of the intrigue of Will Carver’s ‘Nothing important happened today’. I don’t want my inadequate words to minimise or trivialise how deeply this book delves into the shape of humanity and i certainly don’t want to be cliche in my response to it. So I’m trying to choose my words carefully.
The first thing that strikes me with Carver’s writing is his style, which he indicates in his acknowledgements at the end of the book as being written in the third person and the collective first person. The constant switch between the collective, the individual and a third person commentary, coupled with short sentences and repetition of sentences with the same first words creates such a unique reading experience and one that felt like I was reading fiction and non-fiction simultaneously. I loved that experience because the book is essentially non-fiction wrapped up in fiction if you get me.
For me, ‘Nothing important happened today’ is ultimately a commentary on life in the twenty-first century. Will Carver takes the concept of ‘cult’ and bats it around relentlessly until he has shaken it to its core and left the reader pondering what position they take on hundreds of issues, how they respond to a myriad of media intrusions ever single day and what they choose to engage with or image they want to portray. Chapters entitled ‘you want to help’, ‘build a following’, ‘stay illusive’, ‘deal in certainty’, and ‘help by killing’ clearly emphasise the no holds barred kind of writing style that Carver employs. And he does this all the while overstating in an understated kind of way that 21st century socialisation provides the perfect foundation for breeding a cult following.
For me there are poignant passages in this book that made me stop, think, ponder, reflect and nod in wonder at how Carver managed to weave such home truths into this work. Take page 255... “we are so connected that we have become disconnected. We can’t have a thought, we have to have an opinion. Freedom of speech has gone too fucking far when we feel the need to share everything. When we filter the image of ourselves but feel no need to filter what we say out loud, hidden behind a new status and picture of ourselves when we were twenty pounds lighter”.
And again on page 209, “in a world where we show everyone pictures of the meals we are about to eat or we share videos of landmarks in our children’s lives that should be just for us, where thoughts are our latest status and kindness appears to have lost its currency, its often the things we don’t say that cause the most damage”.
So, needless to say this is a book with impact. The impact for everyone will be a little different. It needs to be read with openness to see what is in there for each human being. After all, we are human beings for our entire lives.
The first thing that strikes me with Carver’s writing is his style, which he indicates in his acknowledgements at the end of the book as being written in the third person and the collective first person. The constant switch between the collective, the individual and a third person commentary, coupled with short sentences and repetition of sentences with the same first words creates such a unique reading experience and one that felt like I was reading fiction and non-fiction simultaneously. I loved that experience because the book is essentially non-fiction wrapped up in fiction if you get me.
For me, ‘Nothing important happened today’ is ultimately a commentary on life in the twenty-first century. Will Carver takes the concept of ‘cult’ and bats it around relentlessly until he has shaken it to its core and left the reader pondering what position they take on hundreds of issues, how they respond to a myriad of media intrusions ever single day and what they choose to engage with or image they want to portray. Chapters entitled ‘you want to help’, ‘build a following’, ‘stay illusive’, ‘deal in certainty’, and ‘help by killing’ clearly emphasise the no holds barred kind of writing style that Carver employs. And he does this all the while overstating in an understated kind of way that 21st century socialisation provides the perfect foundation for breeding a cult following.
For me there are poignant passages in this book that made me stop, think, ponder, reflect and nod in wonder at how Carver managed to weave such home truths into this work. Take page 255... “we are so connected that we have become disconnected. We can’t have a thought, we have to have an opinion. Freedom of speech has gone too fucking far when we feel the need to share everything. When we filter the image of ourselves but feel no need to filter what we say out loud, hidden behind a new status and picture of ourselves when we were twenty pounds lighter”.
And again on page 209, “in a world where we show everyone pictures of the meals we are about to eat or we share videos of landmarks in our children’s lives that should be just for us, where thoughts are our latest status and kindness appears to have lost its currency, its often the things we don’t say that cause the most damage”.
So, needless to say this is a book with impact. The impact for everyone will be a little different. It needs to be read with openness to see what is in there for each human being. After all, we are human beings for our entire lives.