Book review: Embracing The Ordinary

ORDINARY has become something of a dirty word. In our constant battle to better ourselves, the ordinary is not merely disregarded; it is despised.

Embracing The Ordinary

Michael Foley

Simon & Schuster, £12.99

In Embracing The Ordinary: Lessons From The Champions Of Everyday Life, Michael Foley – the author of the best-selling The Age Of Absurdity – instructs us to step beyond acknowledging the merits of life’s apparently mundane footnotes, to recognise that they are the stuff we’re all made of.

Boy, can he celebrate the ordinary. Whether presenting a convincing argument for the merits of sniffing toenail clippings or describing the giddy pleasure he gets from the view from his window of a litter-strewn railway track, he is 
a true connoisseur of the ­commonplace.

He’s not the only one. He cites examples of masters of the ordinary from the worlds of art, literature and film; from Robert Frost and artist George Shaw to Mike Leigh and Vermeer, but it is the works of Joyce and Proust that he refers to most frequently.

Both were, in their different ways, adept at capturing the everyday and both had ­epiphanic moments wherein “for no obvious reason, some entirely unexceptional scene 
is illuminated by radiant ­beauty, mystery and significance”.

Foley describes his own such epiphany, when, 30 years ago, a dingy, grey high street “was illuminated, transfigured, a portal to infinite being”.

While he uses the work of these two literary giants to paint a convincing argument for the beauty of the seemingly banal, his own personal anecdotes make for rather amusing light relief. He illustrates the madness of snobbery, for example, by recollecting a serious childhood injury; his mother made him change into his good clothes before rushing him to A&E to see a doctor.

This is a book of Big Ideas about small things, things not only considered insignificant, but often repellent. The reader is left feeling a fool for having overlooked them for so long, and, indeed, even more foolish for having ever worshipped at the altar of the exceptional. That we’ve spent so long distancing ourselves from the unexceptional becomes suddenly laughable.

Foley’s writing is funny and accessible, his ability to rain ordinariness on such lofty topics as love, sex and religion is insightful and amusing. On consciousness, he writes that “if on the way to work next Monday morning you feel like creamed shit, it may help to remember that this very ability to feel like creamed shit is miraculous. Existence itself is a miracle and to be aware of existence is an even more profound miracle. The most mind-boggling question is: how does the mind boggle?”

In terms of practical advice, this is as self-helpy as it gets. There are no exercises, no steps to follow. There is, however, a sense that we are going about our days with our senses shut off to the very things that might truly stimulate them if given half a chance. Foley makes a highly convincing argument for the wonders of the ordinary and it’s up to the reader to venture forth and smell the toenail clippings.