Plain Life

These days, it's easy to get the impression that people are really very anxious. Who? you ask. Well, people you hear about. People who tell you they are. Friends. Lovers. Acquaintances. Colleagues. The Youth. The term is around and people are applying it to themselves, or having it applied to them, willy-nilly.

What would it mean to be able to live a plain life? Would a plain life just be an unambitious one—a drab or routine life, without colour, variation, unknowing or luck? Or would a plain life be one in which we'd fret slightly less, suspect ourselves less, and thus listen to ourselves and others in new ways? We may not need to do more and be more—in the quiet spaces already within us, lurking in the interstices of our days and conversations, there are ways and choreographies to nurture a plainer, saner, odder, less reactive and therefore less terrifying life.

In Plain Life, Antonia Pont questions our thinking about capacities, virtue, envy, wanting, love and kindness—suggesting that it might be fine, more than enough, indeed so much, to live a plain life.

'Read this precise, wild and tender offering, and be sure to ask yourself how you feel after ... Plain Life is challenging and generous.' — Debra Dank

'Fizzing with energy and ideas, Plain Life is a practical, philosophical heart to heart with your most spirited friend. Alain de Botton for hot anti-capitalists.' — Briohny Doyle

'Deeply alert to the challenges of our times, and extraordinarily well read, Antonia Pont delivers us a handbook for life that is politically radical, refreshingly intellectual, and wholly attentive to embodiment and being. Informed and informing, it is a seriously joyful tour de force.' — Julienne van Loon

'An intriguing volume that is reminiscent of the works of Alain de Botton, Maggie Nelson and Rebecca Solnit.' — Heidi Maier, InDaily QLD

'Pont's elliptical, playful, philosophical style requires readers slow down and observe the workings of their own minds, be curious about the fears they've suppressed and dare to feel them, and become aware of how they collude in their own misery.' — Sydney Morning Herald / The Age

'Mixing academic reflection with engaging prose, Plain Life is a thought-provoking book.' — Jeff Popple, The Canberra Daily