Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time - Softcover

Griffiths, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006551777 ISBN 13: 9780006551775

Publisher: Flamingo, 2000

Synopsis

‘A wonderful piece of polemic against everything that’s wrong with the way we deal with time today.’ Independent

WINNER OF THE BARNES AND NOBLE ‘DISCOVER AWARD FOR NON-FICTION’ 2003

An infectiously enthusiastic and original piece of cultural analysis on the one subject that has ousted sex and money from the top of the obsessions league. In thrillingly ebullient style and with every paragraph fizzing over with smart ideas smartly expressed, livewire polemicist Jay Griffiths takes Time in her teeth and champs and chews at it until it’s a far more palatable item – something to nourish us, not just to tempt and worry us.

Her fascinating exploration of the passage of time includes (among many other things): our obsession with speed, with overtaking; motorways and their link to fascism; war; Mercury and the mythology of time and speed; History and the heritage industry; the ‘meanness’ of Greenwich Mean Time; the fast language we now have to go with fast food; Aboriginal Dreamtime; the difference between festivals and pageants; May Day; New Year; fin de siecles; the Millennium Dome; the time-consuming nature of housework; sex as anti-authority and anti-linear time; male concepts of time set against female; plastic surgery and the denial of aging; the evolution of the global calendar and clock; clock time versus wild time.

At once playful, political and passionate, she discusses Time’s arrow/domain/passage/gender/ linearity/circularity/speed/sloth/etc with exceptional elan. It all makes for a hugely entertaining, exciting and even terrifying book which marks the beginning of a significant writing career.

About this title

About the Author

Jay Griffiths read English at Oxford and has written extensively for (amongst others) the Guardian, the Observer, and the London Review of Books.

From the Back Cover

Why does time seem so short? Can it run out? What is '24-hour' society? Why does it seem to move so slowly in the countryside and quickly in the cities? What is cow time and where would you find a coconut clock? 'Pip Pip' is a book for those who suspect there's more to time than clocks – an infectiously enthusiastic argument for other, more extraordinary times, the diverse cycle of nature, of folk tale or of carnival. Jay Griffiths examines the way past and future are seen; how modernity's speed damages nature's time; how women's time differs from men's and how children's time is different from either. Rejecting the idea that time is money, she asks rather whose money is made from whose time. This book should change the way we view time – forever.

'An 'irresistably provocative' and political analysis of time in our personal lives. The White Rabbit and the Slacker have different perspectives on the notion of time: this book renders it as textured and ductile, as potentially wild. Her wittily enthusiastic thesis is that time too long has been used as a took to power: as a manifesto 'it could cause a revolution'.'
IAIN FINLAYSON, 'The Times, Books of the Year'

'Like the seminal socialist and feminist and ecological works, ''Pip Pip' articulates what thousands have felt but no one has been able to put into words'. Suddenly shapeless concerns are brought to into focus. Outrage takes the place of confusion, fascination displaces complacency. Cheeky, intelligent, always gripping, 'Pip Pip' reintroduces us to a dimension we've utterly neglected. It will be 'the opening salvo in a new battle over the human spirit'.'
GEORGE MONBIOT

'A whirl of a book about speeding time and slowing time, stretching time and contracting time, male and female time, poetic time, even wild time and time to enjoy. 'Any page will get you hooked'.'
NEW SCIENTIST

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0006551777
• ISBN 13: 9780006551775
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 334