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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/20/the-trick-review-william-leith-on-how-to-make-a-packet The journalist and writer turns his stream-of-consciousness style to a question that has always niggled him – why isn’t he rich? William Leith’s primary subject has always been appetite, and its close cousins compulsion and obsession. He first explored these themes in his newspaper columns, stagily self-absorbed fragments of a hungover life, and subsequently in two addictive books. The first, The Hungry Years, set his own capacity for excess – in food and drink and drugs – against a culture high on consumption; the second, Bits of Me Are Falling Apart, was a sometimes poignant, always curious, mediation on mortality, the consequences of that binger’s lifestyle. Both books were revelatory and funny, and dramatised their own premise way, way too much. The Trick takes all of Leith’s writing habits – his mazy streams of consciousness (few writers are quite so enamoured of, or good at, watching themselves think) and his love of axiom – and, if anything, ups the ante. His subject here, is one that has always nagged away underneath his tales of excess – if he wants so much, why has he often been so profligate in his attempts to get it? Why has he been unable, that is, to accumulate wealth rather than debt? Continue reading...
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