On Modern Manners

This is a book about our plight in the modern
world, about how we live and how we lie about how we live. It
consists of sayings and fragments telling of slights and fancies,
imagined loves and broken dreams, completed in the time it takes to
recognise another, to smile and to stand back surprised as they pass
by without seeing us. These are moments that may be decisive or not,
fragments on which things just might turn. These are stories that are
as complete as they ever will be, and perhaps can be.

But these stories are also attempts to pull free;
to convince that we can be free and that we need not be pushed down.
These are efforts to say that we can still laugh. Not the cackle of
the maniac or the desperate, but the quiet chuckle that means
contentment and an easy night. These stories ease us away from loss
and assert a wit even if we cannot manage wisdom.