The Zen of Being Grumpy

Book excerpt: Are you proud to be politically incorrect, loathing alternate therapies and green activists, then this irreverent send-up of our modern culture's fashionable obsessions is for you. Mark Lawson, whose heroes are Darth Vader and Ebenezer Scrooge, satirises those things especially dear to the mass media and chattering classes, like climate change alarmism and the worship of youth. Young people, he says, are not special, being the same as older people, but with less experience. "They are just as clueless as their parents." The Zen of Being Grumpy will resonate with those of "advanced middle age" and beyond, "who have ceased to care," yearn to be "liberated from the perpetual pleas of do-gooders and activists" and keep themselves busy "ignoring all conscious-raising activities." The crazes for text messaging, twittering and the social media in general, loud mobile phone users, and even overseas tourism, are among Lawson's many inviting targets. This book is timely, empowering and above all hysterically funny. Mark Lawson was born middle aged and has been growing older ever since, and has long accepted his role as the curmudgeon with no time for the popular enthusiasms and youth-worship that fill the media. That means he is out of step with much of the community, including his own colleagues, defends lost causes such as the ultimate bad-guy Darth Vader (he was just trying to hold the Empire together) and arch-miser Ebeneezer Scrooge (why couldn't he be left alone to not enjoy Christmas) but does not care. That is the zen of being grumpy. He likes some things, if only he could remember what they are. When venting his spleen online he uses the sign-in name curmudgeon. Mark Lawson is a senior journalist and leader writer with the 'Australian Financial Review'.