THE SMALL STUFF

An Atlantic columnist examines how modern society has eroded the tactile pleasures that make daily life feel meaningful.

This book’s opening chapter is titled “What If Contentment Were Easy?” Bogost offers this message: “You can keep pursuing big goals and meaningful relationships, while also enjoying every moment just a little more.” He writes from this premise by centering senses—deemed as “simple pleasures”—as a counter to disconnection from contemporary life. Through interviews and reflections, the book alternates between moments of sensory engagement or its absence: for example, whether a woman stuck in traffic finds solace in the touch of the steering wheel against her knuckles or a local reporter reflects on journalism’s shift from a once-social profession into an office-bound routine. The prose extends an almost club-like invitation: “The more you allow yourself to accept the weird, wonderful gifts that ordinary life constantly offers, the more their offerings will feel desirable, even transformative.” Of course, the journey to embracing the sensory world comes with its challenges—structural and personal. There’s a moment in which a house painter is surprised to see the author participate in home repairs, raising questions about how manual labor is framed as a distraction from work or family life rather than a missed sensory connection. The most striking section considers the role of cell phones: “You walk into your living room to find your spouse or son on the couch, staring or tapping into a device. What are they doing? you wonder. Email? Television? Pornography? Shopping? Which is also to ask, What other, foreign, spaces have they conjured into the shared space of the home? The answer is often unknowable and, in any case, just as quickly replaced by another space as one app backgrounds and another comes to the fore. A proliferation of non-places wasn’t the problem, it seems. Instead, technology has allowed personal intimacy and connection to flourish too much, and anywhere.”

A timely and engaging analysis of digital life, even if it doesn’t always extend beyond familiar critiques.