On Purpose: Ten Lessons on the Meaning of Life

Ten essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives. How do we live fully? How do we live successfully? Adrift in an anchorless world, we often worry about where we are heading. What meaning can we hope to find our modern, secular life? The answer, Ben Hutchinson explains, can be found by looking to writers and thinkers to help us live more purposefully, more mindfully – more fully. Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and Joan Didion, On Purpose proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently. Engaging, uplifting and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who has lost their sense of direction or wishes to radically transform the way they live. Ben Hutchinson's On Purpose is a non-fiction collection of essays that combines philosophy, ethics, and literary criticism to explore the concept of happiness. This top-rated book is a testament to the power of literature in personal growth and self-help. For fans of Mary Beard (Confronting the Classics), Gary Gutting (Talking God), Terry Eagleton (Ideology), Nedra Glover Tawwab (Set Boundaries, Find Peace), and Catherine Belsey (A Future for Criticism). HarperCollins 2023