by Hugh Mackay
Nelson was impressed.
‘So we’re lucky to have such luminaries on our little team. And yet, believe it or not, they are a bit in awe of you, John, the pair of them. Around the office, they’ve taken to referring to you as The Lord of the Aisles – church and supermarket. Ha ha.’
Nelson gave a dutiful smile, this being far from the first time he’d heard that line.
‘Anyway, I won’t spoil their fun by revealing any of the plans they have in mind for you, but I do know they were talking about the need to do something about your wife’s hair. I thought I should mention that.’
John Nelson found he couldn’t agree more: he had been disturbed by Flora’s recent switch to a spiky, orange-tipped hairdo and he heartily approved of the idea of some restoration work. But he was unnerved by the realisation that Buzzz already had Flora in mind as a campaign accessory. He doubted she would agree to anything more than an occasional photo of them as a couple.
‘Take a look at this design for bumper stickers,’ said Harrold. ‘Honk if you want Real Democracy. Don’t you love it?’
Nelson loved it.
‘That’s just a start. We’ll be all over the net – YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, you name it. Buzzz will appoint someone to manage all this – they won’t be expecting you to write your own blogs. Ha ha. I’ll leave it to Neroli to outline their plans for a couple of stunts that will get us on the TV news as well. But I will just say they’ve been talking about some disruptive skydiving. Disruptive skydiving, John. Let your imagination play with that one.’
Nelson tried.
‘We’ll be grabbing every available media slot. Goes without saying. Plus the usual guff – more leaflets and posters than you can poke a stick at. All subject to funding constraints, of course, and we’re half hoping, not to put too fine a point on it, that you might be able to help out with a bit of underwriting of your own campaign. None of this comes cheap. But the main thing is your face, John. Your face. Did I mention that on the phone? Oh, yes indeedy, Buzzz see you as the face of Real Democracy. Exciting, isn’t it?’
Nelson agreed it was exciting.
Tentatively, he raised the question of policies.
Harrold brushed that aside with an airy wave. ‘Totally interactive, John. Nothing prescriptive. Real democracy, see? Deliberative polls, plebiscites, online panels, telephone polling, shopping-centre surveys, focus groups. The works. Totally responsive to the will of the people, John. By the way, when Neroli and her offsider arrive, I wouldn’t mention the p-word if I were you. Marketing is their bag, not policy. They’d never claim to be political philosophers. Ha ha. Oh dear, no. They like to start with a blank slate, they tell me.’
A knock.
Harrold sprang from his chair and swung the door open with a flourish.
‘Living the dream, bro,’ came a voice from without, followed by the slap of a rapturous high five.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I AM GRATEFUL to my publisher, Ingrid Ohlsson, for encouraging me to venture into the realm of satire and for continuing to support the project, even when some of the characters turned out to be rather more repellent than either of us had expected.
Ali Lavau greatly improved the original manuscript with sensitive and perceptive editing, and Georgia Douglas took what I thought was a finished product and, with forensic skill, helped me address some flaws in the structure.
Some of my best friends have worked in advertising, though none of them appears in this book – not even in heavy disguise. My father was an advertising copywriter, and he’s not in here, either. For eight years, I ran a research organisation located in the belly of an advertising agency that was very different from the one I created for this book. Still, all those people and all that experience must have seeped into the narrative, one way or another. I certainly noticed that clever people can have a lot of fun creating advertising campaigns, and that both the strongest critics and the strongest defenders of advertising make the same mistake, in believing ads have more influence on us than they actually do.
About Hugh Mackay
Hugh Mackay is a social researcher and bestselling author of eighteen books, including The Good Life and Beyond Belief. Selling the Dream is his seventh novel. He is a fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and, in 2015, was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. He lives with his wife in Canberra.
Also By Hugh Mackay
FICTION
Little Lies
House Guest
The Spin
Winter Close
Ways of Escape
Infidelity
NON-FICTION
Reinventing Australia
Why Don’t People Listen?
Generations
Turning Point
Media Mania
Right & Wrong
Advance Australia . . . Where?
What Makes Us Tick?
The Good Life
The Art of Belonging
Beyond Belief
MORE TITLES BY HUGH MACKAY
BEYOND BELIEF
What do people actually mean when they say ‘God’?
Around two-thirds of us say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten Australians attend church weekly. In Beyond Belief, Hugh Mackay presents this discrepancy as one of the great unexamined topics of our time. He argues that while our attachment to a traditional idea of God may be waning, our desire for a life of meaning remains as strong as ever.
Mackay interviews dozens of Australians representing many different points on the spectrum of faith, including some who are part of the emerging ‘spiritual but not religious’ movement. He exposes the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through our society: we may not actively worship, but we still like to see local churches operating in our midst, and we use ‘our’ church to marry, christen our babies, educate our children and commemorate our dead. He points out some uncomfortable truths, such as our tendency to call on God only in a crisis, and unpacks our human need for ‘answers’, even when science can’t find them. He endorses the Christian ideal of the good life – a life lived for others – but acknowledges that there are many pathways to that same goal, not all of them religious.
From our leading chronicler of Australian life, Beyond Belief is an engrossing exploration of the ways we find spiritual fulfilment in an avowedly secular age.
THE GOOD LIFE
What makes a life worth living? The non-fiction bestseller on the role of relationships in a life well lived.
Hugh Mackay has spent his entire working life asking Australians about their values, motivations, ambitions, hopes and fears. In The Good Life he addresses the ultimate question: What makes a life worth living?
His conclusion is provocative. The good life is not the sum of our security, wealth, status, postcode, career success and levels of happiness. The good life is one defined by our capacity for selflessness, the quality of our relationships and our willingness to connect with others in a useful way.
Mackay examines what is known as the Golden Rule through the prisms of religion, philosophy, politics, business and family life. And he explores the numerous and often painful ways we distract ourselves from this central principle: our pursuit of pleasure, our attempts to perfect ourselves and our children, and our conviction that we can have our lives under control.
Argued with all the passion and intelligence we have come to expect from one of Australia’s most prolific and insightful authors, The Good Life is a book that will start conversations, ignite arguments and possibly even change the way we live our lives.
THE ART OF BELONGING
The eternal question ‘Who am I?’ must be weighed against an even deeper question: ‘Who are we?’ We are writing each other’s stories as much as we are writing our own.
In his bestselling book, The Good Life, Hugh Mackay argued that kindness and respect for others are the hallmarks of a life well lived. Now, in The Art of
Belonging, Mackay shows how strong communities develop our moral sense and build our emotional security. He says that as ‘social creatures’ we can only reach our potential when we engage with our communities – in the local neighbourhood, at work and even online.
Drawing on his lifelong work as a social researcher, Mackay creates a fictional suburb, Southwood, and populates it with characters who, like most of us, struggle to reconcile their need to belong with their desire to live life on their own terms. Through a series of stories, illuminated by Mackay’s social analysis, we witness the conflicts that arise when individuals assert their needs at the expense of others, but we also glimpse the satisfactions that flow from contributing to the common good.
Compellingly argued and written with wisdom, compassion and wit, The Art of Belonging is for those who yearn for a society that sustains and nurtures the many, not just the fortunate few.
INFIDELITY
The hardest thing, finally, is to accept our insignificance in the scheme of things – or perhaps to accept that there is no ‘scheme of things’.
Tom Harper, a 43-year-old Australian psychologist, is in self-imposed exile in London, living down a sexual indiscretion with a client. Through a chance meeting at the Royal Academy, he makes friends with Sarah Delacour, an academic who studies nursery rhymes. Sarah is beautiful, charming and smart, but she is morally trapped – and perhaps corrupted – by decisions she has made in the past.
As Tom and Sarah’s relationship evolves, many layers of infidelity emerge. Tom falls deeply in love and waits for Sarah to reciprocate. But while Sarah is brilliant at playing the role of a woman in love, Tom fears her ultimate commitment may be to securing a life of luxury.
Through his fiction and non-fiction, Hugh Mackay has developed a reputation as an acute and compassionate observer of the human condition, with all its shades of light and dark. In this beautifully written novel about love and the desire for control, he explores one of life’s most troubling questions: do our circumstances justify or merely explain our behaviour?
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
First published 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Hugh Mackay 2017
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Epigraph taken from page 189 of The Scientific Outlook by
Bertrand Russell, first published in 1931 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
London. Used by permission of Taylor & Francis Book Permissions on behalf of Routledge. Grateful acknowledgement is also given to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760553371
Typeset by Midland Typesetters
Cover images: Shutterstock
Cover design: Debra Billson
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