The succinct, topical, and obvious choice is Review: Tom Lutz’s Aimlessness. It works just fine. But I am not taken with it. I shall come back to this.
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by Akim Reinhardt
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I don’t know how well Abbas knows me. Of course one can never really know how well someone else knows them. It’s a second degree of mystical confusion flowing the first: how well can you really know anyone else? [here]

How well do I know Abbas? Kinda. But more. Or less. I’m not sure. Over the last decade there have been email exchanges and the roughly biennial meet up for drinks. Our mutual friends have described him to me, and likely me to him.

How well does Abbas know me? Not at all in some ways. Very well in others. As 3QD editor he’s been reading my essays for over a decade. Is that what led him to suggest I review Lutz’s book on aimlessness? Certainly some of my own work here has broached the topic in various ways without ever using the word. There was the three-part essay from 2014 that chronicled my rambling 7,500 mile drive around the United States. And there was the book manuscript that I serialized at 3QD in 2019–2020. Ostensibly about songs that got stuck in my head, it was really about whatever mental and emotional meanderings those songs led my head to follow.

Is this why Abbas, who may or may not really know me, asked if I would like to review Tom Lutz’s new book about aimlessness? Read more »