Writer Colin Beavan still isn’t saying what it’s like to live for months in a New York apartment without toilet paper, said Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker. Beavan’s new book, No Impact Man, describes a self-imposed 12-month experiment in asceticism, intended to reduce his “impact” on the environment as much as possible. Yet his outlandish premise has always seemed less a thoughtful attempt to model an environmentally responsible lifestyle than a semicomical, self-promotional stunt. That might explain why he won’t give away any of his “excretory” secrets in pre-publication interviews.
What Beavan will admit, said Penelope Green in The New York Times, is that he, his wife, and their young daughter have cut themselves some slack since the end of the book project. The electricity in their ninth-floor apartment has been turned back on, Beavan no longer forswears elevator service in order to reduce his carbon footprint, and his personal ban on non–locally produced consumables has been waived for both toothpastes and coffee. (Without her quadruple shots from Starbucks, his wife had suffered caffeine withdrawal headaches.) But the family hasn’t completely reverted to its old ways; they’re still looking for opportunities to reduce waste and more generally find “the sweet spot” of resource usage. So they choose to sweat rather than abide even an electric fan, and they run an electric fridge but don’t have a freezer. No word yet on toilet paper use, but Beavan claims that he still washes his hair with baking soda instead of shampoo.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
'A direct, protracted war with Israel is not something Iran is equipped to fight'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Today's political cartoons - April 17, 2024Cartoons Wednesday's cartoons - political anxiety, jury sorting hat, and more
-
Arid Gulf states hit with year's worth of rainSpeed Read The historic flooding in Dubai is tied to climate change
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”