The Advice King
There is so much to love about Chris Crofton. If you can’t make out the words at the bottom of that image. Here they are: Crofton is equal parts Heather Havrilesky, Wendell Berry, and Bojack Horseman.
He really is. He really, really is. And this book is full of heart and analysis and memoir and comedy and eye-rubbingly specific affection for our sweet, old mess of Nashville. It’s about loneliness and the overcoming of loneliness. Chris Crofton is the lovely man you want to eavesdrop on the moment he starts yakking, the person with whom it’s a joy to flip channels for hours. A stray thought on the subject of Anthony Scaramucci, for instance, yields something lovely and essential. After calling him an “uninformed bully,” he slows his roll and offers the following:
“Uninformed bully is redundant, actually. Bullies are defined by their lack of interest in facts. A lack of interest in facts is, in fact, the source of a bully’s power. Bullies mock people who are interested in facts. The bully reframes thinking as “worrying,” which implies weakness. It’s a high school trick, and there’s a reason it works so well in high school—everyone is terribly insecure and sort of dumb.
Y’all know the type? Ever been bullied? Ever been drawn to the magnetic pull of a bully practitioner? Ever contended with a bully within? Crofton is there, reframing the reigning fascist reframings; depriving them of their power, at least within range of his voice.
Remember a few years back, when our executive branch stole children from their asylum-seeking parents on our dime and with our presumed consent. Crofton has words:
Anybody who defends this “policy” is depraved…Anybody in a position of power who stays silent on this “issue” is also depraved. Silence is complicity. I put “issue” in quotes because this is not an “issue,” it is barbarism. Barbarism is not an “issue”—it is an emergency.
So…he has his eye on taxpayer-funded crimes against humanity on one page and then…he shifts to praising the Survivor album, Vital Signs, and Gordon Lightfoot on the other. Righteous pop culture, under Crofton’s eye, adds to the stock inventory of available reality. And we need it—more of it—right now and soon and very soon. Have a look at his words, more relevant with each passing day, on what Republicans throughout our nation are up to in the targeting of children and their parents. We’re back to psychic freefall of bullies and would-be bullies.
There’s a thread of prophetic heft, it seems to me, on every page. There’s self-care, compassion, and skewering wit at every turn. I’m proud to have my words on the cover, I’m grateful that Chris Crofton set it all down, and I’ll never stop thanking Zach Gresham of Vanderbilt University Press for putting it in front of me. Order your copy today.