“The Future belongs to crowds,” said Don DeLillo. Aaron Gilbreath is embarking on a project to document that future in a new book, “Crowded.”
My name is Aaron Gilbreath, and I’m a Good Men Project contributor and reader. I wanted to tell other readers about the Kickstarter campaign for my current book project, Crowded: Portrait of Life on a Teeming Planet. I just raised $3,000 to do the reporting necessary to complete the book proposal, and with fifteen days left in the Kickstarter, I thought I’d tell people about the book and how I’ve stretched the fund-raising effort to extend my reporting trip.
Crowded is narrative nonfiction about the profound yet overlooked ways dense communal living has shaped human affairs, including everything from our moods to our businesses to interior design. Crowding isn’t just an environmental and urban design issue. It’s a social, psychological and moral issue. With over half the world population now living in cities, “The Future,” as novelist Don DeLillo said, “belongs to crowds.” I plan to portray what that future looks like, how we’re preparing for it, and write the first book to detail exactly how crowds have shaped human history through time. Once I finish the proposal, my agent can shop it around, and I can hopefully—hopefully!—write the rest of the book.
So, why Crowding?
Be it sitting on a plane near a screaming baby, or brainstorming ways to organize your office cubicle, crowding touches most everyone’s life, because density is one of modernity’s defining issues. Even if you’ve never tried to articulate it, spatial requirements—of room, of silence, privacy and calm—form part of our definition of “the good life.” How far apart do you need to be from other people to find peace? How far apart do your living room walls need to be to feel comfortable? Even when we’re unaware of its influence, roominess is a condition, and the degree to which we have it determines livability.
With the story driven by characters, scenes, action and dialogue, and rooted in solid reporting, my book will argue that we need to treat overcrowding with the same gravity as other social and ecological issues, and take steps to manage it in a humane way that minimizes crowds’ dangers while capitalizing on their benefits. In the process, Crowded will test the counterintuitive principle that the smaller our home, the happier our life.
Some of my favorite works of narrative nonfiction are Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, David Grann’s The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, and nearly anything by Joan Didion, Joseph Mitchell and Mary Roach. When asked for a summary, I like to call my book one urbanite’s vision of human history through the story of the crowd.
The $3,000 people contributed through Kickstarter will cover my baseline travel expenses of flights and lodging: small rooms in the West Side YMCA, and a bed in a Tokyo capsule hotel. During the next fifteen days, I’m trying to raise a bit more to cover some food expenses. Ideally, if I can raise enough capital, I can (a) stay longer in Tokyo to interview more sources and report on other dense living arrangements, and (b) even extend my Tokyo reporting trip to Seoul, South Korea. Flights from Tokyo to Seoul are far less expensive than flights to Seoul from my home in Portland, Oregon (which are ~$1500), so I’m hoping to combine trips to be economical and smarter with my time and supporters’ money.
I work a retail day job at a tea shop and write freelance and housesit the rest of the time, but I can’t stay long overseas without raising money. While traveling to write pieces for Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Men’s Journal and The Awl, I lower my overhead by sleeping in rental cars and subsisting off of street tacos, even eating the complimentary breakfasts at hotels I didn’t stay at. (I have no shame.) The rest of the year I eat lots of Trader Joe’s microwavable meals, because funds are tight. I assume fund are tight for most writers and editors. Before launching my Kickstarter, I’d never asked people for financial assistance before, and I’m uncomfortable asking for it now, but I needed to put that aside this time to make this happen. I’m enormously passionate about this book, more excited than I’ve ever been about one of my writing projects (and I loved writing my recent jazz essays for the Kenyon Review, AGNI, Brick and Conjunctions). I also believe that the subject’s global scope will impact the lives of city-dwellers both in the U.S., Canada and in Europe, and in developing countries such as China, India and Bangladesh.
If you’re able to help, here’s the Kickstarter link.
As cliché as it sounds, it’s true: every little bit helps. What Kickstarter has showed me is that people, even strangers, are generous and encouraging and full of great ideas, and that big ideas require many people to bring them to fruition. I plan to make Crowded a compelling read and a book to be proud of, and I will have many people to thank for that. Please email me if you have any questions: [email protected]. Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Aaron
Read more in Lifestyle on The Good Life.
Hi Aaron
I took a look at the website The Kickstarter..
Can you tell me if any of the amounts $ will give me your book you now plan to write if I contribute?
It is unclear.
Dear Iben, thanks for your intetest in my book project. Although i would like to have included a copy of the book for supporters in kickstarter, I couldn’t because I cannot guarantee what a publisher will agree to do so don’t want to make promises on their behalf. I can’t even guarantee who or if any publisher will publish it, only that the kick starter funds will enable me to do research to finish my boo proposal. I hope that answers your question and that you might find other rewards there of interest.
Thanks so much!
Aaron