November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Just Quit!

(Page 2 of 2)

September/October 1996
Marilyn Berlin Snell, Utne Reader 
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In the following Web pages, we celebrate the fine art of the quit. Journalist Robert Draper explores a raggedy community in the Texas outback called Terlingua, where quitting is a religion and the American mainstream a distant mirage.

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James Evans gives you a close-up of life in Terlingua in a photo-essay.

Elsewhere, Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk, eloquently describes people who have quit having sex--monks and nuns. No tale of deprivation, Norris' is a story of love and the fullness of friendship.

For those skittish about the cloistered life, there's The Idler's Tom Hodgkinson, who celebrates pleasure in all its many guises and strongly advocates that we give up being 'good.'

American Job zine publisher Randy Russell has made a career out of the 'lateral quit' by rolling from one minimum wage job to the next. In a style both stoic and sardonic, Russell lays bare the shadow work of the modern-day low-wage employee.

And author and self-proclaimed quit artist Barbara Graham ruminates on the unexpected freedom that comes when there's nothing left to quit.

But we begin with Evan Harris, at 26 already the grande dame of the quit. Author, break-room philosopher, and consummate quitter, Harris provides a catalog of techniques for all of us who may have closeted sympathies for the quitting way but are still trying to muster the courage to go public.

(Note: Marilyn Berlin Snell quit her job as executive editor of Utne Reader after editing this cover section. She is now a full-time freelancer.)

Part of cover story, September/October 1996.

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