Overview

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert offers a memorably brief account of his parents’ death: “picnic, lightning.” Picnic Comma Lightning, too, opens with death—that of Laurence Scott’s mother—because, for a philosopher, death raises a profound existential question: How do we know what is real, especially when we have come to question the reality of so many of our day-to-day experiences? Writing from the intersection of philosophy, politics, and memoir, Scott transforms his personal meditation on loss into a beguiling exploration of what it means to exist in the world today. It used to be that our lives were rooted in reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Now, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming flimsier and more vulnerable than ever before. Scott’s far-ranging examination charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray. He ponders how ubiquitous cameras reframe our private lives (an event only exists once someone posts the video), how mysterious algorithms undermine our attempts at self-definition through their own data-driven portraits, and what happens in those moments when our illusions about reality are ruptured by incontrovertible facts (like the death of a parent or a bolt of lightning). “A report from the front line of the online generation” (Sunday Times), Picnic Comma Lightning is an essential account of how we’ve started to make sense of our strange new world.

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Reviews

A brave exploration of life after loss and how it alters our reality. -- Evening Standard Clever, funny and deeply moving...an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life. -- Mail on Sunday In its willingness to dig deeper, Picnic Comma Lightning provides a bravura investigation of our turbulent times. -- New Scientist [A] touching exploration of identity in the twenty-first century. -- Everything Else, culture podcast from the Financial Times

A lucid...brilliant critique of a fragmented culture in a peculiar time. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [A]cutely perceptive...delivers a thoughtful message about finding an authentic way to live at a time when reality itself can seem built on shifting sands. -- Publishers Weekly A brave exploration of life after loss and how it alters our reality. -- Evening Standard Clever, funny and deeply moving...an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life. -- Mail on Sunday In its willingness to dig deeper, Picnic Comma Lightning provides a bravura investigation of our turbulent times. -- New Scientist [A] touching exploration of identity in the twenty-first century. -- Everything Else, culture podcast from the Financial Times [I]nsightful, in part for its academic nuance but also for its humane, personal style....A moving meditation of reality in the 21st century. -- Wired UK

A lucid ... brilliant critique of a fragmented culture in a peculiar time. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [A]cutely perceptive ... delivers a thoughtful message about finding an authentic way to live at a time when reality itself can seem built on shifting sands. -- Publishers Weekly A brave exploration of life after loss and how it alters our reality. -- Evening Standard Clever, funny and deeply moving...an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life. -- Mail on Sunday In its willingness to dig deeper, Picnic Comma Lightning provides a bravura investigation of our turbulent times. -- New Scientist [A] touching exploration of identity in the twenty-first century. -- Everything Else, culture podcast from the Financial Times [I]nsightful, in part for its academic nuance but also for its humane, personal style. ... A moving meditation of reality in the 21st century. -- Wired UK

Author Information

Laurence Scott’s essays and criticism have appeared on NewYorker.com and in the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. He is a lecturer in writing at New York University in London and lives in London.

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