Description:
Faster than a receding mullet, more powerful than an ulterior motive, able to leap tall buildings in a single leap of the imagination, or with the purchase of an overpriced plane ticket. Look-down on the page! It's Ordinary Man!
On the surface Ordinary Man's adventures seem like mundane stuff: he drives to work, counts his farts, shovels snow, checks his watch, and gets things done on time. (Can you imagine?) But in these 52 serio-comic snippets of interior adventure-sometimes philosophical, often absurd-Ordinary Man wields his powers to perform incredible-dare we say "extraordinary"?-feats of heroism. What are these powers? Mainly a sense of humor, an acute self-awareness, and a brain full of literary references. Watch as he considers the path of the hero and the nature of his quest, explains what literature is for, contemplates an egg in a cage, and finds an arrow in his eye. Learns compassion, gets his thoughts in order, and vows to transform into Betterperson. Miraculously-accepts his lot in life! Yes, The Adventures of Ordinary Man! is for the true superheroes, the mild-mannered Clark Kents of the world who against all odds make it through each day.
Review Quotes:
Intellectual without being pedantic, philosophical without being ponderous, playful without being precious, confessional without being self-indulgent, moving, meditative, inspiring, creative, original as hell, really funny, sometimes sad, perspective-changing, honest, wonderfully provocative. Also, fantastic conceptually. The Adventures of Ordinary Man! is a delightful, disarming, deeply-felt journey into the heart of the everyday existence we dream of transending. Ian Marshall shows us how that fantasy of transcendence can stand between us and the wisdom necessary to embrace the unseen richness of our daily lives. I've never read anything like The Adventures of Ordinary Man!, and I'm completely smitten. The liberating epiphany produced by this remarkable book is the extraordinary redemptiveness of Ordinary Man's ordinariness and, by extension, The Reader's ordinariness as well.
--Michael P. Branch, author of On the Trail of the Jackalope and How to Cuss in Western
Sauntering through life like Thoreau on holiday, Ian Marshall's Ordinary Man can bend syntax with his bare hands and, disguised as a mild-mannered English professor, fights a never-ending battle for truth, gentleness, and the Middle Way. These charming stories will convince you that Clark Kent, not the Man of Steel, is the true hero.
--John Tallmadge, author of Meeting the Tree of Life: A Teacher's Path and The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City