For Immediate Release…
IS DATING DEAD? LONG LIVE HANGING!
Unheard of Books Publishing Guide to The Art of Hanging
(Malvern PA, January 16, 2022) – Generation X may have started it decades ago. Subsequent generations of teens have embraced and refined it. Today, it’s the status quo.
It is the demise of dating, and the rise of hanging out.
Perhaps dating had become too serious, with too many structured responsibilities for both sexes, too much undesired pressure; an inherited, evolved dogma that felt stifling to modern young people.
Hanging out became the relaxed alternative, the less-structured group activity. Over time, hanging out even extended to one-on-one couples, becoming a ritual-free, unpressurized dating lite.
Yet author W. Town Andrews, Jr. found it puzzling that such an established phenomenon, having evolved in the waning decades of the 20th century and half a decade into the 21st to the point of nearly replacing old-fashioned dating entirely, still lacked two essential ingredients; 1) a simplified, descriptive, and definitive vocabulary loosely corresponding to the archaic terms of dating, and 2) a written guide to the practice and perfection of the techniques of hanging out–because in any age, and no matter the terminology, there are beginners and awkward souls to whom social skills don’t exactly come naturally.
Seeing no reason why these two needs shouldn’t be solved simultaneously, and simply, Andrews applied an ingenious formula:
Take a 1950s dating manual. Replace key terms and phrases with standardized, simplified equivalents from the actual day-to-day usage of a youth culture that hangs rather than dates. Sprinkle in more new lingoisms from the vocabularies of subsequent urban, suburban, and exurban youth subcultures. Add catchphrases, neologisms, niche jargons, and clichés from pop culture, pop psychology, and Madison Avenue. Shake well.
The result is an old-fashioned guide to new social lifestyles, filled with in-your-face surprises and unexpected linguistic somersaults.
And, as an added bonus, as one reads The Art of Hanging (between chuckles, giggles, and the occasional out-and-out guffaw), the thought occurs that perhaps injecting a little bit of the old-school code and structure into the newer, looser social lifestyles might not be such a bad thing after all.
NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK
Find it on Amazon at The Art of Hanging
More Information:
Full Title: The Art of Hanging…and Stylin’ Limp
- Format: Trade Paperback and E-book
- Genre: Self-Help/Humor
- Series: New Mangled Guides
- Status, March 2008: Printed
- Release Date: May 16, 2008
- ISBN: 1-933728-30-8
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Cover List Price: US$14.95 (CAN$19.95) E-Book: $2.99
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Pages: 304
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Illustrations: 50, Black/White w/ captions
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Cover: 4-color
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Author: W. Town Andrews, Jr.
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Includes TOC, Index, Source Citations
To read more about books being published by Unheard of Books, visit the website, at www.unheardofbooks.com.
About Unheard of Books:
Unheard of Books is a small boutique publisher of fiction, non-fiction, humor, self-help and how-to books. UHB publishes 3 to 5 titles per year, specializing in offbeat, innovative, outlandish, or exceptionally irresistable new works that defy categorization or classification by “normal” publishing standards.