What is the 'it'?

A lot of people have asked me* for an explanation of the chapter titles in the book.

It is time to reveal all.

1. “Hi, How Are You?” is the name of an album by American “outsider” musician Daniel Johnston. I may have inferred the question mark.

2. “Manifesto” is a Roxy Music album.

3. “Mistakes Were Made”. This is a line of uncertain origin. I think I know it as the final panel in a comic strip – which I cannot actually identify – but it’s a kind of generic idea: a room that has been comprehensively trashed, and a child who is looking up at their parents, who have just entered the room and are clearly horrified. The child says, by way of explanation, “mistakes were made”. I like to think it’s from “Calvin and Hobbes”, because it’s the kind of thing I could imagine Calvin saying (with Hobbes, in soft-toy mode, sitting mutely by his side). But further research suggests that it is more likely that I remember it from Matt Groening’s pre-Simpsons comic strip “Life In Hell”.

4. “Are You The Brain Specialist?” is a line from a Monty Python television sketch. It’s kind of hard to imagine today how they got away with this kind of thing.

5. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Proofing” is borrowed from the title of a short story by Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. Haruki Murakami once adapted it for the title of a book about running. I am not suggesting Haruki Murakami and I have anything else in common.

6. “This Is The Way” is from The Mandalorian. I’m sure you knew that.

7. “Everything You Wanted To Know About Referencing (But Were Afraid To Ask)” is almost but not quite the name of an early Woody Allen film.

8. “When Good Sentences Go Bad” is a generic phrase (scil, “cliche”) – “When Good [insert plural noun here] Go Bad”. A cursory internet search gave me the following: “Kids”; Ghouls”; “Geeks”; “Drugs”; “Jobs”. Also “Pets”. That reminds me of someone.

9. “Word Up!” is a 1986 song by Cameo, notable for containing a tiny but instantly recognisable fragment of Ennio Morricone.

10. “The Style Council” were a British band formed, from the still smouldering ashes of The Jam, by Paul Weller in 1982. I saw them play in Melbourne; I was pogoing so hard during the final couple of songs that I gave myself a blood nose. If you are looking for me, I’m up in the balcony to the left of the stage – the perfect spot for watching Mick Talbot pummel his keyboard to within an inch of its life.

*Nobody has, in fact, asked me this.