This volume of 24 essays--a decades worth--by novelist and art critic John Berger includes his thoughts on various artists (Degas, Kahlo, Brancusi), rural living, and his own aging. The pocket referred to is a small pocket of resistance, directed at, among other things, globalization and the destructive effect it is having on the world. Berger has long been a critic of global markets, and here sees the world they have created as a vision of hell like those of Hieronymus Bosch. Some of the essays are in the form of letters, and are more novelistic than many of his essays on art.