by Beth Blum ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 2020
A deep scholarly probe into self-help’s inextricable influence on the history and future of literature.
Blum (English/Harvard Univ.) argues that a literary perspective offers crucial insight into the ongoing appeal and evolution of modern advice books.
In this erudite volume, the author suggests that “self-help’s most valuable secrets are not about getting rich or winning friends but about how and why people read.” The genre has operated “as an alternative pedagogic space to the academy—one whose breezy, instrumental reading methods contrasted with the close, disinterested paradigms” of the university setting. Self-help has a long history—as Blum notes, “what is…Ovid’s Ars Amatoria but an ancient Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?”—and it offers a reminder of the promises of transformation, agency, culture, and wisdom that draw readers to books. Moreover, there is the issue of self-help’s “overlooked embroilment in speculation, imagination, the fantastical, and counterfactual.” In exploring both the history of self-help books and their continued rampant popularity, Blum often wades through thickets of academese—“the self-help hermeneutic binds in unexpected ways a nonsynchronous, cross-cultural community of practical readers”—to get to a point. But the points are well taken. Self-help books have a history of being promoted as antidotes to intellectual bombast and aesthetic idealism, whereas serious literature has railed against instrumental pedantry. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. Indeed, self-help can display emancipatory potential and tap “a progressive, even radical, agenda.” Blum offers close analyses of selected works of a wide variety of authors—including Flann O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf—to discover “the troubling affinities between charismatic literary authorship and the spiritual manipulation of popular guides.” She uncovers the influence of early self-help on the literature of James Joyce—the modernist critique of instrumentalism is a thread through the book—finds interesting parallels in the work of Samuel Beckett and Timothy Ferriss, and examines how modern fictional works use “self-help as an opportunity to modernize a potentially maudlin textual ethics.”
A deep scholarly probe into self-help’s inextricable influence on the history and future of literature.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-231-19492-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Share your opinion of this book
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
Share your opinion of this book
More by E.T.A. Hoffmann
BOOK REVIEW
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
BOOK REVIEW
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.