Lapham (Hotel America, 1995, etc.), adept cosmopolite, elegant essayist, and longtime Harper’s editor, provides a high-class self-helper appropriate to our times” contemporaneously Menckenite, sardonic, and withering. In a felicitous introductory essay—one that is destined, if there is any literary justice, to be anthologized widely—Lapham deconstructs Horatio Alger to reveal the hero’s true nature as sycophant. He expands on the pervasive “courtier spirit” that infects society, with acolyte tycoons “bowing and smiling in eight or nine different directions, forever turning, like a compass needle or a weather vane, into the wind of new money.” Then, usually in a couple of effective paragraphs, he advises careerists on the make, like an observant Dutch uncle. He offers sage counsel on more or less a hundred important topics from Appearances (“promote the impression that you are very busy, never out of touch with Rupert Murdoch or Michael Eisner”) and Adultery (“in some social circles . . . it is still considered polite to seduce the person next to whom one finds oneself seated at dinner,” but, he suggests, exchange business cards first) to Gravitas (“think of yourself as a speech by Alan Greenspan or a trunk by Louis Vuitton”) and Wit (“nearly always ill-advised”). The brief, epigrammatic homilies, pithy as Proverbs, are clearly words to the wise guys at the close of a particularly unwise century. Lapham assumes the stance of a latter-day Lord Chesterfield, a modern Ben Franklin, a ’90s Dale Carnegie. For some, unaccustomed to the study of the upper echelons or without the requisite amour propre, the hilarity may seem below current slapstick standards. But for those anxious to insinuate themselves into the privileged class and for those who care about American cultural sociology, here is a perceptive and funny critique. Lapham has a pointed wit, and he applies it surgically to contemporary society. He’s written a pleasing little book just in time for the eager graduates, class of ’99. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-42605-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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