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DAILY RITUALS

HOW ARTISTS WORK

The message? There is no preferred way—only the ways that work. An enjoyable book to dig into here and there.

A journalist and editor debuts by converting his blog (Daily Rituals) into a book that does precisely what its titles promise.

Although Currey begins with Auden, he does not end with Zola (who does not appear); instead, he offers an idiosyncratically arranged collection of snapshots—scores of them—that show us how various writers, painters, musicians, choreographers and architects go—or went—about their days. Some are unremarkable. They get up and go to work for a set number of hours at a desk every day. But many are as eccentric as you would expect—and hope. William H. Gass writes best when he’s angry. Nabokov wrote in pencil on index cards and sorted them later. Schiller loved the inspirational smell of rotting apples. Some (Plath, Munro) learned to work while raising children. Some were night owls—Kafka, Proust, Samuel Johnson. B.F. Skinner—no surprise—conditioned himself to observe strict routines. Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright liked to write alfresco. Thomas Wolfe fondled himself while writing standing up. Proust and Capote wrote in bed. Some—Twain, Abbey—had little structures on the property where they could avoid distractions. Quite a few of the artists found ways to boost their energy—from the companionship of coffee to the buzz of Benzedrine. Alcohol was a reward for some at the end of the stint. And many of them found exercise a necessity. Oliver Sacks likes swimming; Dickens walked for three hours in the afternoon (myriads of these artists had walking routines); Twyla Tharp worked out for two hours every morning. The sequence is fun to follow and figure out—some are easy, some not: Martin Amis follows father Kingsley; Henry James follows brother William; Charles Schultz follows Anne Rice?

The message? There is no preferred way—only the ways that work. An enjoyable book to dig into here and there.

Pub Date: April 23, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-307-27360-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.

Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5

Page Count: 580

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

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