A fairly conventional self-improvement outline with an intriguing poetic twist.
A self-help guide that offers a lifestyle plan based on a 118-year-old poem.
The famous 1897 Edwin Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory” provides an unconventional springboard for Corey’s nonfiction debut about “maintaining a positive belief in yourself and in your dream.” In Robinson’s much-anthologized work, the outwardly successful title character, who “glittered when he walked,” appears to be the envy of all the townspeople until the final line when he “Went home and put a bullet in his head.” But whereas Robinson seemingly intended the poem to be a wry commentary on the illusory nature of popularity, Corey interestingly envisions it as a great metaphor for human self-improvement, which he relates to seven immutable cosmic “laws.” The book’s first part consists of a law school seminar paper that the author wrote in which he styles Richard Cory as the embodiment of the American dream. In it, he reimagines the character as a billionaire, a lawyer, and devoutly religious, preaching not only faith in God but faith in self. The book’s second part elaborates on the first, taking the form of Richard Cory’s inner journal and presenting the “blueprint” of the title. It goes on to address such elemental questions as “What drives human behavior?” and “Why do people act in certain ways?” by referencing the aforementioned seven basic laws of creation, such as the law of rhythm, which states that “everything has a cycle,” and the law of gestation, which states that “everything takes time to manifest.” The steps by which Cory moves from these laws to standard self-help nuggets such as, “From now on, I swear to myself that I will disregard limits. I will practice what I preach and preach what I practice,” is never very clear, though, and the enthusiastic invocation of feel-good gurus such as Oprah Winfrey and Rhonda Byrne (author of the 2006 best-seller The Secret) don’t clarify matters. Readers will likely find the author’s highly imaginative deconstruction and reconstruction of the beloved old poem the most rewarding part of the book.
A fairly conventional self-improvement outline with an intriguing poetic twist.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1627461795
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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