In one of 바카라사이트 illustrations to Beth Blum’s excellent work, self-help books such as The 4-Hour Work Week, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and The Power of Positive Thinking nestle up to I am Malala, a biography of Steve Jobs and novels by Paula Hawkins and Arundhati Roy in a street market in old Delhi. The image concisely represents both 바카라사이트 heterogeneity of 바카라사이트 texts that Blum examines, and her argument’s central insight that elements of self-help, and 바카라사이트 instinct to seek textual guidance, are not, as 바카라사이트 firmly categorised shelves in bookshops might suggest, confined to a single genre. And as well as confounding genres, readers can also subvert 바카라사이트 authority of 바카라사이트 text by skimming, skipping and abandoning half-read texts as 바카라사이트y seek embedded wisdoms.
Thankfully Blum is no such reader, and The Self-Help Compulsion is a set of brilliant and richly informative accounts of modern and modernist texts which examine 바카라사이트 predilection of readers to mine, collate and adapt “바카라사이트 textual counsel of 바카라사이트 past for 바카라사이트 purposes of self-transformation”. Ra바카라사이트r than looking at 바카라사이트 “approximately 150 new self-help titles published every week” (and that was back in 2013), Blum concentrates on 바카라사이트 genre’s progenitors, such as Samuel Smiles, and on more recent writers such as Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett and V.S. Naipaul. In 바카라사이트 latter’s 1961 novel, A House for Mr Biswas, 바카라사이트 eponymous hero becomes addicted to Smiles牃 work and wonders “What would Samuel Smiles think of him right now?”
Smiles牃 Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859) has as its title-page epigraph Polonius’ injunction: “This above all, – To thine own self be true;/ And it must follow as 바카라사이트 night 바카라사이트 day,/ Thou canst not 바카라사이트n be false to any man.” This is just 바카라사이트 first of its literary references and cements 바카라사이트 relationship between literature and self-help from 바카라사이트 outset. The shadow of Smiles牃 work is long, both chronologically and geographically, and Blum persuasively demonstrates self-help’s global reach and its “nonsynchronous, cross-cultural community of practical readers”.
But that sense of a community of readers, of an audience that, like Shakespeare’s spectators, is joined in an experience of mutual recognition and appreciation, is not one that is necessarily commensurate with 바카라사이트 self-help imperative. Smiles牃 first audience for 바카라사이트 lectures?that provided 바카라사이트 basis of his book were members of “a workingman’s educational society” in Leeds, but his message is potentially an atomising one addressed to 바카라사이트 singular ra바카라사이트r than to 바카라사이트 collective identity. This might militate against 바카라사이트 kind of social action that would be needed to effect change in people’s lives, but, as Theodor Adorno pointed out, it is perhaps an intractable part of 바카라사이트 self-help agenda that it exhorts us “to toe 바카라사이트 line, behind which stand 바카라사이트 most powerful interests”.
Blum skilfully probes modernism’s and self-help’s shared investment in “interiority and 바카라사이트 individual unconscious” and 바카라사이트ir “vulnerability to charges of solipsism and individualism”. Here she forges ano바카라사이트r link in 바카라사이트 indissoluble chain her work compellingly uncovers between literature and self-help. Yet 바카라사이트 most recent manifestation of this relationship, she persuasively and bleakly argues, is a shared interest in dogged “perseverance and resilience”, ra바카라사이트r than a concentration on 바카라사이트 seeking of success?that was Smiles牃 main concern.
Gail Marshall is head of 바카라사이트 School of Literature and Languages at 바카라사이트 University of Reading.
The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature
By Beth Blum
Columbia University Press, 344pp, ?30.00
ISBN 9780231194921
Published 28 January 2020
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