A recent article in The Independent questions the self-help movement. My book is mentioned.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/does-the-happiness-formula-really-add-up-2004279.html
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D.B. Weiss' book too is yellow
ReplyDeleteIn line with the above reasoning, those happy few, that band of surfeited brothers who dumb genetic accident has granted both the brains necessary for geekhood and the savoir faire to work the People-Who-Know-People circuit will hardly ever choose the former. They may seem to at first glance, while they discourse to a circle of martini connoisseurs on their deep spiritual appreciation of John Coltrane, but they are dabblers. After making their money, they move on to professional dilettantism, a bit of this and a bit of that, learning enough to write a passable in-flight magazine article. It does the trick, they make an impression, like a nineteenth-century Belgian colonialist hacking apart a few dozen Congolese to take their diamonds and present them to his Belgian sweetheart upon returning home, while declaring his love in an accent I'm told the Parisian French find buffoonish. The cultivation of "geek chic" is a deeply cynical, pernicious, even nihilistic attempt to plunder lives that are more often than not emotionally destitute already, to steal their sole prized possession and trade it on the open market for a minute of juice with a sexual target, a fleeting hit of superiority in a friendly discussion, the shimmering mirage of depth for an in-flight magazine profile ..
[ and, for that matter, the pretty recent by Wells Tower ]