The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 13 December 2007
by Alain de Botton
With his several books so far, de Botton has made a niche for himself as a kind of popular philosopher, taking some extremely esoteric (for the average audience) ideas and applying them to the kind of everyday life most readers are likely to encounter. He does it with an engaging and sly manner that can catch the reader off guard. One moment, we're thinking about how to make friends and influence people, the next, we're discussing some of Marcel Proust's most insightful and subtle writing about friendship. That is certainly what happens here in de Botton's idiosyncratic little book. The author structures this like a self-help book, with chapter titles like "How to Suffer Successfully", "How to Open Your Eyes" and "How to be Happy in Love". Marcel Proust wasn't always good at all of these things, but de Botton takes examples from Proust's massive In Search of Lost Time as well as from his letters and other writings, and uses these to illustrate his notions of a better life, a better more attentive way of living in the world. His argument is fairly subtle, but his writing isn't clouded with ornate philosophical theorizing. We read about Proust's numerous physical ailments and how he coped with them. We read about the trap of literary idolatry through Virginia Woolf's encounter with Proust and the author's trip to Illiers-Combray, a sort of Proust amusement park. Having read Proust's work is probably not required, but Proustians are likely to get more out of this book. Botton is making an argument for a more considered approach to literature and to living. His conclusions aren't particularly groundbreaking, but his approach is engaging.
Also by Alain de Botton: [The Architecture of Happiness]