How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

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Summary: Illuminating reading!
Review: A lifetime can be spent reading Proust's entire masterpiece. A lifetime can be spent reading one of the seven volumes. And one can spend a lifetime reading just one paragraph. His work is endlessly fascinating, moving, and frustrating. Alain de Botton has flawlessly extracted the essence of Proust and adapted it as a "self-help" book. I can think of no better therapist than Proust, whose uncanny psychological insight unfolded the human condition in bare white light for the world to see. De Botton has written a definitive critique and laugh-out-loud funny condensed version of the definitive "difficult" novel. A must read for serious literature lovers.

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Summary: A self-help book which actually respects its reader!
Review: I have found myself enthralled by de Botton's language, ideas and observations. We all know that the market is flooded with How-To advice books that purportedly teach us how to stay positive, make a ton of friends, etc. However, this book does something totally different and surprising - it takes on a typical premise of a How-To book (in this case, "How to Change Your Life") but does it in such an intelligent and incisive manner that one is tempted to create a brand-new Book Category called "Cliche-Free How-To Books Which Don't Insult One's Intelligence and Actually Manage to Educate and Entertain at the Same Time". Anyway, I'm beginning to sound like either a book reviewer or the author's close relative, which I am neither. But don't listen to me - just buy it, learn from it and enjoy it

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Summary: The only self-help book you'll ever need.
Review: Alain de Botton proves why great literature CAN be therapeutic. At times, he makes you think only HE understands your deepest thoughts. A great soul-mate, in the form of a book

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Summary: Very funny
Review: IF you want to know about Proust without reading him, this is a very fine book. But should appeal to readers of Proust as well. Great fun

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Summary: Best self-help book ever
Review: This is the funniest and most intelligent self-help book I've ever read. If you were suspicious of self-help, and thought it couldn't teach you anything, then this book will prove otherwise. It's packed with wise, humorous and genuinely insightful advice

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Summary: A self-help book based on the life and teachings of Proust
Review: Marcel Proust, author of In Search of Lost Time, one of the greatest and longest novels of the twentieth century, was an invaluable authority on how to live a richer, happier life. How Proust can Change Your life shows us just what benefits he could bring to our own lives. Taking the common complaints of everyday life, I set out to reveal Proust's thoughts on; How to revive a relationship,how to choose a good doctor, how to enjoy a holiday, why we should never sleep with someone on a first date, and why it is important to appreciate the telephone

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Summary: Didn¿t do much for me
Review: Sorry but although I persevered and read this through to the bitter end, it just didn't do anything for me.

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Summary: shallow
Review: This book was authored by a literary poseur written (inadvertently) for literary poseurs.

Proust deserves a true litterateur.

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Summary: Depressing Gap Between Our Own Life And The Realm Of Beauty
Review: We live in a very distracting world. It almost seems that the world conspires to divert our attention from the stuff that really matters. This review in aphorisms (as I like to call it) of reflections by Proust via Botton is, in effect, a reflection on Botton's book "How Proust Can Change Your Life." Botton reminds us, through his avatar that the immediacy of things important is lost and we need Proust to find our way back. Botton writes: Our attention will be drawn to the shades of the sky, to the changeability of a face, to the hypocrisy of a friend, or to a submerged sadness about a situation which we had previously not even known we could feel sad about. The book will have sensitized us, stimulated our dormant antennae by evidence of its own developed sensitivity (29).

We are re-sensitized to the wonder of the everyday - often we know these things and we tend to forget in the hustle and bustle of everyday living - we are encouraged to reflect. The novel is our guide: The value of a novel is not limited to its depiction of emotions and people akin to those in our life; it stretches to an ability to describe these far better than we would have been able, to put a finger on perceptions that we recognize as our own, but could not have formulated on our own (28).

Proust looks to art as another dimension to get us back to center. Botton pens another aphorism [...] Hence Proust's assertion that the greatness of works of art has nothing to do with the apparent quality of their subject matter, and everything to do with the subsequent treatment of that matter. And hence his associated claim that everything is potentially a fertile subject for art and that we can make discoveries as valuable in an advertisement for soap as in Pascal's Pensees (41).

Early on in the book, Botton reminds us that we invest time and energy in being unhappy. Mirroring the life of Proust - one of suffering - Botton pulls a Nietzsche when he encourages us to follow Proust's lead and not embrace the suffering but rather to use it as a space for inspiration. We are disconnected. Botton writes: Nevertheless, before subscribing uncritically to a Romantic cult of suffering, it should be added that suffering has, on its own, never been quite enough. It is, unfortunately, easier to lose a lover than complete In Search of Lost Time, to experience unrequited desire than write De l'amour, to be socially unpopular than the author of The Birth of Tragedy. Many unhappy syphilitics omit to write their Fluers du mal, and shoot themselves instead. Perhaps the greatest claim one can therefore make for suffering is that it opens up possibilities for intelligent, imaginative inquiry - possibilities that may quite easily be, and most often are, overlooked and refused (71).

As previously dealt with, we are too often involved in being the ally of our own gravedigger - be blame ourselves. Botton provides us with an alternative perspective - a kinder one. Through Proust he outlines that: A precondition of becoming knowledgeable may be resignation and accommodation to the extent one's ignorance, an accommodation which requires a sense that this ignorance need not be permanent, or indeed need not be taken personally, as a reflection of one's inherent capacities (76). Botton quotes Proust: "I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it's more or less irrelevant to me that they're intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere etc." (122) Proust, ever in the moment reflects on why we would rather desire than possess - much as it is a digression rather than a continuation, it was something that struck me: [...] in Proust's eyes - namely, imaginative possession (dwelling on the details of the dress, the folds of the material, the delicacy of the thread), an imaginative possession that Albertine already pursues, through no conscious choice, because it is a natural response to being denied physical contact (168-9).

We have come full circle. We need to find out way back to the center. We need to take the time to calmly reflect on things that matter. However unlikely a source Proust might be - a sickly, reclusive, self-indulgent fellow - here is why - and Botton deftly articulates: Why don't we appreciate things more fully? The problem goes beyond inattention or laziness. It may also stem from insufficient exposure to images of beauty, which are close enough to our own world in order to guide and inspire us. The young man Proust's essay was dissatisfied because he only knew Veronese, Claude, and Van Dyck, who did not depict worlds akin to his own, and his knowledge of art history failed to include Chardin, whom he so badly needed to point out the interest of his kitchen. The omission seems representative. Whatever the efforts of certain great artists to open our eyes to our world, they cannot prevent us from being surrounded by numerous less helpful images that, with no sinister intentions and often with great artistry, nevertheless have the effect of suggesting to us that there is a depressing gap between our own life and the realm of beauty (145). Enough said.

Miguel Llora

Rating:
Summary: Reading Proust as therapy.
Review: By integrating literary criticism, biography, and Proust's own writing into an equally erudite and irreverant self-help book, Alain de Botton (THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY) explains how reading Proust (IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME) can change one's life. Addressing topics like "How to Love Life Today," "How to Take Your Time," "How to Suffer Successfully," "How to Express Your Emotions," "How to Open Your Eyes," and "How to be Happy in Love," de Botton shows that he knows his quirky, French subject thoroughly. "While it is clear why someone might be interested in developing a Proustian approach to life," de Botton writes, "the sane would never harbor a desire to lead a life like Proust's" (p. 50). While Marcel Proust was afflicted with asthma, "awkward desires" (p. 53), sensitive skin, hypochrondria, indigestion, an obsession with death, and a fear of mice, and although he lived with his Jewish mother from his birth to her death when Proust was 34, there are gems of wisdom contained within the seven volumes and one and a half million words of Proust's work.

Reading Proust will not result in a quick fix to issues like learning to multitask, finding a mate, or how to become rich. However, reading Proust will bring us back to life "from the deadness caused by habit and inattention" (p. 176), thereby encouraging us to examine our lives and to understand ourselves better. We learn that not only did Proust write with great care, he lived his life with great care, even when it came to reading newspapers(p. 37). "Love," he wrote, is synonymous with "permanent suffering" (p. 55). Still, Proust would say, it is better to pursue tormented love affairs with all their emotional betrayals, than to read Plato or Spinoza (p. 68), for suffering opens us up to possibilities for intelligent, imaginative inquiry (p. 71). In other words, painful experiences are the best teachers.

Is it possible to read Proust as therapy when Virginia Woolf has acknowledged she was crippled by reading Proust (p. 183)? HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE may not make one a better person, but it is a work of witty genius for those who, like me, would rather worship Proust than read a self-help book. De Botton's book may be read in a single sitting, and unlike most bestselling self-help books, it will remain with its reader for a long time thereafter. It will inspire readers to discover and rediscover the rare pleasures of reading Proust.

G. Merritt