How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel by Alain De Botton

How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel



Download How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel




How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel Alain De Botton
Language: English
Page: 208
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0679779159, 9780679779155
Publisher:

Amazon.com Review

This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Generally writers fall into one of two camps: those who feel that one can't write without having a firm grasp on Proust, and those who, like Virginia Woolf, are crippled by his influence. De Botton, the author of On Love, The Romantic Movement and Kiss and Tell, obviously falls into the former category. But rather than an endless exegesis on memory, de Botton has chosen to weave Proust's life, work, friends and era into a gently irreverent, tongue-in-cheek self-help book. For example, in the chapter titled "How to Suffer Successfully," de Botton lists poor Proust's many difficulties (asthma, "awkward desires," sensitive skin, a Jewish mother, fear of mice), which is essentially a funny way of telling the reader quite a lot about the man's life. Next he moves on to Proust's little thesis that because we only really think when distressed, we shouldn't worry about striving for happiness so much as "pursuing ways to be properly and productively unhappy." De Botton then cheerily judges various characters of A la recherche against their author's maxims. At the beginning, when de Botton drags his own girlfriend into a tortuous and not terribly successful digression, readers may be skeptical, but they will be won over by his whimsical relation of Proust's lessons?essentially an exhortation to slow down, pay attention and learn from life. Is it profound? No. Does this add something new to Proust scholarship? Probably not. But it's a real pleasure to read someone who treats this sacrosanct subject as something that is still vital and vigorous. 25,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

MORE EBOOKS:
Clinical Nuclear Cardiology: State of the Art and Future Directions: Expert Consult: Online and Print, 4 Edition e book free download
Download A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 epub
Download A Natural History of Negation e book
Download Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability (Science Study Series 30) ebook
Oculoplastic Surgery Atlas pdf free download







Tags: How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel ebook pdf epub djvu mobi rar
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel pdf epub djvu free download
Download How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel free ebook pdf epub
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel read online free book
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Alain De Botton ebooks and audio books
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel download pdf epub rar rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent depositfiles scribd