Chekhov’s Mistess

Proust Changed My Life, But Now I have Status Anxiety

I enjoy Alain de Botton’s books, but I don’t really like to admit it. It’s not as though they’re trashy novels, but they seem to have the scent of pseudo-intellectual manuals for wannabes. Maybe that’s me, I don’t know, but here is my reader’s journey through de Botton’s world.

My first encounter was with the work that will probably immortalize him, How Proust Can Change Your life, which I picked up from the shelf (where it is always placed with In Search of Lost Time instead of in the d’s), thumbed through thinking nothing more than that it was cute, and put it back.

Some time later I came across The Consolation of Philosophy while looking for Boethius’ slightly older tome of the same name. Now gee, I thought, that’s interesting, so I bought it, read it like a gossip column and was not exactly consoled by learning that, for instance, Schopenhauer was lonely. The book seemed to excel at pithy summations like: “Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.” Great, a fortune cookie, I thought. Still, it was enjoyable to read and some of the biographical information on famous philosophers was interesting.

Then one day, while browsing through Ivy’s bookstore, I eyed a handsome hardback copy of de Botton’s The Art of Travel. Aye, thought I, that could be interesting as it was on a subject that I had long thought about. The concept of authentic traveling, as in, to quote Bowles, “I am a traveler, not a tourist” as well as the way that we “see” things when traveling, which Walker Percy wrote about, is fascinating to me. I couldn’t help it; I bought it, even though I rarely pay $23 for a book. My first impression, after never having bothered to think anything about this author, was that he was a very old man with a grandiloquent writing manner and somewhat stodgy tastes.

The Art of Travel begins:

“It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established, relentless reality.”

It’s actually a nice beginning, but set a tone for the book in which he discusses Flaubert and Wordsworth as if they were old friends. I soon found out though, that de Botton was only in his early thirties and had actually made something of a franchise for himself writing these whimsical didactic books on art and love and philosophy, and of course, Proust. After having found out that he was so young, the writing style and subject matter seemed to me a bit pretentious. An invalid impression really, but that’s how I felt.

I was soon rewarded however; within the first twenty pages de Botton hit upon a statement seemingly right out of Percy:

“It is unfortunately hard to recall our quasi-permanent concern with the future, for on our return from a place, perhaps the first thing to disappear from memory is just how much of the past we spent dwelling on what was to come – how much of it, that is, we spent somewhere other than where we were.”

This is one of de Botton’s better observations, but the book revolves around these profound statements, each reinforced by evidence from some respected dead person. By the end, I couldn’t say that I was a better traveler, but again, the book was enjoyable enough. It could be dull here and there and while it had structure, it seemed to have little real point; it was simply an enjoyable read under the guise of something a bit weightier.

I guess it was inevitable that I would eventually read How Proust Can Change Your Life, since that is where the journey began. In late 2003, the Lydia Davis translation of Swann’s Way was released (I bought the 6 volume set from Amazon U.K., which will not be released for sometime in the U.S., probably at least, until I get to reading them, but no matter). I was ready to go back for some more Proust and thought it would be a good time to read de Botton’s book as an aside.

This, of all his books, reads most like a self-help manual. It’s full of pithy conclusions on topics such as friendship, emotions and reading, supported, in this case, by the writings or biography of the slightly hermetic literary genius, Marcel Proust. By now, I had enough experience with the ways of Mr. de Botton to know that I would not learn anything, but would enjoy having a conversation, in a way, about M. Proust. My expectations were met. I did like the part where de Botton chastises idolators for going to Illiers-Combray on pilgrimages to see the quasi-fictional setting for Proust’s boyhood in In Search of Lost Time. I agreed with the sentiment and was glad that he said it, being that, I would suppose, many of those pilgrims would be reading this very book.

And that brings me to Status Anxiety, which my wife bought me, at my request, for Father’s day (my first by the way). I know what I’m getting into here, but I still have mixed emotions about where these books fit. Status Anxiety begins with a chapter on “Our Need for Love, Our Desire for Status.” I’m just not interested, but somehow simultaneously compelled to read it.

I guess I’m just jealous in a – I wish I thought of that – kind of way. Ultimately, I like de Botton’s books for no other reason than the subject matter usually revolves around something interesting, even if the ostensible topic does not, and they are easy reads. So I’m jealous because I should be writing fun pointless books like that instead of merely pointless blog entries like this.

Botton’s web-site

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 17, 2004
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
• Filed Under:
  Reviews & Commentary, More or Less

Tags: Alain de Botton

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