  | Book Details Title: The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature |
Book DescriptionReview Beth Blum has opened our eyes to a fascinating area: the intersection between self-help and serious literature. Blum is deeply unusual among scholars in appreciating the extent to which ordinary readers seek solace and insight in literature―and she explores the consequences of this idea in a series of readings of important and interesting writers. This book is sure to deepen our understanding of a genre of literature that has perhaps been too hastily dismissed in the past. — Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your LifeSelf-help books have become the favorite reading of Americans, and English professors are no exception. Until Beth Blum’s ferociously witty yet ultimately sympathetic study, however, few critics saw any way to connect their lowbrow guilty pleasure with the high-flown ambitions of literary theory. Blum’s intellectual history of self-help takes seriously the ideas as well as the institutions involved in the production of this body of practical knowledge. Self-help thus stands revealed as the uncanny double not just of literature itself but of literary theory. — Leah Price, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About BooksIn this witty and original study, Beth Blum traces the diffusion of a nebulous genre―textual advice―into artistic zones in which one does not expect to find it. Unpacking self-help’s collectivist, working-class origins, and tracing the impact of its commercialization on the styles of James, Woolf, Beckett, Joyce, and others, Blum’s story of popular morality’s various roles in the genealogy of modernism unfolds with critical incision and humor. What an eye-opening book! — Sianne Ngai, University of ChicagoBeth Blum places us at the cross road of creation. Here at last we can see the “self-improvement axioms” hidden in the rarified atmosphere of Virginia Woolf’s modernism, Marcel Proust in the company of advice columnist Ann Landers, a poem by Baudelaire enumerating his recent reading of self-help books. In moments of acute love or loss or fear, literature can feel like a rope bridge carrying us safely across a ravine. Beth Blum’s brilliant and startling book shows us why. — Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard UniversityBeth Blum’s The Self-Help Compulsion is the first book to explore the multiple forms of contact, influence, negotiation, strife, and imitation between modern fiction and self-help literature, and the result is breathtaking. Any scholars who assume that self-help books are not worth their attention or that self-help and serious literature have nothing to do with each other will be wholly disabused and wonderfully edified by Blum’s magisterial study. — Timothy Aubry, author of Guilty Aesthetic PleasuresA deep scholarly probe into self-help’s inextricable influence on the history and future of literature., Kirkus ReviewsBlum’s outstanding debut places self-help books in historical and literary contexts. . . . This insightful look at a popular genre will give fans and critics alike much to contemplate., Publishers WeeklySedulously researched . . . The Self-Help Compulsion traces the evolution of self-help books, places them in historical context, and, perhaps most strikingly, suggests that they’re worthy of more respect than they get., Wall Street Journal Read more About the Author Beth Blum is assistant professor of English at Harvard University. Read more Customers Review:The Self Help Compulsion: Searching For Advice In Modern Literature (2020), written by Beth Blum is a highly interesting exploration of the Self Help genre. Blum illustrates how theme based advice, motivational, inspirational, “How-To” books were absorbed into the Cultural Studies genre, that promoted formal academic research supporting the ideology and blending of self-help in contemporary readership and literature. Beth Blum is the assistant professor of English at Harvard University.The genre of self-help is fueled by insecurity, fear and anxiety: likely due to these reasons, the genre is frequently denounced and mocked by some critics or regarded as psycho-babble, junk science etc. The evidence of popularity and demand for bestselling self- improvement titles can’t be underestimated (particularly when written by a celebrity). The fact is, as readers desire the possibility to improve their lives– the individual value of self-improvement is impossible to accurately define and measure. Also, another debatable topic is: “Does self-help actually work?” as the “secrets” of self-help were explored further in the book.Blum narrated a colorful historical perspective of how the earliest forms of self-help advice originated in medieval times when the scarcity of books for the general public led to the circulation of hand copied newspapers, tracts, pamphlets etc. This practice continued into the Renaissance period. American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was among the first to promote the principles of “virtuous living” in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. The masterpiece book: “Self Help” (1859-) written by Scottish philosopher Samuel Smiles (1802-1904), contended that the misfortune of poverty could be converted to a blessing with the practice of vigorous self-help. This book was translated into numerous languages including Persian and Arabic and continues to inspire many authors and readers alike since publication.The stressful turn of the 19th century fostered a “therapeutic ethos” and “new thought” that was combined with self-help ideology. Readers were commended for the serious study of self- improvement instead of novels and/or science fiction. A.A. Brill translated Freud for academic studies (1909): Freud’s darker theories regarding human sexuality and desire led to a greater acceptance of psychoanalysis. The Great Gatsby (1925-) opened with fatherly advice to a son. Nietzsche apparently agreed with the importance of paternal advice and observed: “if one didn’t have a good father, then it was necessary to invent one.” Curiously, Blum noted that the paternal advice themes were absent in the fiction of Mohsin Hamid and Junot Diaz.It was particularly notable that the themes of self-help in contemporary fiction and non-fiction are often directed towards women, although TED talks, podcasts, media feeds etc. are created for everyone, sometimes on a professional or commercial level. This book was factual, researched and written well, despite the BIG words and passages where it was necessary to keep a dictionary handy. **With thanks and appreciation to Colombia University Press via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review. | |
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