I was very much drawn to this book, strangely enough solely because of the title alone. I could instantly sympathize with the idea contained within those five words, probably since I too have spent time in three countries (two of them being France and “Amerique”). Poland is not a direct connection, but one set of my grandparents were born just southeast of Poland…
Leslie Kaplan has a trajectory which is somewhat unusual in that her forebears came from Poland, went to America, and then emigrated back across the Atlantic to France, with American confidence and a sense of world-citizenry. Little Leslie was born in the states but grew up in France with a double consciousness, or maybe even triple if one counts the Polish-Jewish roots.
I learn that this is the sixth part of a series of autobiographical writings, and become curious as to what she might have written about in the previous five, because this feels pretty condensed and definitive. It has three parts, childhood, youth and adulthood. These are set in the 50s, 60’s-70’s and 80’s, respectively. The first part meditates on her flailing American identity and how it clashes with her French upbringing. It also tells the story of her parents, who seem to have been career-driven universalists who worked in diplomacy and international relations. Kaplan herself was drawn to the political stirrings that culminated in May ’68 and the second part is rife with stories of that period. She quotes Bob Dylan lyrics, retells her memories of almost all of Jean-Luc Godard films, and other movies of the era. The third part retells the story of a friendship with someone, and feels different, colder and more austere than the previous parts. The 1980s represented a break with the earlier period. I might not seek out more Leslie Kaplan, as it feels like I have got a sense of her style from this book. Maybe later on.
Arctic Dreams (Barry Lopez, 1986)
We who inhabit the northern parts of the world, should maybe make it our duty to visit the Arctic. We are its closest neighbors, yet I’ve met few countrymen who have taken the trip to the arctic regions. We may take it for granted, and consider it uninteresting or mundane. Which it most certainly is not – a fact that Barry Lopez‘ book Arctic Dreams very convincingly demonstrates.
Lopez is a naturalist, environmentalist, adventurer and essayist all rolled into one. He has written a nine chapter book about the Arctic region, based on his extensive research and wide travels. Each chapter centers around a theme, like Polar bears, Inuit culture, narwhals, monks, explorers.
Arctic Dreams is often mentioned as one of the greatest examples of “nature writing” there is. Barry Lopez, who wrote the book, is a fascinating person – an American environmentalist/adventurer who has traveled the Earth and chronicled the natural world, with a sort of dual perspective, both scientific and cultural. I was curious about what “nature writing” really referred to, which is why I was drawn to pick up this book. I have read stuff in the past that should qualify, like Peter Wohlleben‘s book about trees, or Annie Dillard‘s essays on nature. I’ve perused Thoreau’s Walden and noted names like Edward Way Teale, or Loren Eiseley as naturalists to read. I like the genre of travel writing a lot, which “nature writing” is closely related to, but where travel writing is a lot about moving in culture, nature writing is about moving in nature. Both are journeys, though, and the essayistic eye is common to both genres. Some books, like Redmond O’Hanlon‘s Trawler from 2003 where he recounts three weeks on a fish trawler from the Shetland Islands up to Greenland, are probably just as much travel writing as nature writing. Others get into this whole spiritual at-one-with-nature vibe, which seems to attract a lot of people. An example would be hiking alone for weeks through the Grand Canyon, as did Colin Fletcher and wrote a popular book about it in 1968. Man and nature, connection to the Earth. Something many of us feel we are lacking, and therefore might want to read about.
It goes back to Darwin’s journey on the Beagle, or the notes of Linneus and Humboldt. Lopez is quite classificatory, but he combines phylum and philosophy, and throws in a good measure of cultural history too. There probably are a number of factors which participants of nature writing score high or low on – and I could name a few. Scientific or impression-based? spiritual or materialist? environmental concerns or no? adventure or solitude/calm? Being in nature is a sort of religion, argues David Thurfjall, Swedish scholar of religiosity.
Reading about nature is, arguably, not as good as being in nature for real. But it can reveal different things than can firsthand experience. I sense there is something about our relationship to nature that is a bit off. And this may be slightly corrected by hiking, reading “nature writing” och the recent rebrand “forest bathing”.
Arctic Dreams reminds me of my time in Iceland (which is just about sub-arctic, though). It’s the closest Ive come to the arctic I think (barring a week in Lapland 2018). I learned a bit about inuits (some of whom who want to be called eskimos). They have an interesting term, a shaman-like role in their culture, which is called isumataq: “the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself”.
The book contains many beautiful and interesting descriptions of natural phenomenon, like ice, snow, light and darkness.
“The evening I spoke with Haycock, I came across, in my notes about light, the words of a prisoner remembering life in solitary confinement. He wrote that the only light he experienced was “the vivid burst of brilliance” that came when he shut his eyes tight. That light, which came to him in a darkness that “was like being in ink” was “like fireworks”. He wrote, “my eyes hungered for light, for color…” You cannot look at Western painting, let alone the work of the luminists, without sensing that hunger. Western civilization, I think, longs for light as it longs for blessing, or for peace or God.”
Lopez makes a cogent argument that deep-rooted ideas about seasons, time, space, distance, and light are not applicable to the Arctic, and that different ways of thinking about these concepts are needed.
Svenska bilder (Carl Snoilsky, 1886)
This is a collection of poems about Swedish history, written by the eminent 19th century poet Carl Snoilsky. I understand these poems as a way to deal with history and ultimately making sense of one’s predicament. Ranging from Gustavus Vasa to Carl XII, Snoilsky collects gedichte from various moments in Swedish national history, mostly from the 16th to the 19th century. I once heard American sociologist Richard Sennett scoff at the idea that stone age dwellers of Sweden were Swedes. He was shamelessly unaware of the Swedish viewpoint on the matter.
I have always liked kings etc, but whatever. Some poems take the perspective of the common man, like “På Värnamo marknad”, but mostly it is a royal affair, along with some noblemen who were generals. I like recognizing historical information in the poems. I think Snoilsky based a lot of the poems on Anders Fryxell’s book of Swedish history. It is a nation-building exercise. I found the book at our family summer cottage. Written before the spelling reform, lots of words have old-style orthography. A favorite among the poems is “Den gamla fröken” which is a meditation on the passage of time and memories passed on through generations.
As a child, I often took walks along “Snoilskyvägen” in Stockholm, a fact which made me unconsciously sympathetic to this name – which must be slavic in origin, but belonged to a family of German-speaking nobility when Carl Snoilsky was born. Snoilskys grandfather was Johan Banér, who named banérgatan. The family name was originally Znojilšek, then Snoilshik, Snoilski, von Snoilsky, Snoilsky. It seems to be of Slovenian origin! The name Znojile is derived from znoji(d)lo (‘sunny or sun-facing area’) from the verb znojiti (‘to be warmed by the sun’).
I guess most of the material concerns the 18th century. Some of the people that are mentioned throughout the collection:
Gustav Eriksson Vasa (1496-1560)
Erik XIV, King of Sweden (1533 – 1577)
Johan Banér (1596-1641)
Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632)
Torsten Stålhandske (1593-1644)
Erik Dahlbergh (1625–1703)
Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702)
Hedvig Eleonora (1636-1715)
Kristina (1626-1689)
Carl XII (1682-1718)
Gustav III (1746-1792)
Bellman (1740-1795)
A M Lenngren (1754-1817)
Kellgren (1751-95), Stiernhjelm (1798-1872), Lidner (1757-1793)
Carl Olof Cronstedt (1756-1820)
Anders Fryxell (1795-1881)
The Dunning-Kruger Effect (Andrés Stoopendaal, 2021/2023)
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a name given for the tendency for low-performing people to overestimate their performance, and for high-performing people to underestimate their performance. In other words: dumb people see themselves as smarter than they are, and smart people see themselves as dumber than they are. Why this phenomenon has been chosen as the title for this Swedish novel (in English translation this fall by Simon & Schuster) commenting on contemporary culture is not totally clear.
It all starts with a dinner party (or parmiddag in Swedish) where the protagonist mentions Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who has been vocal about the policing of language around trans issues. But because Peterson’s name isn’t followed by a clear condemnatory diatribe, the other guests become uncomfortable. “You can’t possibly mean he has something noteworthy to say” is the response, and just in time for dessert the evening becomes increasingly uneasy. It is this tension that the book is based on.
One could assume it is a joke on the reader, to sprinkle the text full of culture war-laden buzzwords and terms gleaned from Wikipedia articles describing psychological research. But I don’t think it is. I think the writer has immersed himself in this world and let it tumble around in his writerly mind for a while, and the end result is this book, which I don’t think is premeditated or really planned. It is a pretty funny book. I wonder though, to what degree the humour is culture-bound to the Swedosphere (suèdosphère?). I should be in prime position to judge, as I am pretty well-versed in both Swedish and English.
Some parts of the book must be hard to translate, like the Sweden-specific dread around a certain political party, and lots of comments on social customs or Swedish middle class culture. I almost felt embarrassed at times. Stoopendaal dissects the Swedish cultural obsession with consensus and general avoidance of social tension. Several sections of the book deals with current events and cultural upheavals like the metoo movement, and its repercussions on the Swedish literary establishment.
In Swedish there is a word for English terms taken in directly as loanwords without consideration – anglicism. This book is FILLED with them, both intentional and unintentional. A lot of English words and expressions are employed, as if they have slipped through to the Swedish usage. Sometimes they ring very false. This might be an intentional effect, but I don’t know. It has to be nearly impossible to convey this linguistic interplay in the English translation though.
Sometimes i get the sense that Stoopendaal wanted to review a book or just express a fleeting thought, because there are a lot of digressions of that kind. This is common practice in contemporary novels, an autofictive influence. Stoopendaal drones on about Pomeranian dogs (which inspired the choice of cover design), the culture of the ultra rich through a book by Sigrid Rausing, and some notes on writing with Stephen King and Swedish stalwart Jan Guillou.
He also dedicates a chapter to French writer Michel Houellebecq, which invents a story where Houellebecq is visited by an agent of the French Secret Police. This chapter has captured the attention of Houellebecq enthusiasts internationally, and might be a contributing factor to why he book has been picked up for translation. Stoopendaal also seems to have found inspiration in the writing of C.G. Jung, alt-right expressions and computer game lingo. It is refreshing to read satiric treatments on current cultural trends like podcasts, words like “safe space”, New Public Management, and various current thoughts on masculinity, sexuality, class, politics and “just-in-time production”(!).
Another astute observation is the now ubiquitous phenomenon of couples sitting at home each with their own tablet och phone watching separate screens, but sitting next to one another in a sofa. Here is the excerpt (translated by the reviewer):
Something about this situation, this setting, with me in the easy chair with my laptop computer, Maria with her iPad, resting on the sofa, felt very, even brutally familiar. Which it was. It was most certainly a painfully ordinary situation in the everyday lives of millions of people, regardless of where on the globe they lived. Two or more people in a living room, each of which are busy or rather wholly absorbed by their electronic plaything, together and close to one another physically, but at the same time very much solitary. Did Maria need my physical presence in this room? Did I need hers? No, in a fundamental sense neither of us needed the other, not in this situation, not until one of us started to demand something of the other. I could at any moment request Maria’s attention. But why? For her to give me some sort of validation? I didn’t feel any need for such validation, in any case not in this particular situation.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect by Andrés Stoopendaal
All in all, a pretty funny book, with things to say about our current moment which amounts to a good time, with plenty of moments of mirthful recognition. I’m not sure it is meant as a comedy, though. My take is that the book doesn’t have a set purpose, it’s more of an expression of one person living in the early 2020s.
Emotional Inheritance (Galit Atlas, 2022)
Reading tales from therapy is a double-edged sword. The stories are so heavy, but at the same time they are strangely nourishing. There is something rewarding in taking in heavy stories. And this book does contain some devastating stories! There is a focus on sexuality, which I’m not really used to. I guess the Esther Perel-ness of it all feels very female. Several stories included instances of trying to heal hurt with sexuality. Female sexuality is probably more “weaponized” in the lifeworld of women, the vantage points are not equal when compared to men. Radical equality is probably not even possible because of the differences in sexual setup! Female perspectives are needed for men – and also vice versa.
Anyway, I’ve read a handful of books of ”tales from psychotherapy”, the first one being my grandmother’s dog-eared copy of Love’s Executioner by Irvin Yalom. I was fascinated by the vignettes of personal problems, the therapist’s view and then the unfolding of the process. I revisited the genre when I started undergoing therapist training myself, reading more. Stephen Grosz’s Examined Life was a compelling one. A family friend in New York sent me Robert Lindner’s Fifty Minute Hour, for a vintage taste (it was written in the 50’s). This time around I found Galit Atlas’ Emotional Inheritance, which focuses on intergenerational transmission of psychological trauma. There are eleven case stories divided into three parts, grandparents, parents and ourselves. I’m very interested in the generational view, which to me seems underdeveloped in psychotherapy. This book provided several good examples of this perspective, all drawn from Atlas’ own practice.
Throughout the book, Atlas is candid about her own thoughts and insecurities during the sessions, and she also opens up about her own complexes and traumas. In an interview she mentions that she considers her research to also be ”me-work”, meaning that her interest in trauma originates in her own traumatic experiences, which she processes as she helps others as well. This is the notion of the ”wounded healer”, common in folklore. She mentions the all-pervasive trauma machine that is the Israeli military (as Atlas is Israeli, she served in her youth). She also talks about the trauma of her parents’ families being forced to leave Iran and Syria during the period of persecution called Farhud. Another is her own experiences of relationships.
One of the stories in the book is the unbelievable account of a man who, although having grown up as an only child, senses that he had a twin brother who died and then discovers it to be true. What’s more, this phenomenon isn’t even that uncommon. Another memorable story is about a young woman whose family had been ripped apart when her grandmother accused the young girl’s (innocent) older stepbrother of abuse because of a sexual abuse trauma the grandmother experienced in her own youth. Such is the human comedy, tragic and flawed. I thought there would be more about the Shoah, but in a way it was better to keep it more universal. One fascinating point Atlas returns to is the fact that a lot of the patients activate a complex when they turn the same age as their parents, or when their children become the same age as they were when the had a defining experience. I wasn’t aware of how common this seems to be.
Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999)
Jhumpa Lahiri is a London-born American of Indian extraction – now living in Italy and writing in Italian! This book was her breakthrough collection of short stories, and it came out before her mid-life move to Italy. It deals with Indian-Americans of various situations. Lahiri was 29 years old when this was published, so a lot of the stories are about relationships. I have become enamoured of the form of the short story and this was a fun way to try on a type of author that was new to me. I enjoy stories about immigrants who are straddling two worlds.
The book consists of nine stories, previously published in various publications. My favorites were The third and final continent, The Interpreter of maladies and A temporary matter. I saw that this book’s title got a very poor translation in several languages, where it is just called “the Indian interpreter” which misses the point so much it’s almost ridiculous. It is also strange to think that this was published 24 years ago.
Some of it seems to be a critique of arranged marriages, some of it a defense of them. One story deals specifically with views on religion and Indian identity in west (This blessed house). Lahiri is skilled at weeding out those poignant moments and sentiments that populate our lives which we don’t necessarily know how to express of explain. That is a real talent! It might be on the strength of this talent that the book was not only nominated but also subsequently the winner of the Pulitzer prize for fiction, which is a big deal.
Leo Africanus (Amin Maalouf, 1986)
This is a historic novel, imagining the life of 15th-16th century explorer Leo Africanus, who despite his moniker wasn’t from African. He was Hasan al-Wazzan, a Moorish refugee from Granada after the fall of Al-Andalus in 1492. His family resettled in Fes, Morocco and he went on to explore Africa in Timbuktu, Cairo and later also Rome, Italy. The book is written in diary form almost, with every chapter telling the story of a year (“the year of Astaghfirullah” or “the year of the Raging Lions”). Maalouf was fascinated with Leo Africanus as he inhabited and mastered several cultural spheres throughout his life. When he was captured by mercenaries he became the captive of Christians in Rome, where he met the Pope and eventually taught Arabic to priests. He also converted to Christianity himself, according to historical record. The writing is a bit tedious at times, but it was interesting to imagine the world of 500 years ago, in to me quite unknown parts of the world. Maalouf must have made quite a lot of it up as he went along, because the original manuscript of Leo Africanus only tells of his travels to Africa. It was interesting to learn of various proverbs and ways of thinking that might have been current in the Maghreb of the time. A taste of the magribian mindset, if you will. There is a book called “The Arab Mind” by Raphael Patai that I in my younger days tried to check out from a law school library but I think it was unavailable or lost; there was at least something that finally prevented me from getting to it.
The fact that it is a historical novel is a problem for me. Because, when it comes to historical novels, I’m not usually on board for the ride. They feel too speculative, too large a risk for present to butt in. So I’ve done my best to avoid historical fiction. But I do like history and speculation. Having read this book still leaves me on the fence when it comes to historical fiction. On the one hand, this book allowed me to enter a 15th century Muslim world, for which I am grateful. But on the other hand, I have no way to judge the degree to which it has any standards of historical fidelity, if there ever was such a term. However, that might ultimately be true of all historical work. But to me there is an added dimension when it is portrayed in fictive form. Luckily, this is not the only feature of the book: it also gave me an interesting parable about the three Abrahamic faiths. In the novel there is mention of the three being as fish, landliving animal (can’t remember which) and bird. So they inhabit different realms. A fish can only live on land for a while, and a bird will only survive underwater for a short period of time before it must return to its original habitat. This is said when Africanus explains his re-conversion back to Islam. It reminded me of the stories of Naguib Mahfouz about the “children of ghebelawi” where street urchins represent the three faiths. There was also an Egyptian play in the 1950s called Hassan, Morqus and Cohen (later remade into a film in 2008 where they dropped Cohen and only called it Hassan wa Morqos). There is also in Indian cinema the movie Aamer Anthony and Akbar (1977) where the three faiths are Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. In a way I think Maalouf (a Lebanese Christian in exile in France) also wanted to add to this subgenre of story about different faiths meeting and merging. It was his first novel after the ambitious nonfiction work Les croisades vus par les Arabes (the Crusades seen from Arab Eyes) in 1981.
Benjamins bok (Bo Carpelan, 1997)
A novel of aging. Thoughts about the life course…
I was made aware of this uncompomising book when I read Peter Luthersson’s Förlorare from 2014. In the opening chapter Luthersson relates how gutted he had been by reading Carpelan’s book, and how it had made him think about aging and the shift of worldviews that constantly occurs in the flood of time. Luthersson’s book is about one such worldview that in his opinion has been lost to the tides, namely ”the ethos of the 1800s”. He expands his argument over the course of 470+ pages with close readings of several 19th century writers, like Kipling, Conrad, Melville and others.
But Carpelan’s book is not about the 19th century. It is firmly set in the 20th century, as the protagonist is an aged man at the end of his working life, reflecting on what became of him – and what became of his own zeitgeist. The stuff of the novel must be of autobiographical origin, as the author shares several of the important characteristics with the protagonist.
It is written almost in diary form, with short numbered chapters containing a fleeting idea or other. The narration also mentions that this is a thought-diary, even though it is interspersed with more traditional prose storytelling too.
Benjamin Trogen (Trogen means faithful), is a newly retired translator living in Helsinki, or Helsingfors rather, as he is Finland-Swedish (a Swedish-speaking minority of Finland). He has spent his life transferring the thoughts of others into Swedish and feels now that he wants to record some of his own thoughts instead. Some of the thoughts are the kind of throwaway thoughts that might have ended up in the paper basket. Some are philosophical in nature, jumping off of Descartes or others. Some are plain old curmudgeonly complaining about the decline of manners and such. He even has a name for it, “SUra GUbbars KLUbb” written with a few upper case letters for some reason (meaning “grumpy old men’s club”).
An overarching story is that of his childhood friend Olli who became mentally retarded after falling into the water and hitting his head, an accident that Benjamin believes he is responsible for, and has blamed himself for his whole life. Benjamin is visited by Olli in his dreams and decides to make a trip to visit him in real life.
This book has not been translated into English, as far as I know, but some other of Carpelan’s output has been subjected to English publication. A certain David MacDuff translated a few of them in the 1990s, one of them being Urwind. Horace Engdahl, a leading Swedish authority on literary matters, and former leader of the Swedish Academy called Carpelan “an architect of dreams” when he was awarded the “De Nios Stora Pris” 1995. He also received the Nordiska rådets litteraturpris in 1977.
Carpelan (1926-2011) was a translator of Finnish to Swedish and some of the prose reflects that bilinguality, which intrigues me as a linguistically inclined person. Also of note is that he started out as a poet, and continued writing poetry throughout his life. Poets writing novels usually makes for a certain type of prose, more mystical in tone, which definitely applies to Benjamins bok.
The Tartar Steppe (Dino Buzzati, 1940)
This is my contribution to the 1940 club, graciously hosted by Simon and Karen at Stuck in a Book and Bookish Ramblings, respectively. This is my sixth or seventh time participating, and it is good fun seeing what other books people have read and reviewed. Go to their pages and have a look!
Life consists of waiting. Waiting in vain, perhaps, as Robert Marley wrote. Italian writer Dino Buzzati noticed this and it inspired him to write this novel, his most well-known work, published in 1940.
Buzzati got the idea for the novel when he saw friends, colleagues, acquaintances just waiting for things to happen. Sometimes these unnamed “things” did happen, most times they didn’t. This, it seemed to Buzzati, was a fact of life. A fact he wanted to describe in a work of fiction. It also indirectly comments on the balance between settling and ambition in life. He seems to comment on life expectations. Are we being conditioned to expect too much out of life? Is the freedom that comes with modernity ultimately empty? Is that what existentialism was about? Buzzati, and this novel in particular, is sometimes mentioned as an example of existentialism. But what is it about?
Giovanni Drogo is a young soldier, on his way to be stationed at a remote fortress, at the edges of an unnamed Empire. This fort, Bastiani, is supposed to be a waystation where he just will stay for a few months, before an awaited transfer to the city. But somehow, as a simile for life changes unrealised, Drogo stays for longer than the four months. He ends up staying for 30 years, spending the better part of his adult life in the fort, waiting.
The book is a meditation on life and meaning, on wasting time and considering opportunities. On routine and the ultimate purpose of our lives. It is a reminder that we often make choices as if we will live forever. It can be seen as a wake up call to take advantage of our short time of earth. If that’s not existential, I don’t know what is.
This book was recommended by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, and he said it was his favorite book for a long time. It’s one of those books that I think one must get to at a young age to really be taken by. For me, on this theme, it was probably Camus that took up that space. Another French book with a similar theme, published in 1951, is Julien Gracq‘s The Opposing Shore. It is also about warring states, even though no battle has taken place for over 300 years. The notion of the “barbarians at the gates” is an evergreen theme, but Buzzati is said to have been inspired by Constantin Cavafy‘s 1904 poem Waiting for the Barbarians. That title also resurfaced in J.M. Coetzee‘s 1981 novel, reportedly inspired by Buzzati.
The waiting aspect of this book has been compared to Vladimir and Estragon’s anticipatory loafing in Beckett‘s classic. And for some reason it is also said to be similar to Kafka, which I don’t agree with. One reviewer saw similarities with John William‘s Stoner, because both are books in which nothing happens (which was also said about TV show Seinfeld, incidentally).
Buzzati seems to say that life is waiting, but life is also a train journey (Radu Mihaileanu). Life is a sea voyage (Joseph Conrad), life is hugging the shore (John Updike), and life is a lane switch (Kendrick Lamar). Life might be an overtake on the motorway (Rodolfo Sonego).
Stand Firm (Svend Brinkmann, 2015)
Contrarian Danish psychology professor Svend Brinkmann goes against the grain. The idea of the book came from his observation that positive psychology had become near-dogma, and Brinkmann started imagining a negative psychology as a counterpoint. The result is this “anti-self help book”, to use Brinkmann’s own appelation. One might as well call it an inverted self-help book – inverted in the sense that he attempts to clarify our current zeitgeist by reversing common tropes (think negatively, supress your feelings, dwell on the past). He comes up with seven of these “reverse” rules, and discusses them in order:
Cut out the navel-gazing
Focus on the negative in your life
Put on the No hat
Suppress your feelings
Sack your coach
Read a novel – not a self-help book or biography
Dwell on the Past
He latches on to the trend of neo-stoicism and urges the readers to suppress their feelings. He takes a cognitive approach in his argumentation that the self doesn’t exist, and is of the opinion that there’s no use wasting time thinking about it. The book is a strange brew of different currents in the broad field of psychology and self-help. Brinkmann gets it slightly confused when he advises against self-help books (in his own self-help book…). He means to say that novels are so much better than rulebooks and guides. This is also a 2010s trend in counselling, called bibliotherapy.
The anti-positive track is trodden by forerunners like Barbara Ehrenreich (“Smile or Die” was the UK title) and Oliver Burkeman (“Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking”). In my native Sweden we’ve been exposed to the same idea by Gothenburg-based thinker Ida Hallgren.
The title Stand Firm seems to suggest the opposite of movement and self-development. The text is at its most interesting when it gets political and mentions a shift in mental healthcare from community-based interventions towards individualized treatment. He mentions work in this area by Ole Jacob Madsen and Rasmus Willig.
I am reminded by the unspoken expectation of constant development and expansion, which must come from some innate competitive drive and probably spurred on even more by an economic system which rewards competition. What would happen if more people would say no to the constant grind? One trend among artists is to complain by protesting asleep, so-called lie-ins. Somehow, that would be the ultimate refusal of work.
My long interest in the dilemma of self-help is again awakened by this book. It is at the intersection of self-determination, epistemology, health, and sociological themes. Brinkmann stands on two sides of the fence, it seems to me. I guess he sees it as both ineffective and effective, depending on the intervention. There’s a lot more to say on this topic, so here are some keywords:
“life is speeding up” (Hartmut Rosa), “don’t believe in the gut feeling, it’s often wrong” (Gerd Gigerenzer), “Being ‘positive’ and saying yes to everything is dangerous” (conformism, consensus-seeking), “emotional culture” and “therapeutic culture” (Eva Illouz, Zygmunt Bauman, Arlie Hochschild), “coachification leads to passivization”.
Kinship of all Species 