Reviewing the Review: June 28 2009
by Levi Asher on Saturday, June 27, 2009 09:21 pm
A dustup is always fun. Caleb Crain basically murdalizes a non-fiction book called The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton in today's New York Times Book Review. It's an exciting article, but after examining the plays in detail I'm not quite sure who wins.
A critic who sets out to write a strongly negative review ought to open with a powerful point, but Caleb Crain actually punches himself with the opening paragraph, which posits many doubtful assertions as fact:
Work is activity that earns money. Lucky people enjoy their work, but even they might not do it without pay. To the extent that pay motivates, people work for the sake of something else -- so they can buy food, shelter, clothing, security, luxury or leisure -- and against their inclinations. Now, to do anything against one’s inclinations is to put one’s dignity at risk. It is fascination with this cold truth that draws children to blend sludge out of refrigerated leftovers and then dare one another: "Would you drink it for a hundred dollars? For a thousand?" Everyone has a price in theory; a worker is someone who has agreed to a number. He is exposed as someone under constraint, like a prisoner in a stockade. To mock him for being less than perfectly free in his thoughts and actions is easy.
This is some dense prose, and it expresses a surprisingly shallow point. Our connections with our jobs go much deeper than money. For many people, work is identity. It gives us our pride, our sense of self. Certainly work is a key part of who we are, not an activity we engage in with calculated detachment. I really don't know where Caleb Crain is coming from with this opener. He also doesn't mention the book he's reviewing.
He's better when he gets to the book, which, in his opinion, reeks of condescension. Crain finds de Botton a highly unreliable and capricious journalist, and he scores one killer punch here, describing de Botton's account of a dull interview with a bureaucrat in London:
De Botton decides that he pities the man for his hollowness. But it is evident that he was outplayed -- that he wasn’t prepared with questions detailed or insightful enough to oblige the executive to take him seriously. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the head of an accounting firm would know well how to keep his cards to himself while going through the forms of transparency.
Crain's point about de Botton's unconscious snobbery is a serious one, but interestingly Crain's prose has a snobbish undertone too, as when he drops a reference to the classical music term "ostinato" into a sentence. I can't stand that kind of pretension -- if I want to read about classical music I'll read a damn book by Alex Ross (and, to be honest, I don't want to read about classical music).
Crain's review also fails to connect the book to the long tradition of non-fiction literature about Americans at work: The Organization Man by Wiliam Whyte, Working by Studs Terkel, Gig by John Bowe and Marisa Bowe. All in all, I'll hand this match to Alain de Botton. Caleb Crain does not have a strong enough offense to pull this bad review off.
That's about as exciting as this weekend's NYTBR gets. Paul Bloom's meditation upon The Evolution of God by Richard Wright is meant to be a rave (he calls the book brilliant) but the points I manage to glean from this review are wishy-washy. Speaking of condescension, both Bloom and Wright seem to assume that only monotheistic Western religions deserve our awe, and I don't think much of the attitude expressed by this:
In fact, when it comes to expanding the circle of moral consideration, he argues, religions like Buddhism have sometimes "outperformed the Abrahamics." But this sounds like the death of God, not his evolution.
It's strange to imagine that anyone would want to read a modern history of religion that doesn't take Buddhism seriously; this book is called The Evolution of God and in my observation the Eastern religions have a more highly evolved sense of God than the Western ones.
Today's NYTBR also features David Gates on Love and Obstacles by Alexsander Hemon and Jeremy McCarter on a new biography of playwright Arthur Miller by Christopher Bigsby.
A critic who sets out to write a strongly negative review ought to open with a powerful point, but Caleb Crain actually punches himself with the opening paragraph, which posits many doubtful assertions as fact:
Work is activity that earns money. Lucky people enjoy their work, but even they might not do it without pay. To the extent that pay motivates, people work for the sake of something else -- so they can buy food, shelter, clothing, security, luxury or leisure -- and against their inclinations. Now, to do anything against one’s inclinations is to put one’s dignity at risk. It is fascination with this cold truth that draws children to blend sludge out of refrigerated leftovers and then dare one another: "Would you drink it for a hundred dollars? For a thousand?" Everyone has a price in theory; a worker is someone who has agreed to a number. He is exposed as someone under constraint, like a prisoner in a stockade. To mock him for being less than perfectly free in his thoughts and actions is easy.
This is some dense prose, and it expresses a surprisingly shallow point. Our connections with our jobs go much deeper than money. For many people, work is identity. It gives us our pride, our sense of self. Certainly work is a key part of who we are, not an activity we engage in with calculated detachment. I really don't know where Caleb Crain is coming from with this opener. He also doesn't mention the book he's reviewing.
He's better when he gets to the book, which, in his opinion, reeks of condescension. Crain finds de Botton a highly unreliable and capricious journalist, and he scores one killer punch here, describing de Botton's account of a dull interview with a bureaucrat in London:
De Botton decides that he pities the man for his hollowness. But it is evident that he was outplayed -- that he wasn’t prepared with questions detailed or insightful enough to oblige the executive to take him seriously. It shouldn’t have surprised him that the head of an accounting firm would know well how to keep his cards to himself while going through the forms of transparency.
Crain's point about de Botton's unconscious snobbery is a serious one, but interestingly Crain's prose has a snobbish undertone too, as when he drops a reference to the classical music term "ostinato" into a sentence. I can't stand that kind of pretension -- if I want to read about classical music I'll read a damn book by Alex Ross (and, to be honest, I don't want to read about classical music).
Crain's review also fails to connect the book to the long tradition of non-fiction literature about Americans at work: The Organization Man by Wiliam Whyte, Working by Studs Terkel, Gig by John Bowe and Marisa Bowe. All in all, I'll hand this match to Alain de Botton. Caleb Crain does not have a strong enough offense to pull this bad review off.
That's about as exciting as this weekend's NYTBR gets. Paul Bloom's meditation upon The Evolution of God by Richard Wright is meant to be a rave (he calls the book brilliant) but the points I manage to glean from this review are wishy-washy. Speaking of condescension, both Bloom and Wright seem to assume that only monotheistic Western religions deserve our awe, and I don't think much of the attitude expressed by this:
In fact, when it comes to expanding the circle of moral consideration, he argues, religions like Buddhism have sometimes "outperformed the Abrahamics." But this sounds like the death of God, not his evolution.
It's strange to imagine that anyone would want to read a modern history of religion that doesn't take Buddhism seriously; this book is called The Evolution of God and in my observation the Eastern religions have a more highly evolved sense of God than the Western ones.
Today's NYTBR also features David Gates on Love and Obstacles by Alexsander Hemon and Jeremy McCarter on a new biography of playwright Arthur Miller by Christopher Bigsby.
This blog post is part of the series Reviewing the New York Times Book Review. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: July 5 2009. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: June 21 2009.
13 reponses to "Reviewing the Review: June 28 2009"
One thing about the Crain article. De Botton was actually born in Zurich, Switzerland. He's also written a few novels. Therefore, he wouldn't be a "British essayist." Where are the fact checkers at the Times these days? For goodness sake, you can just go to de Botton's website for all that.
I once read a de Botton book, 'Consolations of Philosophy', although most of the philosophy that I study is no place to go for consolation. It was a companion text to a PBS series of the same name. With six short chapters that profile six philosophers three ancient and three modern that attempt to help us overcome our perennial anxieties about unpopularity (Socrates), poverty (Epicurus), frustration (Seneca), inadequacy (Montaigne), heartbreak (Schopenhauer), and difficulties (Nietzsche). I can recommend it as a cursory introduction to philosophy. He actually visits Montainge's chateau where he retired to, at an early age, to contemplate and write, couched by wooden beams overhead in his study with great quotes from other great philosophers inscribed on them. This book actually inspired someone to give me a gift of Montainge's writings which I have been trudging through for a few years now.
ps
Hey eliot, is murdalize a word ?
The death of god's
an iteresting consideration
no sooner is it achieved
an along comes another one
or even ressurection
the almighty is either a bus
or a scientific equation
perhaps religious speculation
which ever way you look at it
at the present moment
the bus is a certainty
the rest are information
what's that you said
about the super highway
gamblers dont do buses
only riverboats and trains
dont get many of them
wandering in a desert
unless the promised land
is located in las vegas
and gambling really is
an empirical vocation
while the book of numbers
is running the revelation
ps
ts
yes
Murdalize is a word:
Moe, to Curly "Come over here so I can murdalize you!"
Curly, slaps face vigorously with two hands, then thrums his cheek with his knuckles, "Nyeah!"
Moe, "Why I oughta..."
What's more snobby, using a word someone's unfamiliar with, or criticizing someone for using such a word?
Thank you for your perceptive analysis. Yes, I am indeed Swiss, but the errors naturally don't end there. Shame on the NY Times (again!) for letting an attack dog loose on a book of mine. I look forward to the day, possibly very far away, when the paper sees fit to give me even vaguely balanced coverage. This is appalling review number 6 in a row from them. I hope it won't put all readers off the truth, which I think is far from being so bad.
It reminded me of Walter Kirn's review of James Wood. It's an expression of anxiety about some supposed condescension : a weird mental habit that Americans often indulge in. Hence the extreme pertinence of his mentioning de Boton as "British." In many instances he simply misunderstands the tone being used - but either way you cannot write a review about someone's tone while not engaging with any of the ideas at hand. Would that not be condescending and superficial? I like both of these writers, I should add. But one is not necessarily endowed with the right ear to judge the other.
Edward Champion: Botton has lived and been educated in Britain since the age of eight; that he is also a novelist by no means indicates that he is not an essayist - 'British essayist' may not be the most complete description, but it's not erroneous, and closer than 'Swiss novelist' would be.
As Ayn Rand said, people would do anything destroy a great talent, but would take pride in teaching a village idiot how to make a basket!
It's absurd that how deBotton's unfairly attacked while people are ready to invest time and energy to promote all kinds of rubbish!
Zeynep
Someone works for two or three years with immense application on a book. Much of his waking time, when he is not writing, is taken up with thinking about the subject of the book. Someone else then reads the book, and spends an easy hour or so penning a review -- that rubbishes the book, ignoring its many merits and playing up its faults, or worse, perhaps: zooming in on parts of it where malicious interpretation or tweaking can find negatives, and then making it seem as if the book consists, almost entirely, of those negatives.
Was de Botton's response excessive? Perhaps. But that excess is partly explained by the 'excessive' disparity between the work put in by the writer and that put in by the reviewer, and yet the reviewer's quick work can inflict huge damage on the long labour of the writer.
The problem is that de Botton - who plays a great wiseman on TV sorta thing - doesn't even have enough common sense to remain in this role and proves to the whole world that he's nothing but a common moron. Then he fortifies this impression by offering puerile explanations like that he intended this to be a private letter. Who'd post a private letter on the net as a blog comment? How can a cretinous missive be excused by saying it was private? Private of public, it's still the same thing. His problem is that now that he demonstrated that he's a pretty stupid guy in actual life who'll belive his elevated-philosopher literary persona? Otoh, I quite reading him long before this incident: his Proust was good I thought, and so was Consolations of Philosophy, but then I got more stuff of his and I couldn't finish the next book: it became a gimmick and I was bored.
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