The Criticulture Guide to Self-Help!

The Alchemist (1988)

Novel by Paulo Coelho

Tiny Beautiful Things

Based on the book by Cheryl Strayed

Play adapted for the Stage by Nia Vardalos

Starring Nia Vardalos, Teddy Cañez, Hubert Point-du Jour, Natalie Woolams-Torres

The Public Theater

October 11, 2017

Hitler, Ascent 1889-1939

Biography by Volker Ullrich

Alfred A. Knopf, 2016

Triumph of the Will (1935)

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl

Thursday was about self-help literature: in the evening I saw Tiny Beautiful Things at the Public Theater, while earlier in the day my library book club had discussed the novel The Alchemist, now translated into 70 languages and under development as a Hollywood picture produced by none other than Harvey Weinstein, who certainly could use some self-help these days. As I grew weary of this day of needy self-actualization, on the subway home I thought back to my recent reading of the excellent new biography Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by the German Volker Ullrich. All these works made me reflect about the variety of resources people turn to when life seems miserable or unfulfilling. All left me mystified and uncomprehending, since I come from the solid midwestern “help yourself” tradition, but each reflects its era and society in some key way.

The Alchemist was written by Coelho, a onetime Brazilian law student, hippie, (perhaps unjustly institutionalized) mental patient, and pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela. The novel came after a decade or so of popular “self help” books which tried to improve lives by simplifying therapy and psychoanalysis into add-water-and-stir home versions. Following up on Dale Carnegie’s popular 1936 How to Make Friends and Influence People, they included Thomas Anthony Harris’ I’m OK, You’re OK (1969), Robin Norwood’s Women Who Love Too Much (1985), Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within (1991). The online (and hardcopy) bookstores remain jammed with these and similar titles. It is interesting that, while Carnegie took a very alpha-male salesman perspective (his book is still used in sales schools), the later books largely were targeted at and/or appealed to women, probably coinciding with women entering the workplace in the 1970’s and needing more approaches and skills to assert themselves in a male-dominated culture. The Alchemist, initially panned by major book critics as a watered-down fable of self-help, took off in the pre-internet era via word of mouth and reviews in minor periodicals and has never looked back, still being reprinted into new languages 30 years later, while the author has over 29 million Facebook followers. It is a fable about a young shepherd boy, content with his Andalusian sheep, yet who feels a need to explore and push himself. Guided by an elder sage Melchisidech, he journeys to the pyramids to find his inner goal. Along the way he meets various archetypes…the businessman stuck in his ways who cannot imagine change, the cerebral Englishman who wants to find treasure using analysis rather than feeling and intuition, the loyal desert girl who supports his mission unconditionally. He eventually does find his life goal-treasure, but back home, buried in a local old church (echoes of “There’s no place like home!” from a famed 1930’s self-help movie musical!). Some typical quotable passages from the novel include:

Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

While the un-original central message of “Follow your bliss” (to quote historian Joseph Campbell) is certainly solid, and has been my main life strategy (not thanks to Coelho), the message is here muddled by too many subplots. The shepherd is open to all religions and ideas (a proto-Unitarian shepherd!), trusts omens, becomes one with the wind and sun, but ends rather conservatively with a homeward journey where he finds his treasure in the Catholic church of his birth. Much of this is autobiographical, following the author’s meandering path--Coelho also rejected then re-found Catholicism, drifted into drugs then re-discovered family values. My main problem with this book was that it seemed less about helping me than about allegorizing the author’s own psychic journey, all the while implying that it would then work for me, too. This is common in many of these books. They make quasi-clinical recommendations based on the authors’ personal experience (not the psychological literature) then rely on you, the reader, to match yourself to their particular vision. Since one is often inclined to read only those visions that match your own, the exercise becomes masturbatory, rather than self-challenging. Stylistically The Alchemist is a muddle, mostly written in monotonously short declarative children’s literature-type sentences, but with the odd big word thrown in, diminishing its charm. Neither adult nor child in its fictional style, its fuzzy middle ground obviously resonates with a big audience, but not with me.

Another style of self-help is the advice column, where we learn coping mechanisms from the response of the columnist to various (selected) reader questions. These also reflect their eras; for example, the famous Ann Landers and Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby, aka Abagail van Buren) brought an alternately sympathetic, amusing, and authoritative style to their 1950-70’s audience, but now would seem to doctrinaire for an era where authority is mistrusted. The play Tiny Beautiful Things, currently being staged at the Public Theater, is based on the self-help book with the same title by “Dear Sugar” advice columnist Cheryl Strayed. Strayed also wrote Wild, the vastly popular narrative about the young woman who self-actualized by hiking the 2,659 mile Pacific Crest Trail. The play essentially divides a number of reader questions among three actors, then responded to by “Sugar”, the author (played earnestly by Nia Vardalos). The acting was competent, perhaps best by Teddy Cañez, very moving in a long monologue asking about how to respond to his son’s death. This and the equally long response were the emotional core of the play, which was otherwise more of a pastiche than a constructed drama. Since the questions/answers were lifted directly from the book, I assume many of the attendees (some in tears) already had read them, and were reliving these columns live during the play. That the questions/answers still carried so much resonance for these attendees attests to Strayed’s effect on many. For me, her tone was narcissistic and unprofessionally studded with her own life experiences. She harps on how she is not telling others what to do, then does so. There are endless references to her own substance abuse, bad marriage, bad relationships, etc. She fits a more modern model in advice in that she proudly shares her personal experience, so becomes a more intimate role model than Dear Abby ever tried to be. So in reading Dear Sugar, you get a friend, not just an advisor. This is in tune with millennial psychology, but pretty far from the recommended therapist-client distance taught to practitioners, and not a little icky. This is a play for Strayed disciples only.

Another way to improve yourself (or at least feel better) is to immerse yourself in a cause. While this often leads to societal benefits (the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam protests, Global Warming), it has the risk of falling into cultism and demagoguery, whether following Cleon of Athens (the first demagogue), Charles Manson, Sun Myung Moon, Jerry Garcia, or Donald Trump. Each of these knew how to adeptly manipulate unhappy or unfulfilled people enamored of a charismatic central figure, leading to the leader’s own accumulation of power, wealth, or influence. What each noticed was that their message itself might be inconsistent, unfamiliar, irrational, or even dangerous, but that for their followers, this was incidental to The Cause and The Leader. The twentieth century paragon of this, of course, was Adolph Hitler, who somehow persuaded the most skeptical and rational of populations to follow him off a racist genocidal cliff. How he did this has always mystified and fascinated me, and the new biography Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 came the closest of any to making this clearer. While the latter half of the book (after Hitler ascends to power in 1932) necessarily gets caught up in policy and political maneuvering, the first half uses lots of testimony and transcribed speeches to let the reader dissect the genesis of this complex figure. Hitler left little in the way of true personal testimony, early letters, or family documents, insisting they be destroyed prior to his suicide in 1945, thus protecting his image to the end (I wonder how many White House documents will disappear upon Trump’s departure).  Hitler’s “testimony” Mein Kampf was less a diary than a self-serving political treatise, much like the “autobiographies” of most of our ex-presidents, so cannot be trusted for true insight. In fact, like many of these demagogues, there is no evidence of insight at all, just lust for power. While this well-written biography does not in the end explain the psychology of how Hitler went from failed artist to bitter ex-soldier to firebrand to messiah, the author’s objectivity allows the reader to analyze and conclude this for herself. Prior Hitler biographies have taken a more biased approach, either overtly psychoanalytic (without much data) or simply seeing Hitler as a reflection of his times (which neglects his psychopathology and charisma). When one combines this biography with a viewing of Leni Riefenstahl’s great Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (1932), one sees the paradox of an introverted, outwardly unimpressive man with a weak physical presence who became a firebrand on a podium. Hitler’s a complex personality showed a clear duality: simultaneously compelling and responsive to the populace in public speeches, yet insecure, sullen, treacherous, and manipulative in private (maybe this is just a classic politician). While it may be futile to understand the personality of Hitler or of any of the above demagogues (including our own president), what is common to them all is the adoring, irrational wave of popularity that crests seemingly out of nowhere. Hitler took over a decade to build his party, and as late as 1932 was on the verge of defeat and humiliation. But the coincidence of the right personality, the right populace, and the right events (the depression of the 1930s and the penalties of the Treaty of Versailles) combined to push him over the top, and once in power he rode the wave expertly and homicidally. While analogies between Hitler and Trump become less apt once in power (Trump lacks Hitler’s ideological focus, sociopathic race hatred, and strategic competence), their journeys to power have striking parallels--see this article for examples. Each focused on a simple, easily digested, and emotionally loaded message and recognized the populace's tolerance for a 'big lie" that gave them comfort. For Hitler, Germany had a pure “Aryan” heritage being diluted by foreign influence, needed to cleanse itself of foreign Jews, and needed room to live in the primitive East. These messages are shocking similar to “Make America Great Again” and “Build the Wall”. Watch Triumph of the Will and see how the faces in the Nuremberg crowd look much like those of the followers of any of the above leaders.  This may be the most dangerous form of “self-improvement”—the delirious loss of oneself. Read this fine new biography for this and more insight into our own era.