1 post tagged “alain de botton”

I just finished reading Alain de Botton's Essays in Love, apparently this title is used for the British edition, while those who live in US the will find the book titled as On Love.

Essays in Love

This is what the UK edition looks like, it's also the one that I have.

On Love

And the US edition.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Alain de Botton is an extremely good writer, and I frequently pause to reread his beautifully modeled sentences. He's the bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, Status Anxiety, and The Art of Travel. I have read Status Anxiety and The Consolations of Philosophy already, and though I learned a lot from these two, I did not enjoy them as much as Essays in Love, probably because Essays in Love is a fusion of a love story and philosophical ideas and thought, unlike the former two, which are just nonfiction, expository prose.

Anyway, this book follows the development of a relationship between the the narrator and a woman whom he meets on a flight from to . Readers will be able to relate to the different stages of the relationship, from the initial uncomfortable exchanges, charged with expectation, to the first kiss, to argument and reconciliation; from intimacy & tenderness to the onset of anxiety, suspicions, breakup, and depression. What makes this book different from the common romance/love novel is that as the narrator talks about his story, he is also carefully analyzing and explaining the different emotions he's feeling (frustrations, confusions, joy, desolate despair, etc) through history, religion, and the philosophies of many thinkers including Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hobbes, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. There are times when the book is really funny as De Botton shows just how irrational and contradictory humans can be. I gained a lot of insights from this witty and wise book - READ it!!

Memorable Parts:

There are far too many sections in the book that I liked, so I'll just put a couple that stood out to me.

[Edit] I just realized that I put up quite a few (after all, I did put these up first and foremost for my own pleasure). The quotes I put up are some of the philosophical observations found in the book, so not too much will be lost if you read these first and then read the book for the first time. It might also show you what type of book this is, and whether you'll like it or not.  However, if you don't want to anywhere near "spoiled," I have already warned...

"Love seems indispensably connected to stories. Powering most love stories are obstacles. Paul and Virginie, Anna and Vronsky, Tarzan and Jane tend to struggle against odds that confirm and enrich their bond. In a jungle, on a shipwreck boat or the side of a mountain, the classic romantic couple proves the strength of its love by the vigour with which it overcomes adversities.

But there wasn't much adventure or struggle around to be had. The world that Chloe and I lived in had largely been stripped of capacities for epic conflict. Our parents didn't care, the jungle had been tamed, society hid its disapproval behind universal tolerance, restaurants stayed open late, credit cards were accepted almost everywhere, and sex was a duty, not a crime. Yet Chloe and I did have a modest story of our own, a set of common experiences that bonded us together. What is an experience? Something that breaks a polite routine and for a brief period allows us to witness things with the heightened sensitivity afforded to us by novelty, danger, or beauty - and it's on the basis of shared experiences that intimacy is given an opportunity to grow. Friendships nourished solely by occasional dinners will never have the depth of those forged on a trek or at a university. Two people who are surprised by a lion in a jungle clearing will - unless one of them is eaten - be effectively bonded by what they have seen.

Chloe and I were never surprised by a predator, but we lived through a host of small urban experiences..."

from chapter 13: "Intimacy"

“Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are. Our selves could be compared to an amoeba, whose outer walls are elastic, and therefore adapt to the environment. It is not that the amoeba has no dimensions, simply that is has no self-defined shape. It is my absurdist side that an absurdist person will draw out of me, and my seriousness that a serious person will evoke. If someone thinks I am shy, I will probably end up shy, if someone thinks me funny, I am likely to keep cracking jokes.”

from chapter 14: “ ‘I’-Confirmation”

The quote from above reminded me of the self-fulfilling prophecy concept that I learned in sociology this year.

“Once a partner has begun to lose interest, there is apparently little the other can do to arrest the process. Like seduction, withdrawal suffers under a blanket of reticence. The very breakdown of communication is hard to discuss, unless both parties have a desire to see it restored. This leaves the lover in a desperate situation. Honest dialogue seems to produce only irritation and smothers love in the attempt to revive it. Desperate to woo the partner back at any cost, the lover might at this point be tempted to turn to romantic terrorism, the product of irredeemable situations, a gamut of tricks (sulking, jealous, guilt) that attempt to force the partner to return love, by blowing up (in fits of tears, rage or otherwise) in front of the loved one. The terroristic partner knows he cannot realistically hope to see his love reciprocated, but the futility of something is not always (in love or in politics) a sufficient argument against it. Certain things are said not because they will be heard, but because it is important to speak.

When political dialogue has failed to resolve a grievance, the injured party may also in desperation resort to terrorist activity, extracting by force the concession it has been unable to seduce peacefully from its opposite number. Political terrorism is born out of deadlocked situations, behaviour that combines a party’s need to act with an awareness (conscious or semi-conscious) that action will not go any way towards achieving the desired end – and will if anything only alienate the other party further. The negativity of terrorism betrays all the signs of childish rage, a rage at one’s own impotence in the face of a more powerful adversary.” 

from chapter 18: “Romantic Terrorism”

“…I was struck by the incoherence of suicide: I did not wish to choose between being alive or dead. I simply wished to show Chloe that I could not, metaphorically speaking, live without her. The irony was that death would be too literal an act to grant me the chance to see the metaphor read, I would be deprived by the inability of the dead (in a secular framework at least) to look at the living looking at the dead. What was the point of making such a scene if I could not be there to witness others witnessing it? In picturing my death, I imagined myself in the role of audience to my own extinction, something that could never really happen in reality, when I would simply be dead, and hence denied my ultimate wish – namely, to be both dead and alive. Dead so as to be able to show the world in general, and Chloe in particular, how angry I was, and alive, so as to be able to see the effect that had had on Chloe and hence be released from my anger. It was not a question of being or not being. My answer to Hamlet was to be and not to be.

Those who commit a certain kind of suicide perhaps forget the second part of the equation, they look at death as an extension of life (a kind of afterlife in which to watch the effect of their actions). I staggered to the sink and my stomach contracted out the effervescent poison. The pleasure of suicide was to be located not in the gruesome task of killing the organism, but in the reactions of others to my death…To have killed myself would have been to forget that I would be too dead to derive any pleasure from the melodrama of my own extinction.”

from chapter 21: “Suicide"