How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton (English) Paperback Book

Description: How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton "A self-help manual for the intelligent person" ("The New York Times Book Review"), this stylish, erudite, and frequently hilarious book dips deeply into Marcel Prousts life and work to uncover a font of wonderful advice on such subjects as cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, and recognizing love. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A bestselling author draws on the work of one of historys most important writers to show us how to best live life in a book thats "delightfully original.... A self-help book in the deepest sense of the term" (The New York Times). Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres—literary biography and self-help manual—in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life.Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Prousts life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and unclichéd articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Prousts essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life. Author Biography ALAIN DE BOTTON was born in 1969. He is the internationally heralded author of the novels On Love, The Romantic Movement, and Kiss and Tell; his work has been translated into sixteen languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London. Review "Delightfully original.... As well as being criticism, biography, literary history, and a readers guide to Prousts masterpiece, this is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." —The New York Times "One of my favorite books of the year.... Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious." —Julian Barnes "Curious, humorous, didactic, and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." —John Updike, The New Yorker "A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for." —Doris Lessing "A wonderful meditation on aspects of Proust in the form of a self-help book. Very enjoyable." —Sebastian Faulks "Funny and very refreshing." —San Francisco Chronicle Review Quote "Delightfully original.... As well as being criticism, biography, literary history, and a readers guide to Prousts masterpiece, this is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term." -- The New York Times "One of my favorite books of the year.... Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious." --Julian Barnes "Curious, humorous, didactic, and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." --John Updike, The New Yorker "A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for." --Doris Lessing "A wonderful meditation on aspects of Proust in the form of a self-help book. Very enjoyable." --Sebastian Faulks "Funny and very refreshing." -- San Francisco Chronicle Excerpt from Book Following is an excerpt from Chapter 8, "How to be Happy in Love": Q: Did Proust have any relevant thoughts on dating? What should one talk about on a first date? A: Advice is scant. A more fundamental doubt is whether one should accept dinner in the first place. There is no doubt that a persons charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as: "No, this evening I shant be free." If this response proves bewitching, it is because of the connection made...between appreciation and absence. Though a person may be filled with attributes, an incentive is nevertheless required to ensure that a seducer will focus wholeheartedly on these, an incentive which finds perfect form in a dinner rebuff. Q: Was he against sex before marriage? A: No, just before love. And not for any starchy reasons, simply because he felt it wasnt a good idea to sleep together when encouraging someone to fall in love was a consideration. Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones. Q: Surely not? A: Other women may of course be fascinating, the problem is that they risk not seeming so... Q: Are there any secrets to long-lasting relationships? A: Infidelity. Not the act itself, but the threat of it. For Proust, an injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit...The threat of losing their partner may lead them to realize that they have not appreciated this person adequately...If someone threatens the relationship, they get jealous, wake up for a moment, have another kiss with the horny tusk, and get bored once more. Condensed into a male heterosexual version, the situation runs like this: Afraid of losing her, we forget all the others. Sure of keeping her, we compare her with the those others whom at once we prefer to her. Details ISBN0679779159 Short Title HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIF Pages 208 Language English ISBN-10 0679779159 ISBN-13 9780679779155 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 843.912 Year 1998 Imprint Vintage Books Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Alternative 9780676540802 Residence Washington, DC, US Birth 1969 Series Vintage International DOI 10.1604/9780679779155 AU Release Date 1998-04-28 NZ Release Date 1998-04-28 US Release Date 1998-04-28 UK Release Date 1998-04-28 Publisher Random House USA Inc Publication Date 1998-04-28 Illustrations 133 ILLUSTRATIONS Audience General Author Alain De Botton We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:168894195;

Price: 33.46 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2025-01-14T03:20:35.000Z

Shipping Cost: 9.49 AUD