How to Live. What To Do.
In search of ourselves in life and literature
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
What can Alice in Wonderland teach us about childhood? Could reading Conversations with Friends guide us through first love? Does Esther Greenwood’s glittering success and subsequent collapse in The Bell Jar help us understand ambition? And, finally, what can we learn about death from Virginia Woolf?
Literature matters. Not only does it provide escapism and entertainment, but it also holds a mirror up to our lives to show us aspects of ourselves we may not have seen or understood. From jealousy to grief, fierce love to deep hatred, our inner lives become both stranger and more familiar when we explore them through fiction.
Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory, delves deep into the inner lives of the most memorable and vivid characters in literature. His analysis of figures such as Jay Gatsby and Mrs Dalloway offers insights into the greatest questions about the human experience, ones that we can all learn from. He walks us through the different stages of existence, from childhood to old age, showing that literature is much more than a refuge from the banality and rigour of everyday life – through the experiences of its characters, it can show us ways to be wiser, more open and more self-aware.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cohen (How to Read), a psychoanalyst and literature professor, studies the inner lives of literary characters to explore fiction's lessons in this original if underwhelming survey. Cohen playfully begins each character study with a therapist's note: Alice, for example, following her adventures in Wonderland, "spoke rather breathlessly of a series of peculiar exchanges and adventures with domestic, wild and extinct animal species," while Goethe's Young Werther is at "severe suicidal risk." Following these vignettes are detailed psychoanalytical descriptions of the characters' experiences and desires: in To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout Finch's imagination is held up as a necessary aspect of childhood that helps one "approach the world with curiosity and free from the crushing weight of presumption and prejudice," while in The Bell Jar Esther Greenwood's inability to choose a path in life illustrates how ambition can be a source of both freedom and unhappiness. Though a fascinating line of inquiry, Cohen's narrow literature selections overwhelmingly favor white, western authors, limiting the presumed universality of his interpretations. And the peppered-in stories of Cohen's own clients fall flat in comparison to the depth of his literary character analyses, stifling the momentum. While the premise is a brilliant one with plenty of room for fun, readers are likely to be left wanting.