The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature

Adorno, Theodor, 30, 32, 39, 128, 142, 183; on advice columns, 138, 186–87, 188, 199; Aesthetic Theory, 200; on Beckett, 199, 200, 225; on culture industry, 176–77; on do-it-yourself spirit, 91–92, 181; on instrumentalism, 175, 177, 182, 199; Minima Moralia, 108, 181; on Proust, 39, 175, 176, 178–81, 183, 251; on “pseudo-activity,” 82, 91–92

advice columns, 185–97, 218; early history of, 302n37

African Americans and self-help, 31–32, 234–36

agency, 7, 8, 33, 80, 131, 142, 229, 236, 244, 256

Alcott, William A., 11

Aimé-Martin, Louis, 46

Alger, Horatio, 50, 144, 187, 193, 264n38

Alleine, Joseph, 9–10

Anderson, Amanda, 80, 253

Anderson, Margaret, 122–23

Anne, Jessica, 104, 106

anti-self-help movement, 33, 104, 109–10, 125–26, 220

Argov, Sherry, 71, 75

Armitage, David, 252

Asian Americans/Canadians and self-help, 230–31, 233–34

Atwood, Margaret, 207

Aubry, Timothy, 8, 23

Auden, W. H., 20, 176

Austen, Jane, 20, 219

authoritarianism, 44, 165, 199, 202; in advice columns, 186, 188. See also fascism and totalitarianism

autosuggestion. See hypnotism

Aw, Tash, 37, 39, 44, 68, 71–77, 211, 218

Balzac, Honoré de, 160

Barnes, Djuna, 122, 291n130

Barnes, Julian, 175–76

Barthes, Roland, 255

Barzun, Jacques, 102

Baudelaire, Charles, 5, 19, 257, 258

Beckett, Samuel, 19, 20, 21, 39, 132, 163, 176, 183, 199–208, 224–25; Happy Days, 205–6; Krapp’s Last Tape, 208; Molloy, 208; Murphy, 203; The Unnamable, 202–3; Waiting for Godot, 205–8; Worstward Ho, 201

Benjamin, Walter, 197, 228, 239

Bennett, Alice, 227–28

Bennett, Arnold, 22, 133–40, 182, 255, 292n140, 303n37

Bennett, John, 122–23

Ben-Shahar, Tal, 245

Berg, Maggie, and Barbara Seeber, 246

Bergson, Henri, 142, 230

Berlant, Lauren, 30, 108, 253

Bersani, Leo, 83, 86

Berthoud, Ella, and Susan Elderkin, 25

bibliotherapy, 8, 9, 25, 53

Boitard, Pierre, 98–101

Booth, Alison, 48, 83

Bourdieu, Pierre, 19, 96, 138, 180, 219, 254, 255

Bowen, Elizabeth, 163

Brannon, Julie Sloan, 147, 149

Brinkmann, Sven, 20, 26, 109, 221

Brooks, Cleanth, 150

Brooks, Gwendolyn, 235

Brown, Stephen, 204–5

Burgess, Anthony, 147

Burke, Kenneth, 171, 238

Burkeman, Oliver, 109, 125, 224–25

Burton, Neel, 125–26

Byrne, Rhonda, 42, 131

Call, Annie Payson, 125, 288n74

Carey, John, 151, 164

Caribbean countries, 53–54

caricature, 233, 257

Carlson, Richard, 217

Carlyle, Thomas, 13, 46, 63–64, 241, 242

Carnegie, Dale: background of, 4–5, 55, 241, 244; on criticizing, 256; How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, 56, 78, 222; How to Win Friends and Influence People, 3, 5–6, 12, 21, 33–34, 37, 41, 42, 56, 58, 66, 68, 74, 107–8, 125, 127, 222, 231–32, 233, 241, 248; Japan and, 78; McLuhan on, 107–8; novel by, 4–5, 262n19; paperback publishing and, 22–23

Carroll, James, 290n101

Cederström, Carl, and André Spicer, 258

celebrity culture, 121

Certeau, Michel de, 36, 61, 156, 171

character: Bennett vs. Woolf on, 133, 135; James on, 135; Smiles on, 47–48, 64, 135

Chee, Alexander, 231

Chester, Susan, 185–88, 191, 193

China, 36, 44, 69; Aw and, 71–77; Smiles’s influence in, 37, 66–68

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 9, 25

Clarkson, Adrienne, 191

Claxton, Timothy, 13, 46

Cocozza, Paula, 1, 211

Cohen, Claudine, 97, 98

colonialism, 41, 52, 56–57

commonplace books, 2

“common reader” disputes, 15, 146, 156–65, 294n5

compulsion. See under self-help genre

Confucianism, 13, 54, 62–63, 66, 68; Western adaptations of, 70–71

Confucius, 4, 12, 13, 165; Franklin and, 12, 69–70, 143; Pound and, 69–70, 143

Connolly, Cyril, 196

Coué, Émile, 15, 16–18, 40, 103, 110–11, 121, 131, 187, 286n55

Coulter, Philip, 116

Couser, G. Thomas, 238

Covey, Stephen, 78, 220, 245

Cowley, Malcolm, 194

Craik, John Lillie, 46

Critchley, Simon, 222

Culin, Stewart, 63, 78

Culler, Jonathan, 89

culture industry, 20, 21, 112; Adorno on, 176–77

Darnton, Robert, 2, 36

Darwin, Charles, 40, 44

Davis, Eleanor, 2, 26–28, 211, 214

“Dear Abby” column. See Van Buren, Abigail

de Botton, Alain, 25, 157, 244; Art as Therapy (with Armstrong), 244; How Proust Can Change Your Life, 19, 39, 175, 178–81, 183, 185, 251

de Man, Paul, 184, 209–10

Derrida, Jacques, 165, 185

determinism, 94, 132, 142, 208, 236, 252

Dewey, John, 183, 187

Díaz, Junot, 229–30, 232, 235

Dickens, Charles, 46–47

Dix, Dorothy, 41, 303n37

DIY (do-it-yourself) culture, 83, 85, 91–93, 96, 100

Dobbins, Gregory, 204

Dolby, Sandra, 242, 265n56

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 60

drugs and self-improvement, 140, 292n144

Du Bois, W. E. B., 32

Duffy, Charles Gavan, 156, 158–65

dystopian fiction, 206–7

Eastman, Max, 171, 194

Ehrenreich, Barbara, 32

Eliot, George, 46–47

Eliot, T. S., 122, 123–24

Eliot, Vivienne, 122

Elliot, Charles, 182

Ellis, Havelock, 188–90

Ellmann, Richard, 165

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 13, 46, 63, 64, 70, 202

Epictetus, 9, 139–40, 224–26

Even-Zohar, Itamar, 150, 296n24

Fairfax, Beatrice, 186, 218–19, 224, 303n37

fascism and totalitarianism, 32, 138, 187, 304n48

Felski, Rita, 29, 83, 151, 247, 252

feminism and self-help, 30–31

Fenner, John and Audrey, 35

Ferguson, Frances, 83

Ferriss, Timothy, 20, 21, 94, 200–202, 205, 225

50 Cent and Robert Greene, 235

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 120, 229

Flaubert, Gustave, 19, 26, 29, 47, 135; Bouvard and Pécuchet, 38, 82–106, 119, 254; Dictionary of Clichés, 88, 100–106, 181, 213, 229, 283n65; Madame Bovary, 83, 87–90, 96, 102, 104–5, 151, 213; Sentimental Education, 89, 96; “A Simple Heart,” 98

Fleissner, Jennifer, 20

Fletcher, Horace, 15

Flower, Sydney, 112–13

Ford, Ford Madox, 49

Forrest Gump (film), 209

Foucault, Michel, 2, 30, 37, 108, 128, 177, 228, 232, 252–53, 255

Franklin, Benjamin, 11, 46, 63, 69–70, 74, 143, 206, 232, 278n119, 302n37

Freud, Sigmund, 17–18, 40, 41, 131, 177

Fry, Roger, 16, 121, 286n55

genre fiction, 34, 237–38

Gérando, Joseph-Marie de, 46

Gilbert, Elizabeth, 23

Giroux, Henry A., 31, 234, 243

Gladwell, Malcolm, 48, 257

Glissant, Édouard, 61

globalization, 42, 212

Glouberman, Misha, 216

Goldman, Jonathan, 121

Goldstone, Andrew, 254

Goodlad, Lauren, 48, 80

Gray, John, 9, 33, 34, 68–69

Gudelunas, David, 190

Gurdjieff, George, 15, 121–24; modernists on, 287n69

Haddock, Frank Channing, 125, 129

Hadot, Pierre, 217, 316n39

Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel, 18, 32, 257

Hamid, Moshin, 2, 25, 26, 28–29, 34, 39, 72, 211, 212–13, 214, 217–18, 223, 226–27, 228–29, 232

Harrison, Carol, 87, 88, 94–95

Harrison, J. F. C., 82

Hartman, Geoffrey, 124

Havrilesky, Heather, 1

Hax, Carolyn, 197–98

Hayes, Terrance, 2, 32, 234, 236

Hayot, Eric, 66, 247

Heap, Jane, 122–23

Heffernan, Laura, and Rachel Buurma, 253

Hemingway, Ernest, 4, 20, 176, 216, 217

Henry A. Sumner & Company, 24

Heti, Sheila, 2, 39, 211, 213–18, 221–22, 228, 238

Hindu philosophy, 15, 16

Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 30

Hoffman, Werner, 257

Holden, Jonathan, 105

Holyoake, G. J., 13, 46

Homer, 173, 193, 248; in Ulysses, 145, 152, 156

Houston, Pam, 105, 229

how-to fictions, 1–2, 25, 26–29, 44, 104–6, 211–18, 221–22, 223, 229–33

Hubbard, L. Ron, 115

Hughley, D. L., and Doug Moe, 236–37

Hulme, Kathryn, 122, 124

Hunter, Jefferson, 147

Hunter, John, 47, 77

Huxley, Aldous, 120–21

hypnotism and autosuggestion, 16, 111

individualism, 12, 64, 66, 70, 79, 141

intentional fallacy, 178, 179

immigration, 230–31; 303n37

instrumentalism, 15, 104, 213, 238, 254; Adorno and, 175, 177, 199; Beckett and, 206; Flaubert and, 83, 85, 96, 98, 102; Joyce and, 162, 167; Woolf and, 136

Irish Homestead, 157

James, Henry, 15, 26; The Golden Bowl, 126; “The Jolly Corner,” 38, 125–26, 128–32, 140, 213; on Stoicism, 225–26; Wharton and, 123, 125

James, William, 3, 41, 121, 125–28, 133, 135, 135, 137, 244, 288n74; The Energies of Men, 127, 288n81; Habit, 129; The Varieties of Religious Experience, 129, 140

Japan, 2, 15, 32, 43, 61–68; self-help comic books in, 78; Smiles’s reception in, 13, 37, 42, 45, 54, 62–66, 78, 116, 277n102

Jin Shengtan, 67, 69

Joceline, Elizabeth, 9

Johnson, Spencer, 69

Jones, William Powell, 147

Joyce, James, 4, 19, 122–24, 135, 143; Beckett on, 202; Dubliners, 166–67; Finnegans Wake, 60, 160, 166, 169–70, 172, 173, 177–78, 184; “ideal” reader of, 150, 156, 295–96nn22–23; O’Brien and, 110, 119; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 153–54; Ulysses, 20, 24, 38–39, 45, 110, 116, 132, 141, 145–73, 175, 176, 182

Kafka, Franz, 19, 20, 176, 183, 248

Kant, Immanuel, 103–4, 148

Kellman, Steven, 146

Kenner, Hugh, 118, 225

Kenney, Edwin J., 139

Kenney, Jeffrey T., 37, 42

Kerouac, Jack, 143, 294n159

Kershner, Brandon, 151

Kiberd, Declan, 145–47, 157, 164, 173, 175, 202

Kĩmani Mũnyaka, 56

Kingsley, Charles, 201

Kinmonth, Earl, 62, 64

Kitcher, Philip, 147

Knight, Sarah, 220, 222

Kockum, Keiko, 65, 277n102

Kogan, Rick, 190–91

Kondo, Marie, 79, 109

Kosinski, Jerzy, 209

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 188–90

Landers, Ann (Eppie Lederer), 39, 176, 184, 190–92, 194–97, 304n64

Lasch, Christopher, 30, 217

Lawrence, D. H., 70, 138, 278n119

Lears, T. J. Jackson, 30, 139, 186

Leavis, F. R., 139, 254, 292n135

Lefevre, André, 150

Lewis, Pericles, 92, 121

Lewis, Sinclair, 4, 122

Lewis, Wyndham, 124, 142, 143, 183, 287n69

liberalism and self-help, 13, 78–80

Lichterman, Paul, 42–43, 54

Lin Yutang, 3, 41, 66–68, 69, 278n125

literary criticism and self-help, 248–56

literary fiction: moral lessons in, 2, 7, 26, 39, 143–44, 146–48, 154, 172, 209, 253–54; self-help ads in, 24; self-help citations of, 2, 3, 14, 37, 41, 42, 144, 202; self-help influences on, 1–2, 15, 19, 24, 28, 39, 44, 46, 53, 61, 72, 176–210, 212, 229; self-help readings of, 19–21, 25, 52–53, 201–2; suspicions about, 14–15, 26, 52, 74, 221. See also how-to fictions; wisdom literature

Louandré, Charles, 86

Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 124

MacLelland, Bruce, 129

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 155, 161

Mangan, James Clarence, 160

Mansfield, Katherine, 16, 121, 122

Manson, Mark, 220–22, 223, 226–27

Marche, Stephen, 222

Marcus Aurelius, 133, 139–40, 225

Marden, Orison Swett, 55, 128

Martin, Jay, 185–86

Marx, Karl, 50, 92, 93–94

Matsudaira Sadanobu, 66

Matthews, P. J., 157, 159

Maupassant, Guy de, 97

McCarthy, Patrick A., 155

McGee, Micki, 30, 32, 90, 128, 243

McGraw, Phillip C. (Dr. Phil), 218, 224

McGuffey Readers, 208

McKeon, Michael, 172

McLuhan, Marshall, 107–8

Mehta, Uday Singh, 78

Melville, Herman, 110

memento mori and ars moriendi traditions, 226–28

memoirs, appeal of, 238

Menninger, Karl, 189

“mental discipline, 181–83

middlebrow tastes, 22–23, 137

Mill, John Stuart, 41, 63

Millstein, Gilbert, 143

Mitchel, John, 203, 204

modernism, 4, 19–22, 39, 119–25, 141–44, 183–84; autonomy and, 15, 20, 83, 97–98, 175, 213, 254; Bennett-Woolf feud over, 133, 135–40; common reader and, 146, 157, 171–73; critiques of, 119–21; didactic aversion of, 209–10; difficulty and, 20, 122, 146, 171, 181–83; experimentation and, 21, 61, 83, 92; “great divide” between mass culture and, 149, 295n19; mundane in, 49, 142–43; Onitsha pamphlets and, 60–61, 276n84; Trilling on, 138; Wharton’s aversion to, 119–20, 121–23, 143

modernity, 8, 32, 42, 48, 209, 217, 228

Montaigne, Michel de, 20

Moore, Lorrie, 104–6, 229–30, 232

Moretti, Franco, 185

Mulford, Prentice, 131, 141

Musil, Robert, 114, 144

mutual improvement societies, 81–82, 83, 86, 242; French form of, 86–89, 94–96

Myerson, Abraham, 140, 292n144

Nakamura Masanao, 62–65, 69

Narcross, John C., 255

“negative visualization,” 109, 117, 119, 144

Nehring, Daniel, et al., 53–54, 68

Neville, Patricia, 42, 77, 258, 263n28

New Criticism, 22, 104, 143, 150, 180, 251–52, 254

Newell, Stephanie, 52, 56

New Nancy School, 16

New Thought, 16–18, 35, 55, 121, 126–28, 131–32

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 56

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 229

Nigeria, 37, 43, 55–58; Onitsha Market pamphlets in, 32, 40, 57–61, 213, 215, 276nn84–85

Nnadozie, Joseph O., 60

Norberg, Jakob, 108, 181

North, Joseph, 251, 253–54

novels. See literature

Nussbaum, Martha, 148

O’Brien, Flann, 19, 110–19; The Hard Life, 110–11, 113–14, 119; The Third Policeman, 38, 110, 114–19

O’Connell, Helen, 163, 164

Ogali, Ogali A., 58, 60

Olisah, Okenwa, 57–58, 59, 60

Orientalism, 70, 73, 278n125

Ornatowski, Gregory, 71

Parks, Acacia, 242–43

Parnell, Charles, 166–68

Peale, Norman Vincent, 22, 32, 222

Perelman, S. J., 185, 193

“personal inventory-taking,” 223–24, 226

Phelan, James, 105–6

Posner, Richard, 148

Pound, Ezra, 28, 61, 104; ABC of Reading, 15, 183; Confucius and, 69–70, 143; on Gurdjieff, 124, 287n69; “How to Read,” 213

praemeditatio malorum practice, 116

Protestant ethic, 71, 135, 205, 22

Proust, Marcel, 9, 19, 141, 156, 178; Adorno and, 39, 175, 176, 178–81, 183, 251; de Botton and, 19, 39, 175, 178–81, 183, 185, 251

psychoanalysis, 17–18

Qur’an, 37, 45, 66

rags-to-riches stories, 51, 55. See also Alger, Horatio; upward mobility

Rainey, Lawrence, 165

reading practices, 2–3, 7, 20, 33, 45, 242; “bad readers,” 185; efferent reading, 36, 43, 271n10; in Flaubert, 83, 85, 88; in Joyce, 39, 149–56; medieval terms for, 148; reappraisals of, 256; Woolf on, 15, 136; Yeats on, 158

“reality hunger”/“practicality hunger,” 222–23, 237–38

Reynolds, Quentin, 186

Richards, I. A., 249–51, 253, 254

Richardson, Brian, 105

Robbins, Tony, 42, 257

Robinson, William, 14, 26, 219, 221

Rope Group, 122–24, 287n58

Rose, Jonathan, 49–50

Rosenblatt, Louise, 36

Ryan, William Patrick, 159

Salerno, Steve, 32, 90–91, 255

Sandow, Eugen, 150, 151–53

Sarruf, Ya’qub, 50–51

Savage, Dan, 197–98

School of Life, 25, 244

Schreier, Benjamin, 222

Schucman, Helen, 242

second-person voice, 104–6, 212, 214, 227–28, 230–35

Seaver, Richard, 200

Sedgwick, Eve, 131, 253

Segall, Jeffrey, 150

Segno, Victor, 5–6, 141, 293n146, 294n159

self-cultivation, 33, 65, 66, 71, 78, 143–44, 252, 254, 256

self-help genre: attacks on, 22–23, 30, 32, 41, 55, 74, 109, 177; compulsion in, 20, 24–25, 26, 83; contemporary rewrites of, 220–23; cultural literacy and, 42; derivativeness of, 3–4, 7, 143; empirical status of, 255, 258; functions of, 3–4, 7–8, 13–14, 33–34, 41–42, 238–39, 258; “getting real” imperative in, 218–20, 224; globalization of, 2, 13, 32, 37, 42–44, 50–72; history of, 1–3, 5–24, 46, 85–86; “joke” of, 28–29, 192–94, 212, 236, 257–58; lists in, 45–46; marketing of, 24–25; media diversity of, 3, 76–78, 242–43; presentism (ahistoricism) in, 108, 144, 152, 216–18, 228, 244; profanity in, 220–21; psychoanalysis and, 18; political unrest and, 211; quotations in, 2, 3, 14, 37, 41, 58, 60, 255; propaganda and, 187; race and, 31-32, 52-52, 55-61, 229-231, 233-237; scholarship and, 34–36; social class and, 22, 84, 86, 89, 122, 138, 157, 158; titles in, 176. See also under literary fiction

self-help movement in Ireland, 157, 163, 203–4

self-management, 102, 133, 223; Foucault on, 252–53

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 25, 224

Shakespeare, William, 20, 22, 39, 41, 60, 116, 216; Japan and, 65, 217; Joyce and, 116, 147, 150–51, 155

Shibusawa Eiichi, 66

Shields, David, 222–23

Shinker, William, 24, 34

Siebers, Tobin, 124–25

Simonds, Wendy, 2, 39, 61, 238, 258

Sloterdijk, Peter, 108–9

Smiles, Samuel: background of, 48–49, 81–82, 84, 86, 280n16; on character, 47–48, 64, 135; on education, 241–42; ethos of, 47–47, 222; influences on, 46; Heti on, 214–15; lists in, 45–46, 84; Naipaul and, 53, 204, 211–12; popularity and influence of, 13–14, 37, 40, 44–55, 62–65, 68, 83, 151, 277n102; quotations in, 14, 41, 255; socialism in, 49; warnings against novels in, 14, 26, 52–53, 74, 219

sociétés savantes. See mutual improvement societies

Speedy Eric (pseudonym), 60

Squillace, Robert, 133

Starker, Steven, 12, 130

Stein, Gertrude, 4, 15, 28, 61, 104, 213

Stoicism, 63, 116, 118–19, 217, 223–25, 232

Strayed, Cheryl (aka Dear Sugar), 23, 197–98

sustainability, 108–9, 142

Swedenborgism, 16, 289n98

Synge, John Millington, 163

Taylor, Verta, 30–31

“thin culture,” 42–43, 54

Thomas, David Wayne, 80, 252

Thometz, Kurt, 60–61

Thorndyke, E. L., 183

Thoreau, Henry David, 70

Thurston, Baratunde, 32, 234, 235–36, 237

Tolstoy, Leo, 115, 165

Transcendentalism, 16, 46, 63, 70

translation, 64–65, 68–70, 72, 210

Trendafilov, Vladimir, 46

Trilling, Lionel, 138, 143, 210

Troward, Thomas, 131

Trump, Donald, 32, 211

universities and self-help movement, 241–48, 255, 256–57

upward mobility, 7, 33, 45–46, 144, 231, 234, 249

Uramoto, Yuka, 78, 79

Van Buren, Abigail (Dear Abby), 39, 176, 184–85, 192–94, 218, 219

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 216

Venturi, Robert, 180–81

Veysey, Laurence, 244

Victorian era: bildungsromans of, 46; values of, 47–48, 119, 213, 229

Walsh, Richard, 67, 69

Wampole, Christy, 222

Warhol, Andy, 60–61

Washington, Booker T., 74, 234

Wattles, Wallace, 15

Weinstein, Arnold, 147, 157, 172–73

Weinstein, Philip, 131, 237

Weir, David, 69–70

Wells, H. G., 20, 47, 110, 113–14

West, Nathanael, 19, 32; A Cool Million, 110, 187, 304n48; The Day of the Locust, 194; Miss Lonelyhearts, 29, 39, 176, 184–97, 213, 279n138, 303n42

Wharton, Edith, 19, 26; Twilight Sleep, 38, 119–23, 177, 187

Wicke, Jennifer, 150

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 22

Williams, Raymond, 21

wisdom literature, 4, 33, 66, 165, 214; Ulysses as, 145, 166, 171

Wood, Henry, 129–30

Wood, James, 213, 217

Woolf, Virginia, 19, 20, 26, 104, 132, 175, 176, 187, 253, 254, 291n125; Bennett and, 22, 133, 135–40; on Coué, 286n55; “How Should One Read a Book?,” 15, 136, 213; on middlebrows, 22; Mrs. Dalloway, 25, 38, 135, 136–38, 140, 141; Wharton and, 123