Shortly after getting up I checked my Twitter feed — a weakness, to be sure — and saw that Alain de Botton was Tweeting quotes about anger. Here’s one:
Angry people call poverty on themselves and ruin on their homes, denying they are angry, just as the mad deny their insanity, Seneca -De Ira
de Botton — who is @alaindebotton, if you’re curious — had recently left an angry comment on the blog of Caleb Crain, who (negatively) reviewed de Botton’s book “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” in the NY Times. “You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that,” de Botton wrote. “So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review…. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.”
Which is heated, if not nasty. And it doesn’t fit with the Alain de Botton I saw at the Getty in LA just a few weeks ago, who came across as sweet and patient. He stood for hours on a chilly patio in order to speak to every person who wanted a book signed; it was a long queue at the end of his book tour, but he never got frustrated or exasperated.
So he’s either good at fronting, or Crain really pissed him off.
I’m inclined to think the latter, and I’m glad that de Botton said what he said. Not that I hate the review, am convinced this is de Botton’s best work or am even sure that he’s right about the damage done — but I think expressing anger is OK. Don’t like the review — say something! Such reactions shouldn’t leave reviewers cowering, but get them up on their feet, shouting their opinions, their reasons, their refusals to submit!
There is some kind of play-nice mentality going around that I’m not sure I believe in. Maybe we’ve lost our ability to argue without getting personal, or the skill of expressing anger with eloquence. I think that’s why de Botton was pulling what 140-character quotes he could about anger’s place in our lives.
That said, I’m not sure that going to Nietzche on how to live is ever a good idea.
The emotions of envy, hatred and lust are life-conditioning emotions which must essentially be present in every life – Nietzsche
It’s not untrue, but it feels uneasy, unresolved. Nietzche is good for some things — he’s always thought provoking, if not infuriating — but his ego-driven, brittle intellect didn’t make him much of a life coach.
Oh do forgive me for my irrational outburst. You are very generous. I think I was over-exhausted from 2
months of continuous travel – and have come to heartily regret a momentary impulse.
I hope you won’t be disgusted by me forever. Very good wishes – and thanks for coming to the Getty.
Actually, I completely support the emotional content of the outburst — altho I do wish it had included a reasoned response, perhaps arguing that Crain had brought his own class issues to the book and had seen condescension that wasn’t there. But I’m serious when I sat I think authors should go ahead and get mad publicly if they think a review is off. And I say that as a reviewer who would inevitably get hammered someday — but we’re all human, and emotion drives our connection to books as much as intellect does. The literary world could use more of that heat, I think.