Alain de Botton

>>8913185
>What's a good book to start with?

In what sense? Books by Proust or books related to DeBotton's theories?

I only read the first book but it definitely changed the way I think about love. that stupid shit with the pastry is the most pleb part of the whole book which is i guess why plebs seize on it as some kind of big insight, the real value is in swann's relationship with odette. of course the pastry shit is a foreshadowing of the value of memory and shared experience in relationships, so it's important, but for ever pleb who got to that part and stopped, they missed the point

>>8913192
Apologies for my vague phrasing anon. I meant the guy in the subject line and whose pic is related. I've read Jean Santeuil.

>>8913185
Botton's interpretation of Proust is so fucking bad. I don't know if he's purposefully shilling this terrible interpretation of Proust or if he's just a retarded anglo but it's very bad.

Alain the Bottom

>>8913185
Get this fucking pseud off my board. Even Sam Kriss knows that Anal de Bottom a charlatan. Takes one to know one I guess.
https://samkriss.com/2013/11/12/why-does-alain-de-botton-want-us-to-kill-our-young/

He's a lying jew.

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>>8913507
OP here again. Thanks for the link.

>Despite his small nods to the idea that maybe the senseless and continual catastrophe of capitalism might not be the best way to run a planet, de Botton isn’t really interested in changing the world. He thinks people should be a little bit more reflective, he thinks he can help people cope with the stresses of the workplace and the perils of romance, he thinks everyone should have a ‘sunlit room set with honey-coloured limestone tiles’ in which to relax – and that’s basically it. No passions, no fury, no grand and wild ideas, just a dull life with a few small pleasures and a few small worries, instantly soothed. He’s standing atop a pile of corpses and suggesting that they might be arranged more pleasingly. Alain de Botton isn’t just banal, he embraces his own banality; he tries to dress vacuousness up as significance.

All true. I was looking for de Botton's detractors as well as suggestions. Seems the hack's made a living with a hand up Proust's rotting back and his own works are not worth the time. Thanks /lit/.

>>8913507
Here's my summary of that blog post
>Waaah!!! Another intellectual has the fame and influence I desperately want

Don't get me wrong De Botton is shit, but this article is 50% sour grapes

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>>8913666
Checked, nice trips. You're not wrong about the grapes, but here's another reviewer at the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/books/review/Crain-t.html

de Botton himself trashed this review on the guy's own blog.

http://www.steamthing.com/2009/06/review-of-alain-de-bottons-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work.html#comment-326

de Botton is a hack. A pop-psy fraud who dresses petty insights in ruffles and bows.

>>8913641
That green text actually made me like this psued a little bit more.

>>8913694
>de Botton is a hack. A pop-psy fraud who dresses petty insights in ruffles and bows.

I agree; any mass-produced intellectual is. De Botton makes me think of Fight Club's narrator and his 'serving size' friends. De Botton gives people serving size insight. Funny to see even wisdom being commodified.

The great thinkers of our time will be obscure or revolutionaries.