Among today’s fat cats, de Botton is an advocate of moral slimming. Himself full of beans, who can fail to enjoy his tasty diet? Never monotonous, the menu ranges through Artaud, Bierstadt (a painter, I confess, new to me) and Peter-Panic bohemians (who equate freedom with eternal immaturity), Gustave (boo to the bourgeoise) Flaubert and Joseph Gandy (beats out old Mahatma), hierarchy (had to be there!) and Hoover vacuum cleaners, Kant, Marx, Montaigne, Proust (re-bonjour, Marcel), Pullars of Perth (dry cleaners), St Teresa of Avila, Thoreau (natch), Tristan Tzara (vieux jeu qui, à mon avis, doit aller se faire foutre) to Xerxes (who wept as he surveyed the great army about to invade Greece and realised that, win or lose, they’d all be dead in 100 years) and Zurich (where trams are so smooth and reliable the city’s congestion knows no Ken).
Behind the pat phrases, de Botton’s message is memento mori (with The Death of Chatterton to illustrate the point). The recommendation to travel light — who ever needs as much luggage as we tend to pack? — reminds me of my favourite cartoon: watching a richly wreathed hearse, followed by three Brinks Matt trucks, one spectator says to another, ‘He’s taking it with him.’
De Botton knows that our lease is short and that it is folly to imagine that money can shore us against our ruin (even if the rich do live longer). He propounds something close to Heidegger’s Living-Towards-Death, with the lineaments of Christianity flung lightly round its shoulders. Here he and Jeremy Taylor (uncited author of Holy Dying) preach from the same text. What sour tongue will dare to whisper that, in a society where giving your word is only the most plausible form of perjury and Mel Gibson is the archbishop of cant, they are — as learned friends say — farting against thunder?
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.