How Proust can change your life
by Alain De Botton · first published 1997
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The starting point of How Proust Can Change Your Life is that a great novel can be nothing less than life-transforming. This is an unusual claim: our education system, while stressing that novels are highly worthwhile, rarely investigates why this is so. How Proust Can Change Your Life takes Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time as the basis for a sustained investigation into the power and significance of literature. Proust’s novel, almost a byword for obscurity and irrelevance, emerges as an invaluable source of insight into the workings of love, society, art and the meaning of existence.
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…Fairchild, who introduced 10,000 plants to U.S. agriculture at the turn of the 20th century, most of the groceries we buy today) The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf (a biography of Alexander von Humboldt) How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
on “Ask HN: What books have you read that have changed your life?” ↗> I think it is safe to assume that Alain de Botton writes for what he feels is "most people" He also wrote "How Proust Can Change Your Life", which may or may not be for "most people"
on “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person (2016)” ↗I once picked up de Botton's "How Proust can change your Life" in an airport impulse purchase; found it disappointing. But based on others' positive reviews of his other works, I might check those out.
on “TED Talk: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success” ↗The "founder" of this is Alain de Botton. He studied philosophy and started writing books. His greatest success is "How Proust can change your life". In it he explains how to become a happier person by reading Proust for a big public. In interviews at that time (end 90's) he talked about erecting a school of happiness and he did that. The list…
on “The Book of Life” ↗There's an influencer self-help industry, and then there's the likes of Alain De Botton whose output like 'How Proust Can Change Your Life' firmly sits in the self-help arena. Important to distinguish the two imo.
on “Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?” ↗