As in a novel, there are characters and realistic settings, but these are blended in with a host of more abstract ideas. The book has attracted a particular following among those who have recently fallen in love or come out of a relationship. Another chapter mulls over the question of how essays and when to say i love you. A young british woody allen with the benefit of a classical education and you have the nameless and exquisitely love erudite. Imagine, imagine, of all impossible things, a young british woody allen with the benefit of a classical education and you have the nameless and exquisitely erudite narrator of essays in love. The book’s success has much to do with its beautifully modeled sentences, its wry humor, its unwavering deadpan respect for its reader’s intelligence.

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Francine prose in the new republic alain de botton has published five non fiction books: the architecture of happiness. In february 2003, de botton was made a chevalier de l’ordre des arts et lettres, one of france’s highest artistic honours. In november of the same year, he was awarded the prix europ en de l’essai charles veillon. In 2004, status anxiety was awarded the prize for the economics book of the year by the financial times. Cambridge educated, de botton is a frequent contributor to numerous newspapers, journals, and magazines. It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest confidently to seduce those to whom we are least attracted. Was it not the greatest honour for her to have agreed to this dinner, to have dressed so elegantly ‘is this all right?’ she’d asked in the car on the way to the restaurant, ‘it had better be, because i’m not changing a sixth time’ , let alone that she might be willing to respond kindly to some of the things that might fall if ever i recovered my tongue from my unworthy lips? 2.

It was friday night and chloe and i were seated at a corner table of les liaisons dangereuses, a french restaurant that had recently opened at the end of the fulham road. The chandeliers threw soft shadows across her face, the light green walls matched her light green eyes. And yet, as though struck dumb by the angel that faced me across the table, i lost all capacity either to think or speak and could only silently draw invisible patterns on the starched white tablecloth and take unnecessary sips of bubbled water from a large glass goblet. My sense of inferiority bred a need to take on a personality that was not my own, a seducing self that would respond to every demand and suggestion made by my exalted companion. I did not tell flagrant lies, i simply attempted to anticipate everything i believed she might want to hear. �so should we have it or not?’ ‘well, i don’t think i’ll have any,’ ventured chloe. The first course arrived, arranged on plates with the symmetry of a formal french garden.

�it looks too beautiful to touch,’ said chloe how i knew the feeling , ‘i’ve never eaten grilled scallops like this before.’ we began to eat. Chloe had been my only thought for too long, but the one thought that at this moment i could not share with her. A silence with an attractive one immediately renders it certain you are the tedious party.

Silence and clumsiness could of course be taken as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone towards whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words is paradoxically often the best proof that the right words are meant. The marquise de merteuil faults the vicomte de valmont for writing love letters that are too perfect, too logical to be the words of a true lover, whose thoughts will be disjointed and for whom the fine phrase will always elude.

Real desire lacks articulacy but how willingly i would at that moment have swapped my constipation for the vicomte’s loquacity. I had to find out more about chloe, for how could i abandon my true self unless i knew what false self to adopt? but the patience and intelligence required to fathom someone else went far beyond the capacities of my anxious, infatuated mind. I behaved like a reductive social psychologist, eager to press my companion into simple categories, unwilling to apply the care of a novelist to capturing the subtleties of human nature. With allusions to aristotle, sartre, wittgenstein, and groucho marx and moving from one historical period to another, the author has plotted an imaginative and microscopically detailed romance. And when he switches from the essay to the story of the two lovers who meet and carry out their romance before our ears, his voice takes on the very flavors of each step of the affair.

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He gives the truth of an intimate relationship from complaint to ardor with sounds all will recognize. Audiofile 2001, portland, maine copyright audiofile, portland, maine alain de botton picks up the torch, so to speak, more or less where stendhal left off. De botton’s on love reads as if stendhal had lived into the ‘90s, survived modern critical theory as he clearly has , thought it was funny as he likely would have , but retained a novelist’s sympathy for the impulse which he shared to deconstruct and to dissect in search of some higher understanding. Francine prose, the new republic the result is something like la rochefoucauld’s maxims crossed with adolphe, with jokes and against a background of luggage reclaim areas and breakfast cereal packets. Ingeniously pinpointed mundane details stop the novel from getting too abstract. It is witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights.