Opinion | Noah Berlatsky: Self-help books get a lot of hate — but there's more to the genre than literary snobs allow. - NBCNewsTHINK
In her book, Blum points out that self-help has long embraced literature, even if literature has not always reciprocated. Scottish author Samuel Smiles' 1859 book “Self-Help,” which Blum says named the genre, featured biographical sketches of working-class men who succeeded despite adversity. But it also included collections of aphorisms and inspiring quotations drawn from literature.
“Self-Help” was a global best-seller, and, Blum writes, was particularly beloved in 19th century Meiji Japan, where its rhetoric of self-improvement was used to promote nationalist self-reliance against Western incursion. Authors who Smiles quoted extensively, like Shakespeare and Benjamin Franklin, were quickly translated into Japanese. Authors he didn't quote were largely ignored.
Smiles' practice of repackaging literary nuggets as inspirational quotations continues to this day. Just as the Japanese learned about Shakespeare through self-help literature, so do most Americans learn about Confucius and Zen principles through self-help books. Even James Joyce, the iconic impenetrable modernist, has been reappropriated forSelf-help may rely on high-brow literature.
Along the same lines, Blum told me that many contemporary novelists are"using self-help as a frame for their stories, and earnestly engaging with the genre and thinking about why it appeals to so many people." Blum singles out
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