by Jane Gassner of ByJane
Freud or Jung or one of those guys said something like this: it is the psychic life journey of the son to ultimately best his father. Someone else pointed out, perhaps quoting whoever, that the sons of famous men don’t do too well. They tend not to quite measure up. Their promise is broken or, at the least, misplaced. And if they toil in the same row, their harvest isn’t nearly as fruitful. As examples, I give you Scott Newman, son of Paul. Colin Hanks, son of Tom. And all the sons of the Bobby and Teddy Kennedy.
Michael Gates Gill is the son of Brendan Gill, the vaunted man of letters who is forever identified with The New Yorker, the literate magazine for which he wrote. Michael Gates Gill is just publishing his second book, but the row he’s hoeing, if I may continue the metaphor, is in a different garden from his father’s. Michael Gill’s genre is the self-help book, the inspirational, the let’s share school of writing. His first book, published in 2007, was How Starbucks Saved My Life, and the subtitle says it all: “A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.” I didn’t read it, but Tom Hanks has optioned it and the film may be coming to a Cineplex near you in 2012. I have read Gill’s second book–it was sent to me to review–and it is that of which I now speak.
How to Save Your Own Life: 15 Lessons on Finding Hope in Unexpected Places is, well, it’s thin. Not just in pages–175, not including the Acknowledgments which list several pages of Gill’s Partners and Guests (capitals his) at Starbucks–but in meat as well. The fifteen lessons read like a mashup of twelve step, group therapy, and Sunday School wisdom. “Let Yourself Be helped,” that’s Chapter Four. “Let go and let God” is Chapter Ten; “Less is More…Lose All Your ‘Stuff’ and Find Freedom” is Chapter Fourteen.
Perhaps I’m not the audience for this book. I tend to like my philosophical works a bit more complicated. I prefer the paragraphs of books that I’m reading to be longer than one sentence. Moreover, I’m wary of facile generalizations and of those who wax less than eloquently over the pleasures of reverting to pre-modern life. The cynic in me wonders if Gill put this book together to satisfy his agent. There’s a reprocessed quality to it; the bits that are more fully developed are at odds with those that feel like they’ve been plucked out of the karmic stew.
However, I can imagine an audience for this book who would be both eager and approving. I can see How To Save Your Own Life on the bedside table of someone who likes to fall asleep at night with something spiritually-provocative on their mind. My imaginery audience is someone who enjoys short and pithy homilies, who finds them a shorthand key for dealing with life’s complexities. Judging by the bestseller lists in the past decades, this imaginery audience is, actually, huge, so Michael Gates Gill should do very well.
