Essays in Love |
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Author:
Alain De Botton
By Chivers Audio Books
Average Customer Rating: 
List Price: $69.95
Our Price: $48.72
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Product Description
The bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life revisits his utterly charming debut book, Essays in Love.
The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-to-London flight, and by the time they’ve reached the luggage carousel he knows he is in love. He loves her chestnut hair, watery green eyes, the gap that makes her teeth Kantian and not Platonic, and her views on Heidegger’s Being and Time — but he hates her taste in shoes. What makes this book extraordinary is the depth with which the emotions involved in the relationship are analysed. Love comes under the philosophical microscope.
Plotting the course of their affair from the initial delirium of infatuation to the depths of suicidal despair, through a fit of anhedonia — defined in medical texts as a disease resulting from the terror brought on by the threat of utter happiness — and finally through the terrorist tactics employed when the beloved begins, inexplicably, to drift away, Essays in Love is filled with profound and witty observations on the pain and exhilaration of love. An entire chapter is devoted to the nuances and subtexts of an initial date, while another chapter mulls over the question of how and when to say “I love you.”
With allusions to Aristotle, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Groucho Marx, de Botton has plotted an imaginative and microscopically detailed romance.
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A Brilliant Study, 2001-11-29
This is a kind of hybrid novel/philosophical study of romantic love. The plot is, on the surface, a rather conventional one; a man and woman meet and fall in love. Most of the book, however, consists of the narrator (the male lover) reflecting on each stage of the process, from initial attraction to the despair of love's departure. What is perhaps most striking about Essays In Love is how Alain De Botton manages to combine passion and intellect. He is able to adroitly mix a scholarly, intellectual analysis with truly felt emotions. He is also extremely perceptive regarding the often perverse nature of our emotions. For example, he illustrates the tendency of someone in love to feel less highly of the loved one if he or she reciprocates the feeling. From this book, I'd guess De Botton has a background in Western philosophy, as the bulk of the references are from this field. Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and many others are quoted. Yet the book is never dry or academic; the rawness of the lovers' emotions is always there to keep our hearts as well as our minds intrigued. James Wilby, the reader, perfectly captures the ideas, feelings and nuances of the story.
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Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780754006183
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
ISBN: 0754006182
Label: Chivers Audio Books
Manufacturer: Chivers Audio Books
Number Of Items: 8
Publication Date: 2001-05
Publisher: Chivers Audio Books
Studio: Chivers Audio Books |
