Last week Alan Yentob and his marvelous crew of producers at the BBC aired an episode of the cultural program Imagine focused on the rise of self-help culture.
Yentob had been on a Panglossian (is that a word?) quest for the truth about self-help and happiness, and on the way he stopped by in New York City and interviewed me about my take on self-help culture.
Part of what I said is "Now we live in a culture of constant change and turnover . . . you not only have to be employed, but constantly employable. Not only married, but constantly marriageable. And that is the moment self-help emerges as a powerful literature."
It's a lovely summary, and I'm sure I did indeed say that, but the credit for this language rightly belongs to Jerald Wallulis who wrote a wonderful book called The New Insecurity: The End of the Standard Job and Family. When I mention this idea in Self-Help, Inc, naturally I cite Wallulis and his work, but somehow in the ebb and flow of the interview I must have forgotten to mention this intellectual debt.
Apologies to Wallulis, whose book is a veritable goldmine of ideas about the use of anxiety and cultures of self-governance as instruments of social control. And thanks to the BBC for a thought-provoking program.
