The Secret, Rhonda Byrne

Martin Sharp, Explosion

(November 15) Reviewing this book takes care of reviewing The Success Principles, because it’s the same book, just clothed differently. The premise in both is that we all have complete power over the events that occur in our lives and can acquire all the wealth and property we desire by locating that part of ourselves that is infinite and one with the universe and using it to attract goods and experiences. (And also by cultivating an attitude of gratitude, and by running mental tapes of the things and accomplishments you want in your head constantly (i.e., meditating).)

It’s certainly true that identifying this principle and writing a book about it will bring you success -- there are dozens of versions of them out there, all best-sellers, and I believe The Secret was an Oprah book. Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles is the professional businessman’s version of it; Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want is the professional businesswoman and homemaker’s version; Sonia Choquette’s Your Heart's Desire is for the psychic New Age hippie crowd; Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success is the mystical, ancient-wisdom, more-overtly-about-meditating version; James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy is for the adventure-fiction lover; etc.

Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret must be the busy young woman’s version, since it’s short, cuts to the chase, and provides quick, message-board-style testimonials to back up the “insights.” I believe she acknowledges William Walker Atkinson, but she saves you the trouble of wading through his 19th-century style.

It’s fun to read the forums about The Secret -- people are either passionately supportive or passionately contemptuous of it, and the vast majority are the latter. I think there is something repellent about the theory in this book and in all those others, something mercenary that makes people reject it without even wanting to try it. It’s counter-intuitive to the Protestant Work Ethic mentality of the western world, for sure.

But, true story: The moment I finished The Secret, I used the principle to try to get a parking spot at the library since I had to get the book back there within the next 15 minutes. One of the testimonial-providers in The Secret said he used it all the time to get parking spaces close to where he wanted to be, and nine times out of 10 got them. So I drove to the library visualizing a parking spot directly in front of the doors, and I believed I would get it. When I turned onto the library’s block, I laughed to myself, because every single spot on both sides of the street was taken up (which was completely bizarre at 8:50 p.m. on a Wednesday night, too). I rolled up slowly in front of the library with the intention of turning into a driveway and looping back around. At the exact moment I arrived in front, a car pulled out just ahead of me, leaving the most plum parking spot anyone could desire wide open.

Run, Ann Patchett

Faith Ringgold, The American People Series #20: Die

(November 1) I looked hopefully to Run to deliver some of that Bel Canto magic since it's the first book Patchett's written since Bel Canto, but, alas, that was not quite to be. It's really likable, though. It starts out very promisingly indeed with a family story about a statue that goes back several generations and into "the old country" in a very charming magic-realism way... but then it turns into a story of family ties in a strangely interracial family that involves adoptions and a person who doesn't know who her real parents are: in other words, a blend of Taft and The Patron Saint of Liars. Again, as in Taft, the interracialism seems to be merely decorative and, again, as in The Patron Saint of Liars, the girl doesn’t seem to be affected either way by not knowing the identity of her real mother/father. Still, Patchett creates some really interesting patterns within the pieced-together family in this book. Odd touch: Run is sprinkled with passages from famous U.S. political speeches, justified as a “game” developed by the current generation of brothers. It undermines the willing suspension of disbelief every time it crops up.