When a 6-Foot Shelf Becomes a Tower of Psychobabble

A publishing phenomenon of our time is the cascade of books that keeps pouring out on how to manage our emotional, sexual, financial and physical lives.

I call them “how-to” books, and there is no end to them.

I am acutely aware of this outpouring because, for reasons known only to the publishing world, I receive a great many “how-to” books in the mail. Evidently it is hoped that I will mention them favorably and thus contribute to their success.

I feel guilty about receiving these books, because I almost never read one, or even sample it. I do not believe, for example, that reading a 227-page book called “The Art and Practice of Loving” will improve my love life in the least, even if it is by a Ph.D.

Mind you, these books are never about anything practical, such as how to repair your carburetor or fix a broken bicycle. They are all aimed at our psyches, and their language is psychobabble.

I find it impossible to throw a book away. I have probably 3,000 books on my shelves, and I find it hard enough to contemplate those I haven’t read and know I will never read. I haven’t had much luck trying to give away the psychobabble books, so I put them on an empty shelf that now holds at least six feet of unread books, adding to my sense of guilt.

This stream of “how-to” books might seem a phenomenon of our stressful and uneasy times, as I suggested, but in fact they have been an excrescence of the publishing world at least as far back as the 1920s. It probably began in 1929, when the best of all possible worlds came to an end.

James Thurber wrote a number of essays on the subject for the New Yorker and published a collection of them in 1935 under the title “Let Your Mind Alone.”

As Thurber noted, the progenitor of this genre may have been “the indefatigable” Prof. Walter B. Pitkin, author of “The Psychology of Happiness,” who preached that “for the first time in the career of mankind happiness is coming within the reach of millions of people.”

Evidently Prof. Pitkin’s work did not bring about this happy state of affairs, since there is still such a demand for books on the subject.

Explaining his own contribution, Thurber wrote, “I decided to write a series of articles of my own on the subject, examining what the success experts have to say and offering some ideas of my own, the basic one of which is, I think, that man will be better off if he quits monkeying with his mind and lets it alone.”

That Thurber’s advice fell on deaf ears is obvious from the plethora of “how-to” books in the stores today. Either that or people actually did take Thurber’s advice and that’s what caused the nation to sink into its present emotional muddle.

I’ll admit some of the titles are intriguing. For example, “Finding Each Other: How to Attract Your Ideal Life Mate Using Powerful Visualizations, Creative Journaling, and Personalized Rituals.”

Most of the “how-to” books have detailed subtitles to explain the promise of the main title. For example, “Hard Choices, Easy Decisions” is subtitled “A Practical, Easy-to-Use Method That Shows You How to Make the Right Choices About Family, Education, Career, Finances, Relationships and How to Take Charge of Planning Your Own Life.” All in 125 pages.

Just the other evening I had an experience that suggested to me that we tend to equivocate too much over easy choices. We were going to see the delightful comedy “Money and Friends” at the Doolittle, on Vine, and had gone across the street to have dinner at a small cafe. I went to the men’s room and found myself standing in front of two urinals, exactly alike.

For a moment I couldn’t decide which one to use. I realized how silly it was to have difficulty with such a simple choice. How often do we allow ourselves to get hung up in life on trivial dilemmas? The thing to do, I realized, is to make up one’s mind and go. I chose the urinal on the right and went.

Some of the “how-to” books are useless to me because of my age and sex. For example, one is called “Fortysomething: Claiming the Power and the Passion of Your Midlife Years.” Alas, what power and passion my middle years may have offered are beyond me now. Another is called “What to Do When He Has a Headache: Creating Renewed Desire in Your Man.” Obviously, that would not help me.

Maybe I should write a book called “Hard Choices: How to Make Up Your Mind Whether to Go Left or Right.”

By the way, my prediction for the Super Bowl: Dallas 27; Buffalo 17.