Reviews for My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony

The average rating for My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-01 00:00:00 Russell Beerling Highly Plausible I did my Ph.D. At the University of Chicago 1972-1979 and hence overlapped with Wayne Booth's years of teaching there, indeed one could say with his heyday, but never had a class with him and never met him. Nevertheless, two of his books have had a tremendous influence on me, The Rhetoric of Fiction, which I read while a graduate student, and Now Don't Try to Reason with Me, which I read slightly later. The present book is of a piece with them, in that it reflects his "rhetorological" approach to life and thought. It is a very sane, very practical, and very humane philosophy. This book is a good and worthy production in this vein. Why only four stars? Because, like many of the products of the Chicago School of (Literary) Criticism, while very balanced and full of insight, it can also be a bit plodding.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-14 00:00:00 Marcelo Nascimento This might of been an interesting book if Mencken was able to rein in his outsized ego. In one account, Mencken, a young newspaperman living in Baltimore and whose only other experience was working in his Uncle's cigar business, gets a jump on the other papers by astutely describing a naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War which has yet to take place by sheer deductive reasoning. I think to enjoy Mencken, you have to think as much of him as he did himself. And that's a tall order.