Bibliotherapy and Paul Howse

From the Bibliotherapist’s Bookshelf: Paul Howse and Vanity Fair

Writers have a lot to tell us about the way the world works. I therefore often approach literature in a medicinal fashion. There are some people and some situations just crying out for a prescription of literature, the application of a poem, play or novel to a psychological or moral wound. Bibliotherapy has a long and noble tradition. I can think of a few people for whom I’d like to prescribe a restorative dose of literary insight. Paul Howse (and a few other Left luminaries) would, for example, benefit from a good solid reading of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. This isn’t because Thackeray was a sensitive new age guy. In fact, if there are some authors one does not want to have known, then I suspect Thackeray was one of them. Vanity Fair, however, is a wonderful book. Beautifully structured, perfectly unfolding like a dark flower from its central premise – that the world is a colourful pageant of fools and knaves,…