Fred's Book Club: Good Things.

Happy Wednesday, folks! And that means Fred's Book Club is back, with another humpless Humpback Writer for Hump Day.

This week we have one of the most unlikely pairings one might ever find in a self-help book, one that sounds like the beginning of a joke. What do you get when you combine a rabbi psychiatrist and the world's best-loved cartoonist?

When Do the Good Things Start? is a self-help book published originally in 1988 by rabbi and psychiatrist Abraham J. Twerski, with some illustrative cartoons from the long-running Peanuts strip. Everyone familiar with Peanuts knows that part of its great appeal was its undertone of postwar psychological ideas at play, certainly in its early years. Personal failings, individuals vs. society, imagination vs. reality, phobias, insecurity, boneless intellectualism vs. boneheaded determination, friction between personalities, cultural commentary, so many things worked through the strip through the years when it was at its best. Dr. Twerski cleverly uses some of them to illustrate points about weathering life's problems and bettering ourselves in the process.

Dr. Twerski initiated this project because he'd found Peanuts useful in his counseling career. In the introduction he relates the first time he did so, working with an alcoholic who was trying one thing after another to control his drinking, failing every time. "I remembered how Charlie Brown falls flat on his back each time he tries to kick the football at the beginning of each season. And how every year he rationalizes why this year things were going to be different and he was not going to miss the ball. Yet every year the same thing happened. Charlie Brown did not learn from his experience." This made sense to his patient, who saw his behavior now in the same way, presumably learning that the only way to win was to give up the game.

Rather than quote the book, I've scanned some pages (poorly) so you can see how it works with the cartoons. I hope neither Dr. Twerski nor the estate of Charles Schulz will give me grief, as I think this does count as a review. As you can see, the book is written in short chapters, essays really, that discuss common emotional conditions and encourage healthy responses.

I bought the book years ago because I had always enjoyed Peanuts, and I thought it might have some good advice for me. Indeed, its advice is solid, although pretty much right at the level of any self-help book.

I've read several classics in the field -- I'm OK, You're OK; The Power of Positive Thinking; Who Moved My Cheese?; The Purpose Driven Life -- usually because they were recommended to me. And they all have good advice. The problem is, we have to take it, and keep taking it. Charlie Brown gets good advice all the time, but he lacks the spirit to take it beyond a few moments. Most of us just fall back into our groove after the energy we expend climbing out of it dissipates.

None of the Peanuts characters ever really changes. Of course, they never grow up. Growing up does change us; it is a crisis in its way, and every crisis has the possibility of making us move out of our groove because we have to. But without that motive force, good advice can be all so much hot air.

Anyway, I thought I'd run with this book today because I've read some articles about advantages of life during quarantine, and some recommend taking this time to see what's really important, and to better ourselves and our relationships. So, you could do worse than read this book. And if we are shoved out of our old grooves by current events, may we all wind up in better places after it's over.