Flying Houses has never been perfect. From the very first day it emerged and infinitesimally impacted the marketplace of ideas that was the internet on April 1, 2008, flaws have abounded. I have been criticized as a terrible writer, and I acknowledge that much of the content here is, in fact, terrible (see the review of Vampire Weekend's debut album, random shilling for Merge Records, petty concert reviews that I still kind of like, random opening day coverage, second draft posts, reviews of extremely obscure one-off zines, posts inspiring "Christ on wood" anonymous comments, all of those exasperating law school columns, transcripts of unemployment benefits hearings, misbegotten hate-reads, self-congratulatory stuff in general, begging for shout-out fails, story-fails, and most recently, outrageously slow reading).
Over the past half-decade or so, there is an increasing suggestion in the culture that we should be kinder to ourselves, practice sufficient self-care, and treat ourselves more often. I have often pushed back against this notion, and I have said people should be harder on themselves and push themselves to do better and live up to the standards that I set for myself. After reading The Perfection Trap, let's just say I've been convinced that this particular attitude of mine is part of the problem. Now, I know: we are all good enough just as we are, and trying to force other people to strive is counterproductive. We are all the masters of our own destinies and the authors of our own stories and we are all gloriously complex and messy and flawed and imperfect and beautiful human beings.
***
I first became aware of The Perfection Trap after reading a review of it in The Wall Street Journal. That is a notoriously conservative outlet, but readers of it know, while the op-eds and the comments on items are abrasively partisan, the actual journalism, arts criticism, and "lifestyle stories" appear to diverge (rebel?) from such viewpoints. Oh, to be sure, the reviews panning Killers of the Flower Moon and Barbie waded into Anti-Woke territory, but alongside those, you have a kind and thoughtful celebration of Mitski's recent album.
The review of this book struck me because I saw myself in it. I too, struggled with the interview question, "What is your greatest weakness?" What an annoying question! (Only "What kind of animal would you be?" is worse.) The best answer, most seem to acknowledge, is "I am a perfectionist." Yet that is a stock answer that they hear all the time, so it's a sign you lack the confidence to say something more honest and meaningful. But who could fault you for that? It's a job interview. You want to be seen as the perfect candidate.
My greatest weakness, now? Protesting too much. Not actual protesting--I could just be more concise. I actively choose to provide too much information, and I have grown more sensitive to context and the appetites and attention-spans of various audiences. But I still wish I was more concise and this is becoming a new guiding principle for me, one I will adopt in 2024 ;)
It's a good, succinct review, and it ends like this:
"'The Perfection Trap' is a strange and imperfect book. It's not every day that someone in his early 30s who has worked as a sports psychologist takes on the entire global economy. The charts in it are abysmal, like PowerPoint slides that escaped an institutional bureaucracy. The author's injunction to accept yourself in all your unique and imperfect glory is too pat. Perfectionism is too deeplyembodied (sic) in our lives. And apart from political action, he offers no clear path forward. But maybe those things aren't his job. As an explanation of how destructive illusion of perfectionism arises and as a critique of the economy that creates it, this is an important book [emphasis, mine]. One day, Mr. Curran hopes, we may rediscover the truth of the old Italian saying: 'Enough is plenty.'"
***
Kudos to WSJ for publishing the line, "this is an important book," when the book says this:
"Certainly, the conservatives are primarily responsible for this rear-guard action [meeting brave, young environmentalists with "round-the-clock doorstepping, after-dark dumpster diving, and hysterical, off-the-chain screeching in terror until they either stop fighting or are removed from public view completely," i.e. comments on AOC or Greta tweets]. With their allegiance to the rich and powerful, and ever-swelling financial clout, they can use the disproportionate control they have over mainstream channels of communication to frame the terms of debate, shut out 'progressive' voices, and move politics to the right, and further to the right, and even further to the right.
"But it's time we recognize that our current situation represents a failure of the establishment liberals, too. Because most of them, it's sad to say, are complicit in the policing of what's acceptable economics under the surreptitious guise of 'civility,' 'grown-up politics,' and 'compromise.' Which is arguably worse than conservative screeching, because these sensible, Ivy League suits have actually read the reports. They've taken the terrifying projections at face value. And they've been told in no uncertain terms by extremely smart and well-educated scientists--people they like and respect--that transition to an economy prioritizing the conservation of existing resources over indefinite expansion will be essential if we're to avoid global temperatures breaching a no-way-back inflection point.
"Even so, they won't listen. Why? Because in an economy, political climate, and mediascape contaminated to the core by money, that's hostile to anything but the most tepid of window-dressing reforms, and that swiftly, and often viciously, excommunicates those asking difficult questions, it's just easier, isn't it, to pull the blinds shut, and hope against hope that if the Adults in the Room can't see the giant meteor approaching, then surely it won't come hurtling our way after all. Left or right, Labour or Conservative, Democrat or Republican; when it comes to the economy, it's the same machine. Your choice come polling day is simply what voltage you'd prefer to operate at." (235-236)
***
Yes, Mr. Curran has a vested interest in saying the world won't listen, because, secretly, this book is an imperfect love letter to the Smiths and Morrissey.
Heaven knows we are miserable now that everyone thinks we should try to make ourselves perfect. Some perfectionists are bigger than others, and perfectionism begins at home, and what she posted is another way of saying I smoke because I'm hoping for an early death, because social media makes me want to kill myself. Both Morrissey and Curran, it seems, share humble origins, and Morrissey's performative depression appears to have an antecedent in the stereotypes hurled at Generation Z (which this critic has been rather guilty of, rather often, in the past). (And we don't talk about Morrissey post-2018 or so.)
Accept yourself, he says, because everyone wants something they can't have, and what we already have is more than enough (at least, most of us do, from a certain angle). But you just haven't earned it yet, baby, and maybe you never will, when the "reward point" is necessarily not fixed--unless reaching the end of this book counts.
Because I wanted to give this a tepid 3-star review, and the stunning Part Four epilogue/postscript moved it up to 4. It doesn't get 5 because it's imperfect, and it celebrates this. Not every single chapter references a song by the Smiths or the Moz. Curran reveals his vulnerabilities, opens up to confess one of his greatest humiliations and the attendant panic attacks it spurred. Sometimes the book has a very clinical tone, and other times it flirts with totally "unprofessional" prose, and I love that. It wouldn't be right to give this book 5 stars, or to call it one of the Best Books--it's enough to say, this book is important, and really, everyone should read it. And that's not something I say about most books.
I wanted to give it a tepid 3-star review because, to be honest, I grew a little bored with it, say, between pages 150-200. Curran is preaching to the choir, and all of us already get it: this crazy economic machine is destroying lives and ravaging our mental health and there is no way to stop it.
The boldest directives he offers are to experiment with a 4-day workweek, experiment with job-sharing (which I still don't functionally understand--we work with a partner and take 50% of our old salary?) and institute basic income--the boldest of liberal fantasies. That WSJ calls this book important is a reminder that miracles can happen. AOC and Ted Cruz can agree that Robin Hood and Citadel are more manipulative and nefarious than the retail investors that squeezed the hedge funds, and that such market-makers are bad actors that need to be punished and regulated. Few things in this life have made me happier than witnessing that moment.
***
Curran squints into the light that never goes out: relentless striving imposed on us from the moment we exit the womb. At certain stretches, he leans on "harmful social media advertising cliches," but the rhetoric is anything but empty. One example:
"Jean Twenge thinks this link between social media and mental distress is mostly due to smartphones. She makes her case on the back of many data sets, including her own, which show that youth depression and suicide began skyrocketing around 2008. Incidentally, 2008 was also the year socially prescribed perfectionism skyrocketed, too. And when you add these trends to the release of Apple's first iPhone in 2007, there is indeed a compelling correlation.
"That correlation certainly passes a few smell tests. After all, smartphones give us absolutely no respite from the noise of social media. They link us up all day, every day, and penetrate social comparison into parts of life that were hitherto untouched. With them by our sides, apps like Instagram and TikTok are right there first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We idly scroll through profiles on the sofa and in the bath, during the commute and at the gym. In what used to be meditative moments, where we could breathe and think, now we swipe and compare.
"Smartphone made social media ubiquitous, and that ubiquity, according to Twenge, is what makes it so damaging." (135-136)
The zombification of the masses, basically, is the cliche, but it kind of is the single most depressing feature of our era. And Curran doesn't just keep repeating it. Because of his offering, at the end, a way out (kind of--a way out of perfectionism, not a way out of phone addiction), the entire book lifts itself into a different category. That WSJ review referred to it as a "manifesto," and indeed, it becomes just that, and a powerful one. He converted me into an anti-perfectionist, and for the time being at least, I feel encouraged to think differently about how to best accomplish various tasks (not "overdoing" it, considering the idea that we can sometimes make things worse by trying to make them more perfect) and better manage personal relationships (or at least try).
***
Finally, this book is, for lack of a better term, cute. Or maybe precious. Regardless, when Curran discusses perfectionism in the context of educational meritocracy, he wears his class-based insecurities on his sleeve, so to speak, and while this is not traditional in a pseudo-academic volume, it's part of what makes the book surprising and engaging. These aren't purely theoretical concepts; "experience knows it is not so" (or rather, here, knows it is so).
I say cute for two reasons and the first is in his portrait of Karen Horney, whom he identifies as the first sociologist/psychologist to identify the prevalence of socially-prescribed perfectionism in early 20th century. The way he talks about Karen Horney is the way I sometimes think about great writers of the past that are no longer with us, and so I could appreciate that mix of admiration and consolation that he conveys:
"Our perfect self, Horney says, is a complete armory of should: 'should be able to endure everything, to understand everything, to like everybody, to be always productive--to mention only a few inner dictates.' And these dictates are inescapable, she calls them 'the tyrannies of should.'
"Reading these words, I realized: this woman was a genius. Because that's it, isn't it? I should be cooler, fitter, stronger, happier [bands influenced by the Smiths do not escape easter-egging], more productive, not eating too much, [adding 'regular exercise at the gym, three days a week' would be too much] making time to rest, seeing friends, drinking in moderation, hustling and grinding and saying yes to every possible opportunity, practicing self-care, cooking up a storm, raising smart and respectful kids. These are urgent (and often contradictory) directives that we regularly fire at ourselves. And society fires them, too. They're scattered all over the gallery walls of Instagram, dripping from episodes of the Kardashians, and plastered across posters and billboards. There's no other action we can take to bring these pressures into some sort of unity than to chase perfection. For if not by perfection, then how else will we be someone who society recognizes and accepts?" (105)
"Karen Horney died of cancer at the age of sixty-seven, having lived a tumultuous, courageous and at times troubled life. Despite this, she never wavered from searching for the truth about the neuroses that afflicted her and her patients, and the cultural conditioning that gave rise to them. If you feel seen by Karen Horney, then you, like me, will find in her a close friend. Just like friends are supposed to do, she'll help you feel less confused about your perfectionism, less alone with your feelings of never enough. Her lesson for us is that none of this is our doing. The culprit is culture." (106)
Later, Curran reflects on an ex-girlfriend's Facebook profile to highlight the tyranny of performative perfectionism, and lands here:
"Whenever I visit Sarah's profile, and the great many like it, I think about Essena O'Neill [a former IG influencer who later documented her mental health struggles on Twitter]. And then I remember Karen Horney. I wonder what she would have made of social media. Because no doubt about it, she'd have had plenty to say. I imagine her sitting low in her favorite chair, smoking a cigarette, nursing a large glass of red wine, and cracking a wry smile. You could draw a straight line from her observations of cultural contradictions in the 1950s to the present moment. It's as if she could see social media coming. As if, somehow, she knew this was how a nascent, aggressive consumer culture would eventually shake itself out." (143)
I wanted to excerpt another passage about Helicopter Parents and the management of educational meritocracy in Norway and Finland, because it demonstrates the literary flourish that Curran sometimes deploys, and shines a light on other countries and societies that "get it," but this review is becoming too imperfect. Suffice to end near the end, with one short paragraph that made me go "awwww":
"Democracy is what keeps me from losing all faith in the possibility of change. And on a crystal-clear day, if I creak my neck out really far, if I squint as hard as I possibly can into the distance, I can just about make out what looks like a path. And on that path, I can see a long queue of smart, thoughtful, compassionate, generous, and thoroughly decent human beings just like yourself, walking toward the last corridor of hope. Hope that we can live in a place where we don't have to feel insecure. Where we don't need to be perfect just to get by. Where abundance is enjoyed, by everyone. Where enough really is plenty.
For your presence on this earth, and for reading this book, I am eternally grateful." (237-238)
From anyone else, this might sound disingenuous. But coming from Curran, after we have gone on this journey with him, there is no reason to doubt he means it. And to me, that is among the most beautiful of sentiments.
Grade: A-
