> I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing. I've read it before and it's not about manipulating people unless you consider being a genuinely sincere person to be manipulative in some way. It's a good book, if a little outdated, and, if I could summarize it in one glib sentence, its lesson is "If you want people to like you, then be nice to them, be genuine, and show enthusiasm and interest in what they show enthusiasm and interest in."
My read on the book was "humans are really good at telling if you genuinely care about them or not and will respond well to that, so you should genuinely care about the people around you, and good things will result from that overall, especially if you're not super mercenary about it."
Bill & Ted said it most pithily: be excellent to each other.
Serious question - what is your definition of "genuinely care"? The Carnegie example doesn't show "geninuely care" to me. It's nice, I think I should do it. Give people random but geninue complements. It's nice. It costs nothing. It makes both of us feel good. But, is that "genuinely care"?
I ask because I'm bad at conversation. I hear this "genuinely care" and I just, usually, can't get myself to do it. I don't care. I would like to have a nice conversation and I try to care in the moment but the odds are pretty high that 5 minutes after it's over I'll not even know their name and move on with my life. That's not "genuine care" to me.
You can genuinely care in one moment and forget about them five minutes later, that's ok. Part of making conversation is also stopping the conversation when you are done, not letting it bleed out. My favorite is: "I really enjoyed this conversation, now I'm going to read my book".
I find it nice to connect to strangers in real life, if only for a moment. It can be about something silly as sharing a very bright bird you see while waiting for the bus. It can be giving two dollars to the woman in front of you at the grocery store, cause she's short.
Also, having this connection with people when it is about nothing (small talk) helps build communication skills you need when it is about something.
I genuinely hope you will get answers on your question, maybe even in this thread. But I'll also forget about it in two minutes.
Well, force yourself to care.
I'd argue that there is a very strong value in doing something good, not just because it's genetically or socially imprinted on you, but because you actually decide to do it.
This applies to everything, there is no merit in being good at something just because you were born that way.
But the question was different: it wasn't "can I get good at this flowery small talk if it doesn't come naturally?", it was "is flowery small talk genuine care?"
I would posit that no, it is not. And it's not even unambiguously a good thing. There are plenty of cultures where people are described as cold until you get to know them, but once you do - they'd die for you. To me, that is genuine care. The American "Hiii! How ARE you? I don't actually care if you keel over and die!" approach feels fake.
That's kind of the point. Ask yourself: which people would you genuinely be excited to make a little happier? (through a compliment or otherwise) Whose opinion are you keen to carefully listen to and consider? Who do you like enough such that you will want to put in the effort to remember their name?
I think the idea is that if the stranger on the bus has a haircut you genuinely find to be wonderful: tell them about it. You don't need to force yourself to be nice, just take action on the things you're genuinely excited to do.
And if you don't ever want to be nice to people, then you have some digging and reflection to do (including about if/when you are nice to yourself).
I’m not so hung up on the semantics. The fact that you’ll likely never meet someone again can render an act of kindness towards them, no matter how small, more meaningful, not less.
Great quote choice!
Then that's a fallacious argument on several levels, e.g. because as the reader I am also a human who can tell, and so on.
How can you make yourself genuinely care about something you don't care about? It sounds as plausible as changing your own sexual orientation.
> How can you make yourself genuinely care about something you don't care about? It sounds as plausible as changing your own sexual orientation.
Most people don't care about the gym but they care about their health and their health as they age so many learn to care about going to the gym even if they don't love every minute of their gym time. I'm one of those people.
For me, I find most things can be fascinating. There are so many domains I have zero personal, surface-level interest in, but have nuances that are super interesting.
When someone else has that spark, and their eyes sparkle, and they beam as they talk about "their interest"? Idk, I love that. It makes me feel good to hear them. I feel like we both come away better for the conversation.
I guess not everyone is like this?
Not sure what the downvotes are for on this one. It depends a lot on what "genuine care" is supposed to mean. If you want to interpret that as a subconscious feeling then you're right. Feelings aren't normally controllable and calling them up on demand is pretty much impossible.
That being said, if you go through a bit of game theory and apply it to the real world - the experience of the last few millennia of recorded history is the strategy most likely to get people what they want is lots of communication and setting up win-win deals for everyone. Someone who reliably offers win-win deals has a natural advantage over the more common person who thinks in terms of win-lose deals. Communities that make a habit of setting up win-win deals for their members have an overwhelming advantage over those that don't. If you tap in to that type of thinking it tends to translate into taking a real interest in how other people are going because it is easier to set win-win deals up if you know what their problems and goals are. And a sensible sub-strategy is making sure to be as kind as possible to everyone to get into the habit of thinking empathically and keep channels of communication as open as possible.
So if "genuine care" means you literally feel something... nobody has much use for your feelings, we can't tell what your feelings are anyway and you probably can't call them up on demand. If "genuine care" means you try to figure out what other people want and then help them get it then that's simply good strategy and most people should find their way to it if they think about it for long enough. Some people have to think a bit harder than others and there are a few rare maniacs who really just want to cause pain and suffering. The maniacs are bad news.
Maybe just me, but two things -
1. You don't care about X until you do. Like, you can go for years without worrying cholesterol. And then you can have a reason to care about it and all of a sudden you do. The reason can come from something that forces your hand or just because you take an interest in a subject.
2. Altruism. Think less about care and more just doing without expecting anything back. People notice, especially with selfless conversation.
That's pretty close to "be like Keanu Reeves"!
I agree with you this was not Dale Carnegie's intent when he wrote the book, but alexmuresan probably takes issue because the "red pilling" crowd have used Carnegie's advice to manipulate people.
Personally, salespeople have randomly complimented me and repeated my name over and over, and on the receiving end it weirded me out. So the problem is that in certain situations there is an overarching "what did you want to get out of that person?". Don't be those people.
Strike up conversations because you enjoy people and their stories.
> Part of Cialdini’s large book-buying audience came because, like me, it wanted to learn how to become less often tricked by salesmen and circumstances. However, as an outcome not sought by Cialdini, who is a profoundly ethical man, a huge number of his books were bought by salesmen who wanted to learn how to become more effective in misleading customers.
(Poor Charlie's Almanack, Charlie Munger)
I start asking (annoying) legal and technical questions if they start with that first name basis crap, usually enough to make them back off.
Yes, the problem is that every scammer and salesman uses these techniques also, and if you've run into a few of them, having a complete stranger approach you with the standard Dale Carnegie playbook immediately sets off alarm bells.
Yes this is obvious if you think about movies where people become friends or romantic partners- they are usually cold or unfriendly to each other in the first meeting which makes their later connection seem more authentic. I cannot imagine a movie post 1950s in which a man uses these tactics and gets the girl or the sale without difficulty. Of course movies are not real life but they do rely on some verasimilitude.
That's because a movie like that would be boring (at least if it took up more than a minimal amount of screen-time). Interesting stories require some form of conflict, and for movies that focus on romance, the conflict will be interpersonal.
Yeah, that's it exactly. Films aren't reality, although they can be a reflection of what we might think how reality should go. Af the end of the day, films are made to capture an audience, not to paint a perfect portrait of the real world.
Also, there are counterexamples to that person's claim, such as the film Before Sunrise, which is an excellent romance film that doesn't involve an arc where the characters are indifferent or dislike each other at first. The films Sideways and even Office Space defy that trope as well.
Selective memory. Plenty of movies do not require conflict before romance. La La Land, Being Again, Silver Linings Playbook, About Time, ... plenty of others.
Conflict is required, just not necessarily before the romance, or even involving the romance. There's definitely a sub-genre of a low-conflict meet-cute followed by conflict later on.
FWIW I've seen none of the movies you list.
The inverse is true as well. I read it and thought it was great, but it also put me more on the defense as well. It is kind of sad how I can see relationships going from near symmetric to any kind of assymetry and it shocks me how many times they fall apart because I set limits (and not at all unreasonable limits). Too many many tread water, so i get it but... yeesh.
Carnegie might not have seen it that way, but Charles Manson did. He admitted that he'd used the book as a manual.
If Books Could Kill (which is notoriously against self-help books) did an episode on Dale Carnegie.
Even they said that he seemed to be a pretty alright guy who was genuinely nice to people in his personal life, not just in his public persona.
Someone turned me onto this podcast several months ago and, after a few episodes, my takeaway was they seem to be against every book they review. I couldn't find a single book they actually liked.
Assuming you're not joking, that's the point of the podcast... hence the title "If Books Could Kill". They're reviewing bad and possibly dangerous books.
Your takeaway is right in line with their tagline:
"The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds"
Did they review the original text of the 1930s book that captures the intent of the writer or the scrubbed latest version which washes away the sexist, racist and problematic text written by the original author?
He was as nice as they can be for a white man living in 1930. Good for fellow white men, not good for anybody female or a different skin tone.
But the book has been changed over time to make it seem like he was always an "pretty alright guy"
I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.
I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.
I don't want to be too generalizing, but I found the book to be matching a lot of American cultural stereotypes (as I have experienced them) and most of it would just seem corny (but not terrible) to most people from European countries (less in the south or UK maybe).
Like, I don't even disagree with what he wrote, but most of the stuff just felt a little out of place and intruding on people who generally want to be left alone or keep it to small talk on a different level.
> FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing.
but long after The Prince was a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
I've only heard of the Red Pill in reference to the Matrix. Does it have that idea from "The Prince"?
The Prince is the basic concept of red-pilling. I.e. take the red pill and be exposed to the realities of the world where nice guys finish last.
No literal red-pill as in the Matrix but the ideas that mainstream "red-pilling" espouses are those of The Prince.
No, The Prince is very literal.
Inspiration for the red pill (which represents choosing knowledge, however ugly, over pleasant ignorance) would be more like... the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or the Allegory of the Cave maybe. Or Alice in Wonderland (which Morpheus directly mentions in the Matrix)
Redpillers latched onto that red pill imagery because they view themselves as, you know, having the best grasp on reality. Unlike the poor ignorant masses. Or so they believe.
"Redpilled" views do have some things in common with Realpolitik, and The Prince, in the sense that they're kind of nakedly amoral and rather ugly.
I think the red pill is a direct reference to the matrix. Its kind of weird they have such degratory views on sex and gender, given the directors of their favorite movie they cant stop talking about.
For sure, the red pill is a direct reference to the Matrix. I think previous poster was asking if the Matrix took that idea from somewhere.
Yeah. I think the connection they see is that the reality Neo chose to confront (a humankind enslaved by machines) was unpleasant, and the redpill gang knows their version of reality is very ugly as well.And "Remember their name".
Hah. I'm ADHD and I used to be terrible about remembering people's names -- like, their names didn't even register and I couldn't tell you what it was 30 seconds later. It wasn't that I didn't care about the person, it was just that their name would never stick. Anyway, I finally made enough people feel bad and embarrassed myself enough that I started compensating and made a point to remember basically everybody's name that I met. The change was really surprising, people notice that sort of thing and they make an effort to return the same kind of energy. My general attitude about people since then has become a lot more positive because I realized that overall, most people really don't need a whole lot of impetus to show their better side, and it's not like it costs me anything to treat somebody with a little more consideration.
I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to. When it's the first piece of information I receive I think my brain just doesn't really know where to put it and it gets lost immediately. The "use their name several times in the first conversation" trick is a good workaround for this.
> I wish the protocol was to introduce your name about 5-15 minutes into the conversation because then I would have some other information to attach it to.
This is exactly what suave people do to get to know strangers outside of professional context. It's a common TV/movie trope. Asking a stranger's name puts them on the defensive.
As someone with very similar issues with names, how did you start remembering names?
For myself, what really helped was working at an office where everyone's pictures were up on one of the walls. Going to the restroom meant passing the pictures. There were about 30 people there.
At my current office, there is a staff "phonebook" that also uses people's ID badge photo. At this agency, there are about 400 people working here. Plus about 300 more seasonal staff in the "busy season".
If there are "team" photos, see if you can get one and write names on it. You'll get a lot less static from HR if you let them know you have a hard time remembering names and ask them to help you write the names down.
I have a list in reminders called names so when someone tells me their name as soon as I can use my phone without it being impolite I open it up and add a quick note with the names.
- neighbour watering lawn Jack, wife Gemma, daughter Jane
Then I try to remember it later in the day and confirm with the note. I do that the next couple days and it's locked in and I can delete the note.
I've found that the same works for me when I put forth the tiny bit of time and effort to actually do it.
Just a quick note somewhere (phone is easy-enough, or for a long time I carried a waterproof Field Notes notebook with a Fisher Space Pen and that worked a bit better), to be reviewed later.
Maybe that review happens an hour from now. Maybe it happens in a week, or a month. Or maybe all of these. Refreshers are good.
I don't even have to write much, if anything, about the person; the mere act of taking down the names usually helps a ton with my ability to recall the context later.
If I can remember when and where I took that note (which I can often do very easily), then the rest of the details fill themselves in quite nicely.
(I don't erase the notes, so as to let them remain useful to me later. I don't care if that creeps anyone out; my intentions are pure and the problem I'm trying to solve is very real. Its creep-value is really no worse than the contact lists that I've transferred between cell phones, pocket computers, and now pocket supercomputers for nearly a quarter of a century.)
The creep-value of keeping your lists is zero. It's no different to a journal or the options you gave.
I just delete the ones from mine after a while since they aren't needed and makes it more likely to lose focus on the new ones I'm still actively remembering.
exactly this, but with geofenced reminders so that i'm quizzed into remembering them.
Do try to follow the advice of my sibling comments, but its also okay to find out you are simply really bad at remembering names. I think I'm in the bottom 10% percent in that regard. The only way I can somewhat manage to remember the names of the people I would like to is to use Anki (spaced repetition) on a semi-daily bases. This comes down to what others would consider a crazy amount of work, but at least it is somewhat successful. It frustrating for the long tail of people I might not meet again, but where it still would be really helpful to know their name. Where I really fail is situations that don't allow me to write down names shortly after they were used, which is often the case in introduction rounds. Trying to constantly repeat all names in my head means I'm missing on the other stuff people say.
As you point out, in some cases it's better to just accept that you're not good with names if the effort of trying to deal with it is affecting your other interaction with people. A former neighbour of mine was so bad at names and faces that she wouldn't recognise you in the street and walk right past you, making it seem like she was blanking you. Once I experienced that I realised that simply not being able to remember someone's name wasn't really such a killer, a lot of the time you can cover it up. Also, while you may feel bad about it, it's possible the other person has barely even noticed it, or if they have will forget about it 30 seconds later.
For me it just required being "consciously conscious" (if that makes sense), motivated by the thought of the inevitable embarrassment if I didn't remember their name.
I started out by anticipating that somebody would tell me their name at some point and repeating it in my head a few times when I heard it in the conversation. It helps to round off the conversation with "thanks $NAME, pleasure meeting you." so the name is something that gets used and isn't a bit of stale trivia. After the exchange I'd consciously go through what their name was and what they said, trying to attach associations to it. You've got to give them some space in your head. It was kind of a ritual I'd do, like how before I go out I do the "wallet, keys, phone" thing. Now I just do it automatically because of all the repetition.
Honestly I think the biggest things are:
- remembering to make the effort - the anticipation of hearing it, and - using of the name
Along with the sibling comments I'd mention that being afraid to forget someone's name doesn't help you remember it. Be accepting of the limits of your memory and don't be afraid to ask again. If you're concerned they may be offended then being open about ADHD is always a fair mitigating tactic.
My party trick is meeting everyone in a room once and then raffling off their names a half hour later. If I was really trying, I can remember them all after a week or a month. Sometimes, I really can try and the name will come back to me after a few minutes. It's magic to some, which is true in that most magic is just lots of intense preparation and practice. So, here's all the tricks I have developed.
First, you need to put yourself in situations where you can practice learning and remembering people's names. At the start of college, I had read How to Win Friends & Influence people and it directly influenced me to try and learn how to remember people's names. This was a very good environment for this, I was constantly meeting people, and wouldn't it be nice if I made a good impression on them! Conversely, hard to practice the skill if you aren't meeting people often. It's also not a permanent skill for me, and if I fall into a routine without meeting many new people, then it's not as easy, but thankfully still comes back soon after.
The next thing was that I wasn't trying to remember somebody's name, I was habitually checking during the initial conversation to see if I had forgotten it. Depending on the culture you are in, you have about 15 minutes after meeting someone to ask them their name again, as almost certainly they have forgotten yours, people are not good at this. It's an easy way to indicate that you are interested in continuing to know them, it's social, polite and even charming at times, as why else would you want to know their name if you didn't want to contact them in the future because they're good people? So a few minutes, then ten minutes, then a half hour, you check if you know it, and ask if you don't. That's easier to remember for me, than to remember somebody's specific name.
I have kept a daily journal for most of my adult life, and it's more or less write only, I don't often go back and read it, and often cannot, my handwriting is so bad. But it's helpful on days when I need to write things out, and it's another useful habit in learning to remember names. At the end of the days when I was really training this skill, I made myself write down the names of everyone I had met that day. This was often difficult, and I remember getting headaches doing it at times, trying to write down the names of 20 or 30 people at a time. However, it helped set the expectation that I would remember everyone's names, and that reinforced the behaviors.
I did find that I developed chunking of names for lack of a better term. I would remember names in order of where I met them and maybe even which part of a room I was in. Not unlike a mind palace, but not something I really tried to do consciously. Just the idea of remembering I met Grace, Alice and Bob in that order at this party.
After that, just try and do your best for a couple months and it will improve without a doubt. People tell me they are bad at remembering names, and I ask them honestly, how hard do you try to remember them? Even a little bit of effort goes a very long way here.
What I will say is that I have difficulty learning somebody's name in two specific scenarios, beyond it being a bit harder as I get into my thirties now. If I am on zoom, it does not work at all the same. Their names are right there and so I never really feel the need to learn it and I can feel that I don't really know it. The second is that if I have to learn the name at the same as learning that it is a specific persons name, then I struggle with it. That is to say, if it's a name that is foreign to me, it's harder for me to remember, and so I have a habit of asking them to say it again right off the bat. I'm living in a different country now than before, and I can tell that I've gotten more used to the names and language with the time as it is easier for me to remember most of the people's names now. The trickiest ones for me at times are not putting together names that sound very similar together mentally but are in fact spelled and pronounced differently.
With that, that's all my tricks. I am pretty happy with it and it's served me pretty well over the years. I never turned into one of those freaks with the excel spreadsheets full of names and birthdays though ;) That's a step beyond me, and I'm just not socially diligent enough to keep that up long term yet. Good luck!
Make up a mnemonic that makes fun of them in a really horrible way and don't tell them it. The more offensive, the better it will stick in your brain because it's so bad.
Deliberately reuse their name in that first conversation and trust you can recall it. It takes discipline and practice I.e at the end of the day, picture the new people you met and repeat their names when you get home. That works about 80% for me
A trick I learned is to picture their name written across their forehead (visualize each letter). It works pretty well.
Mine is to associate them with a famous person or character of the same name, and make a point of refreshing their name in my mind soon after meeting, and then more later. it’s not perfect but name retention went through the roof for me.
AR glasses killer app.
Imaginary VR
I remember the book saying something like "a person's name is the most beautiful sound in the world to them." The book may say to say their name back to them (I don't remember right now), but that's not what I took away from it. It reminded me of when people would make fun of my name (first and/or last) or bring up someone famous who has the same first ("Donald Duck") or last name ("are you related Joan Rivers?"), or someone famous who sounds like my first and last name put together (Doc Rivers), and I never thought it was funny. When I see people make fun of other people's names, the recipient never seemed to enjoy it either.
My full first name is Joshua, but when I was a kid everyone would just call me Josh. That was until 5th grade, when another Josh joined my class, and whose last name just happened to come right before mine in the roll call. I loathed that he "stole" my name and (in my head) made me sound like the repeat, so from that point on I decided that I would be Joshua because it sounded "fancier" to me. Years later, my choir teacher would sing that old "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho" song whenever he passed me in the hallways, which always made me laugh.
I've got a life long friend who's full first name is Josh, derived from the Japanese name Yosh. People often try to call him Joshua and it annoys the hell out of him.
Yosh would always be an abbreviation in Japanese. And only done for foreigners, not for other Japanese.
Yoshihiro or Yoshiyuki would likely be called Yoshi by their friends.
You’re for sure right about the name thing. It’s so hard to resist commenting on names for a lot of people, I think, due to the extreme asymmetry of novelty. When you meet someone named Michael Jackson, that’s such novel information to you: “there’s a guy right here in front of me who is named the same thing as a famous musician!” Meanwhile, from Michael’s perspective, they’ve been named Michael Jackson and getting comments and jokes about it near-daily for 35 years - and it’s really a boring non-story - they’re named after their grandfather, their parents didn’t care about the other Michael Jackson one way or the other, and they themselves also neither like or hate MJ.
This is like when you're working retail and the scanner glitches or the barcode isn't registered and the customer says "I guess that one's free then!" and you have to say "ha ha, very droll sir" as if you didn't hear that same joke yesterday.
> you have to say "ha ha, very droll sir"
I completely support the defensive adoption of a sardonic butler-persona for everybody on the other side of a cash-register. :p
They might like to hear "Michael Jackson? Like the guy who wrote the book about scotch??" once in a while
I had a friend named Michael Jackson who went by a different first name. I didn't even know until several years later when he showed a group of us his drivers license and accidentally outed himself.
Michael... Bolton?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhxRAsnizbk
This is 100% what I was thinking of, I considered using that name in my comment actually!!
Like the Michael Bolton character in Office Space.
"Well, you could go by Mike instead of Michael."
"Why should I have to change? He's the one who sucks!"
Yeah, you also have to remember that someone has heard every possible joke about their name and their appearance a million times.
I do think Dale Carnegie overemphasizes the importance of saying people's names, and in fact saying people's names in conversation often sounds forced and manipulative, but maybe that's just a cultural shift over the past century.
I've got the same last name as a sitcom character from the 1980s. I used to get so tired of people pointing that out. Luckily nobody really remembers the show anymore, let alone the character.
But, yeah, it usually sets off my spidey sense when somebody keeps using my first name in conversation. It's just seems weirdly unnecessary, so it makes me wonder why they're doing it.
I don’t have any problem with my name, and it feels manipulative and overfamiliar and I assume someone’s trying to Carnegie me into something if they use it.
Doc Rivers is an awesome name though.
Saying someone's name back to them is also a memory trick to help yourself remember their name for next time.
If I'm trying to remember someone's name, I'll say it at the end of interactions more often than I normally would and make some kind of memory device out of it. If it's someone at a place I frequent, I'll add a location based reminder. It's a little much, but I've found that people, more often than not, do like being called by their names.
Oh, no, please don't. Don't use my name before we are actual friends with actual business in remembering each others names. There's very few things that more strongly put me on alert against a person than them mentioning my name to me.
Mr. Carnegie should update his book with a few sentences about how using LLMs to flatter people is not being genuine.
He would almost certainly disagree.
[flagged]
That would be quite a feat, given that Mr. Carnegie was born in the 1800's and died over 70 years ago.
I'm convinced that 99% of the people who criticize or even just talk about that book have never actually read it, and have zero idea what they're talking about. It's just in that Ayn Rand bucket of books that people talk about, because they see other people getting likes and upvotes for it.
Ayn Rand was a pretty terrible person. But you’re right that there are some interesting ideas in her books. Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is exceedingly interesting as a person living genuinely without much regard for societal norms and expectations. There’s some weird stuff in that book, but Howard Roark is very interesting. A trimmed down version of The Fountainhead would be much better received, I think. (It’s over 700 pages and has some odd and unnecessary scenes where some of Ayn Rand’s less-than-great views probably shine through. It would also just benefit from some good editing.)
Ayn Rand was never the type to submit to heavy editing. There is a better novel hiding in there to be sure.
Dune is a pretty good book and I attribute that to a ruthless editor. After the author died, the son published many of the notes (sort of the way JRR Tolkien's son did) and one of the books shows several early drafts of the first novel - most of which were stinkers. The notes filled an entire room and he managed to squeeze 15 novels out of them.
Christopher Tolkien was a lot more respectful of his father's legacy than Brian Herbert. However, I think of Barry Humphreys saying that "if you want roses, you need a lot of manure". Even the best writers produce dreck.
Agreed. Although speaking from the memory, the chapter on keeping wife happy is best not taken literally in modern day and age. It dated considerably, considering how women are way independent nowadays, even if at the time it was relevant.
I am curious what it was that made you say this.
In general I am of the opinion that a happy woman is a happy woman and that this doesn't look fundamentally different in 2026 than it did in 1926.
I've not read the book, but how can a book about talking to people (if that's what it is) be a "little outdated"?
Some of the stories / aphorisms refer to things that just like, don't exist anymore.
Yeah, that's what I meant by it being outdated. He uses a lot of examples and aphorisms from the 1930s, which sometimes come off as a little bit quaint or folksy almost 100 years later. I'll also mention that the book was written for men "influencing" other men; any reference to women in the book is usually in the context of them being objects that should be managed using the author's techniques.
I'm not sure why this would be downvoted. I hope that people consider treating women like objects to be outdated and problematic.
The backlash against the MeToo movement shows that that treatment is not as outdated/problematic as it should be.
That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.
I find that I don't necessarily mind when a book repeats itself, and a good helping of anecdotes can help a point get across. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Trying to distill a book down to the minimum logically equivalent length is like eating the smallest possible portion of a supplement one time and then wondering why it doesn't do anything for you.