<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

The opposite of a self-help book

Francis O’Gorman’s Worrying: A Literary and Cultural Guide finds not much hope for the human race — but at least worriers, being sensitive to others, apparently make good team mates

25 July 2015

9:00 AM

25 July 2015

9:00 AM

Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History Francis O’Gorman

Bloomsbury, pp.192, £14, ISBN: 9781441151292

At last, a snappy pop philosophy book which offers to sort out absolutely none of your personal issues. If anything, it will make them worse. ‘There are,’ Francis O’Gorman admits, ‘serious problems for me with the ethics of writing on worry.’ Since words are the very stuff of worry, O’Gorman (himself a worrier) suspects that reading is unlikely to provide a cure.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close