Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On
by Anneli Rufus
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anneli RufusEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-26
ISBN: 1585426679
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Tarcher
Book Reviews of Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On
Book Review: not so much "self-help" as social commentary
Summary: 5 Stars
I should start by declaring my absolute insistence that the work of Anneli Rufus is done a great disservice by getting lumped into the "self-help" genre. By their very nature, self-help books offer simple, bullet-point ideas by which the would-be reader can magically transform his or her life. Anneli Rufus offers no such simplicity. By their very nature, self-help books are heavy on platitudes and light on real introspection. Anneli Rufus offers no such fluff and instead challenges her readers to dig way past the easy self-help small talk and face some very hard facts. Such are not the things from which best-selling self-help manuals are made.
And, that's okay.
If you read the majority of dissenting opinions about Stuck, you find they fall into two main categories - those that proclaim her too harsh and uncaring and those who declare her to be an enabler rationalizing and making excuses for bad behaviors. I am left wondering how one can be guilty of both. I believe the truth goes back to my earlier comments regarding the authors' work being mistakenly tagged as "self-help." Her work might better be compared to the likes of David Sedaris - often painfully and uncomfortably entertaining yet offering amazing insight and perspective while you weren't even looking.
One of her strengths is in the discerning research she employs to illustrate often complexly intertwined ideas. Unlike many authors, Rufus is not afraid to shine an unsympathetic light on events in her own life to make her point. In fact, the author saves her most biting commentary for her own mistakes and transgressions. In her examination of her own life and of those around her she is unapologetic and not prone to make excuses. She is also not afraid to admit that she still struggles with many issues. The books of Anneli Rufus are not the literary self-help equivalent of a half-hour situation comedy. Many of the storylines in her life are on-going and unresolved. If this makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should stick to the works of Wayne Dyer, Joel Osteen or Rhonda Byrne.
Rufus covers many important aspects of our modern ethos and offers marvelous insight into their origins and influences. Whether talking about disease theory or trauma narrative, her indictment and exposure of a society of victims can be a tough pill to swallow. This does not lessen the impact of her words.
I think the biggest problem most self-help readers have with Anneli Rufus is that she and her ideals and ideas cannot be easily or firmly pigeon-holed into simple to understand and easy to digest political or social demographics. We are so conditioned to broadly label everything and everyone that her call to reconsider a broad spectrum of easily palatable ideologies manages to offend and alienate any and all whom cling too tightly to long held notions and beliefs. There are no sacred cows in the writing of Anneli Rufus. It is in their slaying where she most offends.
I highly recommend the works of Anneli Rufus in general and Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On specifically. However, I would offer the caveat that her writing is not intended to offer quick and easy answers for a life of trouble-free bliss. Instead, it is an almost Buddhist-like call for awareness, self examination and introspection. Her words are a plea to change the things you can and want to change and to come to terms with those things you cannot or won't change. Her words are a warning that your expectations must match your effort. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Summary of Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On
A brilliantly written tour through many lives?and a nation? stranded at the crossroads.In Stuck the author of the highly praised Party of One: The Loners? Manifesto identifies a rather striking social trend: many people are stuck. Be it in the wrong relationship, the wrong career, the wrong town, or with the wrong friends, some of them even say they want to make a change but . . . somehow . . . never get the job done.
A self-described ?adolescent in size-ten shoes who is also a happily married homeowner with a master?s degree,? Anneli Rufus knows whereof she speaks. In this book, she draws on her own life experience as well as interviews with others who are also?in some way or another, and to differing degrees?immobilized. Tracing the many subtle ways in which American culture often conspires to keep us stalled, Rufus delivers a long-awaited diagnosis for our day and age: stuck. But there can be a light at the end of the tunnel; Rufus also tells the stories of people who managed to become unstuck and of others who, after much reflection, decided that where they are is best. After all, she says: ?What looks to you like paralysis looks to others like passion. What looks to you like a rut, others would call commitment, true absorption in a topic, a relationship, a career, a pursuit, a place. What looks to you like boredom, others call commitment. And even contentment.?
Stuck is a wise and passionate exploration of the dreams we hold dearest for ourselves?and the road to actually achieving them.
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