“I think we ought to read only the kind of books thatwound or stab us.If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow tothe head,what are we reading for ? A book must be the axe for the frozen seawithin us! “
Kafka’s quote perhaps never rang more true for a book than Dr.Viktor Frankl’s chilling and insightful humdinger of a book,”Man’s Search for Meaning”.While generally disinclined towards the healthy habit of reading newspapers, I do occasionally leaf through them out of a sense of urgency that I should keep abreast of the latest happenings.
And the last time when I stopped at a newspaper vendor’s establishment to quickly scan the pages of the dailies, I happened on the ‘Book recommendation’ section of the GK. The title mentioned struck a chord instantly.The very next day I hastened to a popular book store here in the city, but to my consternation couldn’t get me a copy.I managed to fetch one nevertheless elsewhere.
If this book fails to deliver an emotional punch to the reader, it would be no overstatement that the point of the book is lost on him. Sure enough, it would appeal strongly to those who have seen the various colours of life and especially those who have wrestled with its caprices.
On the surface it’s just another book recounting the horrors of the Holocaust and how savagely the jews were treated during Hitler’s dictatorial regime. But this depiction of horror does not circumscribe the scope of the book that goes beyond the sordid details contained therein and, which the author so brilliantly shows us all through the book.
As one could readily infer from the title itself, the bookaddresses the existential question that is life meaningful even in the teeth ofcircumstances of a most harrowing and subversive nature ? Does life holdmeaning and purpose even when one is stripped of everything and what remains isjust one’s naked existence ?The answer,according to the author, is a resoundingYes! Dr.Viktor Frankl survived three nightmarish years during the Second WorldWar and the book portrays those experiences from an inmate’s perspective.
Add to that the fact that Dr. Frankl was a psychiatrist cumpsychoanalyst and the credibility of the book goes a few notches up. That is sobecause unlike a fictionalised account, the book details the author’s owntravails as an inmate of concentration camp and how he valiantly combatted thesuffering without forgoing his dignity and how despite all odds he managed totrudge through the endless saga of pain and privation because he saw purpose tolife nonetheless; When you have a credible voice who has dived deep into thehuman psyche and doctored souls and known the dormant reserves of courage deepinside every human being glamorizing suffering, the point is furtherreinforced.
Technically, it is a mighty addition to the self-helpliterature we often take to in moments of crushing despair and yet it differsfrom other self-help books in that it is rooted entirely in example rather thanin precept. The author lays bare the stark facts behind life in a concentrationcamp and how one could endure even such a traumatising experience with grace.
Thus the book should easily fend off any attack levelled against most self-help books accused of seducing the human ego by resorting to impractical solutions to the human condition.
The author appropriately quotes Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and others at various places in the book to hammer home his point that suffering could have a divine purpose and that it doesn’t necessarily have to despair one of life. Citing Nietzsche at one place, Dr.Frankl sagely exhorts us to follow this credo: “He who has a “why” to live for can bear with almost any “how”.
The tone of the book is justifiably didactic because it is not a figment of someone’s imagination but rather the first-hand memoir of someone who had to brave the pain of an unendurable magnitude and yet emerged a victor.
Does the book qualify as life-changing as many have attributed it this label ? Depends.Because the label is a subjective one.Still the book compels the reader to question his place in the world. What more can one ask of a book than when it confronts us with a question as challenging as this and then attempts to answer it too! For anyone besieged by feelings of existential crisis or worn down by the excesses of fate,it is just the perfect kind of read. A spiritual vade mecum of sorts as I have come to call it.
While the first part of the book talks about the author’s experiences in a concentration camp, the second part is a distillation of those experiences. Pioneering a new school of psychoanalysis, Dr. Frankl’s novel method of logotherapy is a promising addition to remedying the existential crises along with Freud’s and Adler’s psychoanalytic methods.
The protagonist of J.D.Salinger’s masterpiece “The catcherin the rye” remarks at one place that after finishing a good book,”youwish that the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you couldcall him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” If I but once had theprivilege of calling up Dr.Frankl, I would thank him for writing such atimeless book!
The writer has done his B.E. in Civil Engineering.