Review: How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Arnold Bennett is quite the dude, his stylishly manicured but un-Nietzschean walrus mustache, worn with an air of nonchalance better than Nick Offerman and Tom Selleck. I mean, anyone who has a classic omelet named after him at The Savoy, deserves his reputation. Born in the aspiring working-class, Bennett excelled in French and Latin, but never went to college, and was never fully accepted into the literati, (most of his work was middling and he often chose simplicity over eloquence and style).
It requires an extraordinary spunk to tackle a subject as ancient as the stars. He himself acknowledges the fact, as he goads his readers to read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and meditate on them. Why do we need Bennett’s book exhorting the denizens of London to look inward? We do know the answer. Even the holiest of texts need elaboration and elucidation. There is the timeliness of an interpretation, even for a timeless dictum.
In any case, it requires some bravura to deal with the well-trodden topic, and commensurate skill to make it sound fresh. In fact, so tight is Bennett’s narration and so absolute is his clarity and focus, that the book has survived 110 years later. Compare this to any number of self-help books that show up at an alarming frequency in airport stalls, that don’t make it to their first birthday, ending up as torn covers in publisher buybacks. The lucky ones survive amid the rummaged pile in the backrooms of second-hand bookstores.
Bennett has chosen the salaryman — working from 10 am to 6 pm every weekday and trudging into the London city by train from his quiet countryside home — as his focal audience. Some reviews have rightly complained about the fact his advice is addressed to men. This is indeed evident. It is the turn of the last century, and the middle-class women are not yet in the white-collar labor force, because they are tiring in the unseen job of bringing up the children. (I must say that even the children in the household are absent in the book). A hundred years later, we know that throngs of salarymen still jostle in daily commutes — in Japan, in Korea, and in the Indian subcontinent and American suburbs. Nevertheless, when read for the current era, Bennett’s advice is universal. It applies to everyone — men and women — caught in the drudgery of work.
Bennett talks about the gift of time.
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality.
There are many absolutely quotable lines.
“Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day.”
Simple ones with resonant clarity like this.
“Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.”
How do you use the eight hours a day (after 8 hours at work and 8 hours of sleep)? Bennett recommends waking up early and using the early hours of the morning. He recommends reserving three 90-minute slots a week for learning and self-reflection. Don’t like music. No worries! (“ ‘I hate all the arts!’ you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and more.“). Bennett has some solid advice for everyone. Here is Bennett on reading books — making you think about what you read.
The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself: “I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats.” And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being a specialist.
The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.
I have decided that I very much admire Bennett’s advice, humor, and self-assuredness. Lovely book. Well worth your time. That — in Bennett’s words — is the best compliment one can get.
Available as an ebook on Project Gutenburg.