Reading Coelho
Reading the works of Paulo Coelho is truly a challenging activity, mostly because it encompasses a myriad of sub-tasks that can be quite demanding.
First of all, we must note that Paulo Coelho is a controversial author. His books, while having a great commercial success, have never gained critical acclaim and are quite shunned by the majority of authors and critics, while Coelho’s own election to the Brazilian Academy of Letters was marred by criticism and controversy.
That being said, I’m sure that on a personal level, no amount of criticism from outside can negate one’s own opinion on the books. For that I can give you my personal example as none of those who advised me to avoid Coelho’s work succeeded in dettering me from reading some of the books. But again, the lack of critical acclaim can be used as a warning side, that the book at hand should be carefully searched for true meaning.
One of the cricism brought towards Coelho is the simplicity. Indeed, when reading, Coelho’s books seem more of a “poor-man’s philosophy manual”, to such an extent that some of the “deeper” contructions simply feel thrown there in the hope that the reader will simply accept them as universal thruts. Indeed, this has lead to some people quoting Coelho for the sake or argumenting a point in discussions, but given the amount of “false truths” I would be worry of people choosing this way of supporting a statement.
Maybe I have confused you a little by now, so I shall give you and example. First things first, “The Alchemist”:
The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. - not a particularly bad example, but simply a proof of logical fallacies in the work of a man selling “lessons of life”. Basic logic states that getting up takes place following a fall, therefore before getting up one must fall. Say you’re walking on a street, you fall, you get up. Do that eight time and let’s count the actions until you find yourself standing again. That’s right: 7 falls and 7 getting-ups. Getting up again is quite an impossible task … so the correct illustration for the idea of never letting yourself be beaten down by life is: falling seven times and getting up seven times. This is a severe lapse.
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own - actually I’ve never heard anyone at all making such a claim. At most I’ve heard people giving insistent advice to others for the solution of a particular situation, but never something as extravagant as how the entire life should be lived. Ironically enough though, this is exactly what Coelho himself is doing, which is again a reason not to take everything in his books for granted. A not so severe lapse, sounds more like an admission of guilt from the author himself.
People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. A sound advice, as letting fear govern your actions is generally bad and can lead to disaster and furthering yourself from your dream or goal. Still the motivation stated is misleading. Any assessment of one’s capabilities is based on a current situation’s known factors. Anything unknown can throw off such assessments off and make them be false. Again, not a critical lapse, but something to note.
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams. - maybe I’m taking this one personal, but anyone who’s studied philosophy knows that many philosophers of various levels have augmented the very opposite idea. Coelho himself doesn’t bring much of an argument. My personal argument to the contrary is that for the whole length of the search, the heart suffers every time when the hope of reaching the dream proves false. However, letting fear govern is still bad, as mentioned above. Add to that the need to get up every time after suffering occurs and the first sentence is found to be true, but the second one is very false. Aside from those that have reached their dream on the first attempt, all others have suffered during their search, on each failed attempt. Not a bad lapse, but it proves ignorance of classical philosophy.
Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time. - a very serious lapse. The old saying that “those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” has been proven times and times again throughout history. Coelho himself seems to be unaware of this and of the implications.
Sure enough, all this is open to interpretation, but it’s actually the author’s very fault. Like mentioned earlier, Coelho’s work amounts to a poor man’s philosophy and as such it fault lies in the very brief observations of various ideas, but none are deeply analyzed. Everything is touch on a shallow level, both the false claims and the true ones, to the extent that a novice in philosophy will either find himself at a loss, unable to pick the good ones from the bad ones, or worse, be tempted of assuming all the ideas on the account that they “sound” deep.
Granted, Coelho writes beautifully, but beauty isn’t a substitute for truth. Perhaps his words are a piece of his dreams and personal experiences, but one some level, I just hope he simply failed to analyze some ideas in-depth, otherwise some of his book would amount to no more than “self-help” books (”buy my books if you want to live happily ever after” - he would succeed better if he would pick some proven ideas and wrap them up nicely in his words).
Therein lies the danger, as many readers allowed themselves lured by Coelho’s words and end up accepting blindly all his ideas but I hope those reading this won’t fall into this sweet trap. I would generalize, advising you to pass every word through your own knowledge and experience (you could an amazing job with Coelho if you had read the classic philosophers and poets, those that have shaped the world as we know it today) … and do that with everything you read, even with this small critical piece.
All in all, reading Coelho is a great experience and in the light of all being said, I think all those with a passion for philosophy should take a look. It’s a beautiful reading and a good one too, as long as you don’t take the words as great truths.