Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move on

I was walking through Borders and saw this book sitting on the paperbacks table, near the front of the store. It caught my eye and I picked it up. I'd been going through a rough few weeks with my father. He's been separated from my mother for 18 years, and has recently began to hoard things in his Little House of Squalor. Add to that each time I see my sister she repeats the mantra "I wish we had a normal family" over and over again. Mom's extreme religious views caused the two decade separation. "Stuck" is what I see all around me, and Ms. Rufus' writing is powerfully poignant. It doesn't take a genius to see that the problems of the West can be laid firmly at the feet of any number of elements; and that is what she does in this book. I think that some of the reviews were short-sighted in their critiques of Ms. Rufus' book. Fundamentally she makes the point that we have an external locus of control and that is where the crux of the problems lie. If you can't be happy without some external "thing", then you'll be unhappy and blame your unhappiness on the very "thing" outside of you that you have no control over. This book is not a qualitative analysis of third generation phallic narcissists who have a penchant for paisley, it is an overview of the major currents that have affected our culture and our collective unconscious over the last 50+ years. Ms. Rufus takes a hard look at life and asks the tough questions: Why do young people feel the need to self-mutilate? Why are there so many anorexic kids? Why is virtually everything framed in terms of disease and addiction? Why is victim-hood now the highest virtue? What are the negative effects of the self-esteem movement? All are powerful question and deserve to be answered to the best of our ability. She is right to criticize the 1960's counter-culture for the detrimental effects it has had on our society. At his trial Socrates is credited with saying,"The unexamined life is not worth living." Dare I say that Anneli Rufus is a modern day Socrates? Read the book and you'll see.

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 Rufu

Anneli Rufus was an author I had never heard of but the book title and my current life situation was impetus to buy and read. Rufus is a contradiction--she writes of herself, being resistant to "growing up" and learning to drive and do other "adult" things yet somehow chides those "lost souls" she portrays in the book. One character, a wannabe author is trapped (or stuck) in her search for happiness as a writer--she fumbles and fails at seizing her dream and instead ends up a copyweditor...not too shabby...but my impression is that the author loathes these "wanderers" and thinks of society as too frequently fickle and too often loose canons trapped in a prison of excess and lust. Yet, I myself, a bit "stuck" in a mediocre relationship and a low-wage job, hardly think of myself as lazy or lost but rather running in a hamster wheel built by my own lack of self-esteem and determination. I bought this book with the hopes of tales of harrowing and happy "transformations"--of those who took risks, rallied in their own lives and radically reconnected with themselves, but this book is more of a study not self-help... The author is an articulate and interesting writer but her book would've been far more powerful to endorse those who changed, who chartered courses that went against convention and those who un-stuck themselves. Instead of stories of all those who took the road less traveled and ended up at success' doorstep--she attempts to diagnose the stuck souls and in the process demeans the book's opportunity to inspire.

As a 24 year old currently unemployed college graduate (just writing that makes me ashamed), the title 'Stuck' jumped out at me. I'm sure many people will be able to identify with the feeling of being 'stuck', whether it's in a career, relationship or habit. That, along with the interesting visual on the cover, led me to pick up this book yesterday from B & N. I found it filled with many interesting insights, culled from the works of prominent psychologists and social commentators. The author speaks about various aspects of American culture, such as the glorification of victimhood, pathologizing habits, consumer marketing strategies, etc which promote a certain personality, which in turn, causes our 'stuckness'. The author seems particularly fascinated by herself and anorexia, and many of her anecdotes include one or the other. She says she is stuck in a child's mind, because she lives in the present. I think the author should have offered a more honest example of being stuck. I feel this example is a little facetious and trivializes the other serious examples of 'stuck' given in the book, such as people with drug addictions. I can understand how a person can retain some childlike wonder or playfulness, but saying you are trapped in a child's mind completely seriously is dishonest. After all, childlike thought is marked by the complete absence of abstractions, and obviously this book employs a lot of them. Even though that part annoyed me, I kept on reading because the author has a really engaging writing style and I found myself agreeing with many of her other observations. However, after 300+ pages, I was getting a little impatient and at the end, the author never really did offer any clear solution on how to get 'unstuck' from our stagnant lives.