Exercises in dullness defeat book's purpose
How To Be More Interesting by Edward de Bono, Viking, $305 It is extraordinary how this book managed to draw so many furtive, and then pitying, glances from people on the MTR. Pairs of eyes shifted uneasily from the words on the cover to the reader, and then moved up and down for the once-over.
The reactions said it all. Ranging from the 'Poor chap, he does look a bit socially challenged' look to the hasty retreat by one soul to a neighbouring carriage, they made an unprecedented torture of the journey from Central to Quarry Bay.
In the end I felt rather relieved after reading Edward de Bono's latest offering because I learned - I think - that I was not in need of his 'help'.
Take one of the book's first questions: what is interesting about a frog? Turn the page and de Bono helpfully informs by suggesting lines of inquiry such as why young ladies should be encouraged to kiss a lot of frogs (should they?); that frogs are amphibians and are at home equally in water or on land; and that they move by jumping as opposed to kangaroos which hop. Fancy that.
There are 74 such exercises and most are stultifyingly boring. The Hong Kong telephone directory offers more thrills and it comes free. The overwhelming question, then, is: who can this book possibly be written for? De Bono argues that people spend huge amounts of time, trouble, care, worry and money on becoming or remaining beautiful. But how much time do they spend being interesting? The more you think about it, the more you realise there are many people in dire need of getting a life. We all know the crashing bores who drone on about how much they have made (or lost) on the stock market, or the car geeks who know the performance figures of their GTis to three decimal points.
Life is already stuffed to the gills with the boring. Should the boring be countered with something equally dull? Of course not. Far better to ditch the dispensable in favour of more worthy topics for consideration: try sex, for starters.
