This is a big year for Darwin, and his work. Also a big year for over-evolved shoes. Multiple celebrations will offer self-loathers numerous opportunities to fall off our platform pumps, put our feet in our mouths and generally humiliate ourselves in the festivals of academe.

Click thumbnail to see larger version of my T Magazine piece on the subject of Darwinian Shoes, or download the PDF file below.

Darwinian shoes PDF

This piece of mine ran Aug 17th in print, and can be found online here. It is unusual for The Times to do humor, let alone about neuroscience, so attempting a project like this was an invitation to a kind of filigree-style self-loathing, wherein the insatiable concerns of psychobiologists for repertorial accuracy (you just can’t convey the complexity of neurocircuitry in ten words and still have room for the graphics) and the delicate feelings of celebrities’ lawyers (note the ample use of words like “seemingly”) twist their tendrils about your waking mind and spin spiderwebs through your dreams.

Is it clear in my article that the brain doesn’t really have clearly-definable “centers” for complex functions like speech? No. Is it clear that diffusion of Botox into the upper reaches of the cranium from a shot in the forehead has (as yet) no support from experimental evidence? Not really. Was I able to suggest that the nicotine receptors that Botox blocks have never specifically been shown to occasion the release of dopamine – a neurotransmitter associated with a very different set of receptors? Barely.

So this article makes me out to be something of an idiot, neurology-wise. And that for me is the fun of it. Because really we don’t need Botox to make us into fools; the simple task of trying to write clearly will do that nicely and far less inexpensively. Alas, it also causes the brow to wrinkle.

ClickHERE to order Self-Loathing for Beginners from Amazon.

On April 13th, the fashion supplement to The New York Times (called “T Beauty”) ran a piece of mine on the self-loathing fashion awards. (Click the image at left to see a legible version.) A few of these images benefit from still further enlargement, both visually and mentally, because of the playful way they violate human dignity. Since dignity is one of those things we must often abandon to survive (or even to charm those whose baser affections we seek), it’s worth a self-loather’s time to study these costumes further.

The men’s outfits were particularly delightful for self-loathers this spring because they so wittily elaborated upon what sort of things men might want to loathe themselves for. Specifically, for being either a pussy or a brute. In times of war, it’s tempting to go for one or the other, even if you aren’t a man.

According to numerous sloppy thinkers in government and the academy, when faced with a vague, power-seeking enemy who wants to turn tables on you, you must agree to do terrible things to these enemies in order to protect your friends. Shackles and hoods, orange jumpsuits and women’s panties, all kinds of fashion accoutrements have been deployed in assaults on the dignity of war captives in the hope that once they are dignity-free they will be willing to help us. Both our willing interrogation teams and those of us exposed to images and tales of their exploits, are also frequently dressed down by those who still cling feebly to decency.

The Thom Browne fashion plate is a man who refuses to let his manhood bloom, lest it take him into such murky waters. This outfit’s frilly gray roses—at once tender and dead looking—so beautifully express the terror of cowardice we all feel that I think we should all spend a day or two wearing them. Galliano’s gladiator, conversely, is a lord of flies and carnage, a man less likely to sip a martini than to guzzle a goblet of bull’s blood. He has renounced the civilizing principle, refusees community; he has abandoned any trust in refinement, in pencil skirts and purses and bouquets, and so thoroug is his fear of femininity that his mighty hose has turned on him and now pumps him full of his own toxic juices. Galliano sees this warrior as a figure of fun, a grotesque, an object lesson, but also a curious object of desire. That hose may be useless, but it is impressively large, and I imagine that it would be hard to get it out of your mind once it came strutting down the runway at you. But the point is, that these are the outfits we’re all metaphorically wearing these days, and it’s always a joy to see our general discomfort (malaise? revulsion? embarrassment?) so amusingly caricatured.

 According to the New York Times,  a Swedish company, Kasthall, is displaying a “Negative Text Rug” which proclaims “I feel like everyone is walking all over me. I feel so low. Like someone is standing on me. I feel as if I am flat on the floor.” The words, written in white cursive script on a dark ground, were created with a “pneumatic yarn gun” (whatever that may be) and the rug is displayed in Kasthall’s New York showroom hanging on the wall, (making every word it utters a lie). The rug’s pimps are asking $6,091 for it, far more than it thinks it is worth, which is what makes it so valuable to the self-loather in us.

Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila Matas and translated by Jonathan Dunne, is a small masterpiece of literary self-effacement. It is presented as a series of 86 footnotes to an otherwise unwritten book devoted to writers who stop writing (Robert Walser who went mad, or Rimbaud who wandered off after his spectacular debut) and writers who never actually write at all (like Socrates—who leaves the penmanship to Plato—or Paranoid Pérez, a character created by Antonio de la Mota Ruiz, who never gets to author a book because any time he has an idea for one, another character in the story writes it first).

Vila Matas lauds writers whose humility forbids them to attempt the impossible feat of writing accurately, writers who—properly conscious of the vanity of literature and the irrelevance of acclaim—beg to be forgotten, writers who, like Melville’s Bartleby, “would prefer not to.” This most amusing and inspired meander through the history of creative self-negation is a must for the serious self-loather who wishes to go for a higher degree.

Striving to make success of self-loathing

PAIGE WISER pwiser@suntimes.com

The bad news? I have recently spent actual money on:

• • • A lavishly illustrated book by one of the “Biggest Loser” trainers, a show I have never watched.
• • • A 2008 page-a-day calendar for “Women Who Do Too Much,” which I have not yet bothered to take out of the box.
• • • And Scrabble for my cell phone. I figured I could keep my mind sharp by playing myself and improving my strategy skills.

You guessed it. I cheat.

Clearly, I hate myself. But there is good news: It turns out that I am directly on top of a trend, which is documented in the new book Self-Loathing for Beginners.

Author Lynn Phillips explains that, even if you sometimes love yourself, that should never stop you from loathing yourself, too. As an example, she offers up Oprah Winfrey — a woman equally known for her philanthropy and her yo-yo dieting.

“Oprah is able to layer her public self-love and private self-loathing like low-fat whipped cream and sugar-free Jell-O so that both can be tasted distinctly, but at the same time,” writes Phillips.

(The book is so smart and densely funny that several times I had to pause, just to hate myself for not writing it.)

Chicago: Capital of self-loathing

Phillips knows that we talk a good game. As Americans, we like to pride ourselves on democracy and diversity. The truth is that globally, we are considered a superficial, dangerous country absorbed in a never-ending pursuit of self-improvement . . . which inevitably leads to credit card debt and Cheetos binges.

And as Chicagoans, forget about it. We insulate ourselves from the preposterous weather with layers of parkas and fat. We root ferociously for losing sports teams. We call ourselves the Midwest, when anyone with a map can see that we are much more Upper Right. We are the Capital of Self-Loathing.

Introduction

Part I—The Basics

Chapter 1: The FAQ
Are You a Beginner?
How Much Self-Loathing Is Enough?
Self-Love—Friend or Foe?
Perpetual Motion Self-Loathing
The Free Pass

Chapter 2: The Building Blocks of Self-Loathing
Self-Loathing’s Seven Essential
Questions (and Their Answers )

Chapter 3: Self-Loathing’s No-Brainer—The Body
Women First
Men Can Do It Too
More Women
Unisex
Chapter Review

Part II—The Material World

Chapter 4: Celebrity Culture
The Tabs
People Who Need People
Porn
Show Biz

Chapter 5: The Fashionable Self-Loather
First Impressions
Fashion Minefield
Don’ts, Dos, and Dids

Chapter 6: Food for Self-Loathing
Diets
Gorging
Purging
Foraging
Dining Out with Civilized People

Part III—Interactive Self-Loathing

Chapter 7: Self-Loathing Sex!
Before
During
After
Hooking Up

Chapter 8: Love and Other Romantic Involvements
Fishing for Love
Getting Hooked on Love
Cutting Bait

Chapter 9: The Self-Loather’s Family Album
The Self-Loathing of Minors
Self-Loathing Quality Time for Adults
Self-Loathing and Marriage

Chapter 10: Workplace Self-Loathing
Buckling Down
Horizontal Motion
Vertical Promotion

Chapter 11: The Social Self-Loather
Act Locally
Act Globally

Part IV—The Self-Loathing Elite

Chapter 12: Self-Loathing Dabbles in the Arts
Fine Art
The Performing Arts—Theater, Dance, and Music
Dead Trees

Chapter 13: The Spiritual Self-Loather
World Religion
The West
The East

Chapter 14: All in Your Mind
Meta-Self-Loathing
Ancient Philosophy and Self-Loathing

Chapter 15: Endgame
Old Age
Decline
Fall
Death

Appendix

Graduation
Acknowledgments
Author’s Bio

The Spitzers appeared to be in an advanced state of self-loathing when Eliot abandoned the gubernatorial ship yesterday. But loathing over what? Was his shame as durable as he claimed in his resignation speech? He looks like he has swallowed a big gulp of crow, but is “The remorse I feel will always be with me” an accurate statement on his part? We detect a note of relief in his departing words:

I go forward with the belief. . .that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

In other words, he will not stay limp for long. He goes on…

As I leave public life, I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and my family. Then I will try once again, outside of politics, to serve the common good. . .

Serious students of self-loathing will detect in this trajectory the mark of the pseudo self-loather. Like Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, Eliot Spitzer’s dive may be a self-preserving stratagem designed to escape the harsher sort of public scrutiny and land someplace more cushioned where a person can be more effective, less embattled, better paid and — should he so desire — better laid than a public official.

As for Silda, her self-loathing seems at least temporarily authentic. “How could I?” reads her thought bubble. “How could I have gotten so entangled with this worm it no longer pays to leave? I should have run for Governor myself — like Hillary! And that hooker is so lame! ‘Ashley!!!’ When I think that he stuck his dick into a mouth from which came the words, ‘I am all about my music, and my music is all about me,’ I want to puke my guts out. And now I’m the icon for doormat wives. Thanks, girls.”

In US cinema, self-loathing in the line of duty was pretty much this year’s theme, making it hard to award SL4B’s coveted SLOscar to just one performance in the category: “Best Depiction of Self-Loathing.”

In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen’s “Nikolai” had to become London’s top Russian mafioso in order to fight crime effectively. He ended up defaced by sinister tattoos and the splatter of underworld butchery, feeling too slimey to claim a woman’s love. That was also, more or less, the plot of Sweeney Todd, the vengeful barber and class warrior, magnificently portrayed in puddles of stage blood by Johnny Depp. Both actors were quite convincing and, more importantly, attractively miserable.

So was George Clooney’s “Michael Clayton” as a giant law firm’s fixer, a character who felt compromised (a) from the start and (b) to the core. After Clayton’s equally self-loathing friend, Arthur Edens (pb Tom Wilkenson), generously teaches him to put his self-loathing to work saving innocent maidens, (much like mob infiltrator Nikolai), Clayton ends up loathing himself for trading his livelihood (and ability to pay child support) for a hollow moral victory. He communicates this without lines, thank God, by slouching and looking empty, plus sad, palpably conveyong that the alternative to feeling compromised is feeling fired.

Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton both played ambitious strivers who spend their lives desperately running from themselves towards something they wrongly assume will be better. Swinton achieves a shivering state of free fall, and maintains it brilliantly, while Lewis keeps shooting black bile skyward as if we will never run out of the stuff. Bravo.

So who wins the SLOscar for best portrayal of making one’s self want to puke? Subtle Viggo? Operatic Johnnie? Suffering George? High strung Tilde or the explosive D.D.?

Well I just can’t decide. Isn’t that pathetic? Except I will say that Daniel Day Lewis’s Daniel Plainview does a little bit too much eye-crossing, shouting and turning red in the face to make a credible self-loather. When he famously bellows “I’ve abandoned my boy!” at a revival meeting, you suspect what he’s really feeling is tired of ingratiating himself with the saps he’s fleecing. There’s never a moment in which Lewis’s Plainview sees the worst in himself and figures it’ll be hard to live with. You can imagine him pouring himself a stiff one and cutting himself some slack, like, “Hey: At least I didn’t invade Iraq.” The giants of self-loathing don’t hedge like that. It was a fine performance, but less a portrait of a self-loather than of someone interestingly loathsome.

So, while we end up with an awkward number of SLOscar winners, I’m happy to say that we could at least pick a loser.

Books need friends, just like lonely rock stars, mathematical geniuses and losers do. Maybe more. Stars, geniuses and losers can all swap roles if they get bored, but a book lives and dies a book, and without friends books now die rather quickly.

To be this book’s friend, don’t be shy:

1. Quote from it (with attribution),
2. Ask your bookstore to carry it,
3. Give it to self-loathing and militantly happy friends alike, and
4. Post encouraging reviews of it on blogs and booksellers’ websites.

To be this book’s friend-with-privileges:

1. Turn it face up (or out) in bookstores if all they’re showing is the spine.
2. Leave it the bathroom of an institution devoted to intermittent self-loathing, like a university or barracks.
3. Wear its insignia proudly on a product from our store.

To be this book’s best best friend:

1. Become a celebrity and say it’s your favorite
2. Get it on Oprah.