Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist

[Bjorn]

On reading The Alchemist, or "Du liest Paulo Coelho? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!"

- Note: spoilers throughout, though I don't see why that should matter since the back cover gives everything away anyway. -

Short version of this review: The Alchemist is crap. Through and through.

Slightly longer version: The Alchemist is crap for several reasons. Because there's no plot to speak of - everything zips along on a trail straighter than Fred Phelps' public persona; it does exactly what it says on the tin with no twists, no surprises and nothing to grab your interest, and everything turns out exactly as you'd think it would 10 pages in. Because the characters are a series of identical cut-outs saying the exact same things in the exact same voices over and over again. Because the prose jumps back and forth from purple to something that would be better suited for a children's book, full of repetitions and redundancies. Because it's a ridiculously conservative piece of pseudo-pop-philosophy that's only slightly dumbed down from your average Ricki Lake monologue and... OK, imagine if Candide had been perfectly serious. If Voltaire had thought irony was just a colour, like goldy only greyer. Then add some new-age nonsense to Pangloss' teachings, get rid of the gorier bits and you'd have The Alchemist: a book so unaware of its own shallowness that people were already parodying it 250 years ago.

The book is about this sheep herder. His name is initially given as Santiago but rarely ever mentioned after that, he's just referred to as "the boy," presumably since Coelho has watched that Simpsons episode where a greedy self-help guru tells Springfield to "be like the boy" (except he must have missed the second part of that episode where the advice predictably leads to disaster). This "boy" is certainly no Bart Simpson, though; for one thing, he must at the very least be in his late teens. For another Bart's not a blithering idiot like Santiago, or "Thicko" as I'll call him from now on. Thicko has to have everything explained to him at least four times, since even though he's supposedly been to seminary school and reads obsessively, the simplest words and concepts make him go "huh? Whassatmean?" Of course, the real reason for this is that Coelho is supremely uninterested in telling a story; his one purpose in writing is to impart Wisdom on his readers, and since he obviously considers his readers about as lucid as Thicko's sheep (there's a slightly disturbing Also Sprach Zarathustra undertone to this) he's going to have to be as literal and anvilicious as he possibly can. At one point, the Alchemist points out that this kind of wisdom can only be imparted orally - and since he's very obviously an authorial self-insert on a scale I've never seen outside of Erich von Däniken novels, you have to wonder why Coelho bothered writing the book. Maybe he got sick of people laughing at him when he tried to peddle this pap face-to-face.

So anyway, Thicko has this dream in which he finds a treasure at the Pyramids. This dream confuses him, but two Mysterious Strangers (one of whom we are explicitly told comes straight out of the Bible - subtle storytelling there, Paulie) tell him that this dream means he's going to find a treasure at the Pyramids. Thicko is highly impressed by their dream-interpretation skills and promptly sells his sheep and hitches a ride to Tanger, where he loses everything and ends up working for a living. He immediately forgets about his treasure, but after he's made enough money, he suddenly remembers it again and joins a caravan across the desert where he learns to accept that things happen because they are written and that nobody can change what is written - cue up the soundtrack from Lawrence of Arabia, since that's the only way you'll get the slightest sense that any of this is real. Finally, he meets up with the Alchemist of the book's title, who turns out to be... Yoda. Yoda with better grammar and a worse script, but still Yoda, right down to the big test where Thicko has to lift his spaceship out of the bog... uh, I mean turn himself into a gust of wind. Yoda teaches him to use the force, that we are all one and that there is no "try" only "do" and "do not," and Thicko sees the light. Except without the part where the beautiful Arab girl with whom Thicko fell in love at first sight (and she with him, since women in this story are nothing but rewards for male heroes) turns out to be his long-lost twin sister; a pity, since this is the sort of novel where even incest would have been an improvement.

The blurb on the back says that the book is "a magical fable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path, and above all follow your dreams." Fine. Problem is, that's ALL it's about and it says it both literally and repeatedly, again and again and again until it finally sinks in for poor Thicko: "Hey, I think I'm starting to get this! You're saying I should... uh... listen to my heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and... follow my dreams?" THANK YOU, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS. (No wonder Julia Roberts loved the book so much her endorsement is printed TWICE on the last few pages - the whole thing is based around the chorus to a Roxette ballad, just like Pretty Woman! Gee, I wonder what life-changing morals Coelho's other novels have in store - "If you want to know what love is, ask someone to show you"? "Dance cheek-to-cheek with ladies in red"? "Love lifts you up where you belong"? "Do anything for love (but don't do that)"? "Listen to the winds of change"? ...wait, that last one is already in The Alchemist.) The only thing the 180 wide-spaced pages of narrative add to the blurb is a profound sense of boredom, probably laced with some anger if you've actually shelled out cash for this twaddle. Every single character except for the one who's even dafter than Thicko keeps telling him the same things, every single character and every single thing that happens serves only one purpose: to convince Thicko to read the blurb on the back of his own novel until he gets it and is rewarded - in cash, of course. No wonder rich celebs like it; Madonna must have gone "Hey! He's right, I deserve to be rich!" when she read it.

I'm not even going to try to pick apart Coelho's "philosophical" and "spiritual" meanderings, which seem to consist of 50% random lifts from various religious writings and 50% hospital greeting cards. If you're the kind of person who thinks "today is the first day of the rest of your life" is a deep, thought-provoking comment on the nature of humanity, then you'll love The Alchemist. According to Coelho we're living in the best of all possible worlds, so never aspire to be more than what God has dictated for you, always follow the traditional ways, and remember that the only value of other people existing is that they can help you realise this. It's a remarkable mix of selfishness and fatalism and I'm honestly confused as to whether the writer even realises this or if he just mixed and matched from some 1-dollar book of aphorisms without thinking about it.

Alchemy is the art of turning base things into gold (and Coelho honestly seems to believe in it, even if no sane person has for the last few hundred years), but Coelho is no Midas; the only thing The Alchemist manages to prove is the old saying about polishing a turd. No matter how many stars and quotes from stars you stick on the cover, I'd suggest not sticking your fingers into it; the stink rubs off.

Rating:

Until next time, I'm Troy McClure.

[Stewart]

I don't think there's much to add to the above as it sums up my own thoughts and dislike toward the book. I suppose the only good side is that Coelho can write in 180 pages what it takes Ayn Rand almost a thousand to say: that greed is good, as long as it's all for you.

[Heteronym]

If you're reading it in English, you may have an extra bonus: friends have told me his translators greatly improve the quality of his prose, which is atrocious in Portuguese.

[metin]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

If you're reading it in English, you may have an extra bonus: friends have told me his translators greatly improve the quality of his prose, which is atrocious in Portuguese.

Then I didn't miss anything. Cause I'd long thought I might enjoy this book just a bit if its Turkish translation wasn't that tasteless.

[metin]

Originally Posted by Stewart

I don't think there's much to add to the above as it sums up my own thoughts and dislike toward the book. I suppose the only good side is that Coelho can write in 180 pages what it takes Ayn Rand almost a thousand to say: that greed is good, as long as it's all for you.

Ditto. Yet I must confess though that I acted as gentle as I could when I asked "The Man" for an autograph

As for the woman, comparing her style to Coelho's, at least I enjoyed it like a soccer game, at the end of which you know who wins.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

If you're reading it in English, you may have an extra bonus: friends have told me his translators greatly improve the quality of his prose, which is atrocious in Portuguese.

Originally Posted by metin

Then I didn't miss anything. Cause I'd long thought I might enjoy this book just a bit if its Turkish translation wasn't that tasteless.

Somehow I'm not surprised - I read it in Swedish, and I kept thinking that not even the most inept translator can mess up a text THIS badly if it was any good to start with. And to think he even namedrops some really good authors (Borges among them) as his main influences in the rather confused postscript, too...

The greed aspect of it is probably what irked me the most - which is a bit unfair; as philosophy goes, I find it personally distasteful but not an invalid opinion, and the book has bigger problems. But when he drags in all this religious justification for his ideas, and when so many people claim that this book changed their lives, I can't help thinking that it seems to go against some rather fundamental aspects of most religions; he's rewarded not for the way he treats others, but for putting himself first and making the world serve his purposes - there's the slight Übermensch aspect again. Sure, it's an allegory and it's not meant to be taken literally, but still. What's that Ibsen quote? Man, be thyself. Troll, to thyself be enough.

[Eric]

Personally, I've found an excellent way to avoid Coelho's inadequate use of language - by not reading him.

It is really awful that Brazil has many good authors, such as Lispector, Guimarães Rosa, Trevisan, Machado de Assis, plus poets, yet the world focuses obsessively on this one hideously over-hyped author, with his U.S. connection, who keeps churning out pseudo-mystical stuff, from what I gather.

I too have heard that his Portuguese isn't up to much. But he seems to have mesmerised those who want a cult to follow. Thumbs down. If Björn says it's crap, then I believe him, prejudiced though this may sound from someone who has read none of Coelho's books. But you have to develop what they used to call a shit detector, so you don't have to plough through a whole book before discovering what you already suspected.

Life's too short, and the world is too full of literature, for me to bother with this man.

God is worth more than having such pseudo-mystical garbage (judging by Björn's posting) written about Him.
I like the moving shite icon. I'l remember it for when I need it.

Please tell me why some people tend to rush into bookshops and buy the latest fad author. Don't these people try to develop a taste of their own? Do they always fall for the hype, window-dressing, and soft soap sales talk? Talk about Thickoes...

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Eric

Please tell me why some people tend to rush into bookshops and buy the latest fad author. Don't these people try to develop a taste of their own? Do they always fall for the hype, window-dressing, and soft soap sales talk? Talk about Thickoes...

As a Swedish speaker, maybe you're familiar with the old saying "Allting går att sälja med mördande reklam - kom och köp konserverad gröt!"?

I'd say pretty much all big-money entertainment (whether literature, music or cinema) depends to a large extent on the knowledge that as soon as something is hyped, people will want to see what all the fuss is about. You don't sell a product, you sell the hype around the product, you sell the feeling of being in on something that everybody else is in on. The difference between a successful movie and an unsuccessful one isn't necessarily in the quality - it's in the marketing budget.

(Record companies excel at this; if you put out a Greatest Hits album by a long-forgotten artist who had two hits in 1967 and advertise the hell out of it, it will sell. A few years ago they even managed to turn "German Marching Band Favourites" into a best-seller. A friend of mine who worked the CD counter at a major department store said he'd lost track of the number of times customers had come into the store, walked straight over to the rack with the huge sign saying "ADVERTISED ON TV", paid for the CD without listening to it, and then asked him "Is it any good?")

One might speculate that with books, hyping them up is an even surer sell (or at least, it was up until everyone started their own book blog); after all, books aren't as easy to sample as a CD or a movie - the only way to be sure of how good it is is to buy it, and once you've bought it the publishers won't really care if you like it or not. Most people don't read nearly as much as they listen to music or watch movies, and if they don't like a book, they're less likely to tell all their friends that it's shit than they would if they don't like the latest Michael Bay movie... and by the time they do, the friends will all have bought the book as well.

Of course, hype doesn't necessarily mean there's no quality to the product. Which just makes it all the more frustrating. What if this particular bestseller is a actually a good book? I was pretty sure of what to expect of The Alchemist before I started it, though.

</rant>

[Heteronym]

In Paulo Coelho's case, I'd say it has to do with the disturbing rise of self-help manuals in modern times, which has made Rhonda Byrne's The Secret so popular. Today I picked up a book by Epicurus, and one of the first sentences fascinated me: "even when we're young, we must philosophize." But some people never philosophize, so they must consumme the ready-made philosophies of others.

To paraphrase Fernando Pessoa, if you know the Truth, keep it to yourself.

[Eric]

I'm going to continue to give Powl O'Quell-You a miss. But tinned porridge doesn't sound too bad, Björn (I don't know whether you write your name with two pricks, or if you pronounce it B-dzhawn).

I can follow all the twists and turns of the psychology, the brainwashing, that goes on, but why don't these people sell baked beans or Viagra instead? They seem so obsessed with tricking people into selling things they don't want, and thereby screwing money out of the gullible. But surely if all they want is money, why can't they leave literature alone?

[Stewart]

I just realised that I have my (very old) review of The Alchemisti on my blog. I'll just paste it here to reinforce all that's been said before:

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is billed as a modern classic, yet I find it difficult to discern why. It has the feel of a fable; from a time as hazy as the desert in which it is set, and carries the lessons on life one would expect from such a parable. The feelings of distant memory that it creates, however, fashion a gap between the book and the reader.

It begins with Santiago, a shepherd boy, who gives up his customs to follow a dream he has, a vision of treasure found at the Egyptian pyramids. Along the way he meets a king, a crystal merchant, an Englishman, and an alchemist; all of whom, with their passing involvement, provide him with a piece of the spiritual jigsaw that is his life. Finally, when he arrives at the Egyptian pyramids, he learns a lesson in life that brings him happiness.

The novel is short, and, while it gets its message across, a number of other things suffer. The characterisation is lean; everyone is faceless, ageless, and speaks with the same voice, a voice of implied wisdom. Most characters are also nameless; even Santiago, the protagonist, is simply referred to as ‘the boy’ throughout. Setting, also, is a casualty of the book; while we follow Santiago through the desert, we never truly get the feeling of being there. We don’t feel the heat, thirst for water, or shiver when night falls.

The prose in the book is extremely simple, giving The Alchemist the feel of a children’s book. Adjectives, especially when necessary, are rare, so that most things are described as ‘the desert’, ‘a horse’, or ‘some wine’. The desert has no texture, the horse no character, and the wine no flavour. Repetition, also, lengthens the book so that, once wisdom has been spoken, it echoes through the narrative so that each action can be credited.

The Alchemist is a quick read, but it’s not a good read. It has the feeling of a bonding session in the workplace where you discuss the implications of pseudo-situations, only moved from the office to the desert. It’s a self-help book disguised as a novel, the “secrets” of life, though hardly life-changing, are listed as stages in one boy’s discovery. And if any discoveries are necessary, it’s that you don’t need this novel.

I love it when the moral of a story is not to read the story.

[Stewart]

I'm currently reading a book called The End Of Sleep, which is set in Egypt, and there's a small throwaway sentence in a line of dialogue, on the subject of treasure, that makes me wonder if it's a sly dig at The Alchemist. All it says is "A shepherd finds this...". Probably nothing, but it certainly put me in mind of this book.