The Virtue of Coexisting with Suffering: On Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

No matter how much stern critics insist that nobody buys books anymore, and if they do buy them they don’t read them, and if they do read them they don’t recommend them to others, the walls and shelves of the publishing market testify that the Iranian audience does not give a f*ck. They buy, they read, and they recommend to others. If you want proof, I won’t go far. I reach out toward the new releases shelf and call the seventh printing of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck as a witness. It’s enough to know your audience well and choose well; to author or translate precisely, to adorn handsomely and splendidly, and to consign it to print. Leave the rest to the publishing market and its inner, self-generating logic. Before a year is out, the print run reaches seven. I hope next winter I can congratulate the publisher of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck on its seventieth printing.

But not everything that comes out of the press finds this fortune—to taste good under the reader’s tongue, to seem sweet in their palate, and to show off on the bookshelves of homes. This success has its etiquettes, its principles, its exigencies, and of course, its strokes of luck and good fortunes. Add to these the “taste of the time,” or the “spirit of the age,” or the “mood of the era,” whose stuff sometimes matches the stuff of a certain book, and for the reading public, it takes on the function of a cane, a medicine, or air, and settles on the mantelpiece of many Iranian families—if not next to the Quran, Mafatih, and Hafez, then at least next to Shahriar, Sepehri, and Moshiri. Out of the roughly seventy thousand titles that enter Iran’s publishing cycle annually, perhaps less than one-tenth of a percent possess these etiquettes, exigencies, fortunes, and the taste of the time together. When these walk arm in arm, get caught between the cover, the hinge, and the stitching, and make a book, then its beauty, together with its grace, conquers the world and catches the Iranian reader’s eye; that’s when printing follows printing, it steps in with good fortune, and the bestseller shelf of the bookstore does not stay empty. In this note, I have a few words to say about one of these pleasant-to-read, handsome, fortunate, and auspicious publications—about The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

One

Let us, for the moment, overlook the theme and content and cast a glance at the form and face of this book. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, in the realm of the publishing craft, is a noteworthy example of collaboration between publisher, translator, and editor in the tasteful preparation of a book. For years, neither have publishers made the effort to revive the abandoned tradition of serious editing of works, nor have translators and authors been willing to hand over their dirty laundry to professional, ruthless editors. We have often heard that during the period of the glory and flourishing of books in Iran—that is, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s—a book would not reach the display window until it had been clawed at by an editor and thoroughly washed in the water of editing. Now, there is no news of those formalities and initiations. Both publisher and author have given up on serious editing and the professional editor. The former wants it to come cheap, and the latter says it’s beneath them. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is an innovative work in this respect, for reviving the tradition of serious, professional editing and bringing the translator and editor from a face-to-face situation to a side-by-side position.

In addition to attending to the duty of editing, the creators (Rashid Jafarpour and Babak Abbasi) have acted very judiciously in choosing the appropriate language. The book’s linguistic model is something between formal and colloquial. The building plan is architecturally engineered, meaning it does not stray far from standard language, but the materials and supplies, instead of being ordered from mass-production companies, have been procured from the wares of itinerant peddlers. The result is a sweet and savory language, with a host of bazaar-slang, popular, and common-folk expressions that strip away the harshness, rigidity, and dryness of epistemological works and create a soft, flexible prose; like the sprinkle of water a housewife scatters on dry village bread—not so much that it sticks to the roof of the mouth like tarid, and not so little that it remains hard and tooth-aching.

Apart from the choice of language, which serves as the engineering plan, the translator and editor have also been successful in rendering phrases and expressions, which is akin to the architect’s bricklaying and wall-building. I must confess, though, that my hand was short of the English original of the work, and I have not compared the Persian of the book with its original language, nor have I compared it with that; but I did sound out one or two discerning friends who, in the field of translation, can hold their own, and who have laid the Persian work over its English original and measured it, and they attested to the precision, correctness, and fidelity of the work.

At any rate, it may be far from the piety of criticism to claim that the translation of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is flawless, like the pure and enduring exemplars of translation in the Persian language, but I bear witness that reading it stirred a noble and intimate feeling within me, and I suppose this single point—that an audience felt no estrangement from the work—is enough for its creators to consider themselves graced with success and achievement. In this regard, I dare claim that the translator and editor have, in the most precise sense, rendered a book with all its linguistic and metalinguistic particularities into another language and culture.

It would be further verbosity to speak of other features of the book's design, such as the cover design, typography, paper, and printing, but it goes without saying that the good taste in translation and editing has overflowed into these matters as well, providing a commodity that is pleasant to handle and pleasing to the eye.

It would be a pity, now that I have enumerated the merits of the work's book design, not to point out one unwarranted shortcoming. I wish the translator had not neglected the obligatory duty, or at least the highly recommended practice, of writing a preface, and had, in a piece of writing, however brief, acted as an intermediary so that the Iranian reader, before entering into an exchange of knowledge, could exchange a few pleasantries and become acquainted with the author (Mark Manson). I am not saying he should have gone to the trouble of laying out a feast stretching from here to there; a cup of bitter tea with a few dates on the side would have sufficed to warm us up before entering the main subject; long live the editor's house, who has graciously provided something in the form of a "Series Editor's" note.

Two

The fame and standing of a book is not merely the product of its content. I am not saying one must write it off to fate, but I believe the hand of fortune and luck cannot be overlooked in this matter. Allure has many arts and tricks. Only one of them is meaning-making and thematic development. The rest are of a different nature. Far be it from me to suggest by this remark that I am diminishing the share of theme in a work's finding favor. Far be it from me to bring magic and riddles, or mazes and enigmas, into this matter and say that hidden forces or unseen helpers raise up or strike down a book. Substance and content are the champion in the arena of culture, and without this essence, everything is unleavened and feeble; but this very champion, in a specific period of time, strikes up a singular affection and rapport with audiences and spectators and finds a fame beyond expectation, whereas in another day and age, with the same substance and content, it is incapable of achieving such renown, fame, and popularity. It is the great fortune and favorable luck of a book that it sometimes falls into alignment and harmony with the taste of the time and the spirit of the age, multiplying the force of its content several times, and sometimes a hundredfold. I suspect The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has enjoyed this favorable luck, having harmonized with the taste of the time, the spirit of the age, and the conditions of the era. In other words, it seems there is a constant, mysterious, and dialectical exchange between objective and subjective exigencies: the text creates a world for external reality, and external reality, in turn, does something to ensure the text finds a hearing ear beyond expectation. In this regard, the auspicious star of a book is the result of the weight of its content plus additions from objective and external exigencies. I suspect what brought The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck to seven printings in one year, apart from its theme, claim, and content, is its harmony and consonance with the current situation or the spirit of the age in today's Iran. The years 1397 and 1398 (2018-2020) were among the most difficult of the past four decades; years when bitterness and darkness rained down on the people from earth and sky. A year when succeeding and making progress in daily affairs seemed as impossible as turning the ring of fortune. The "Success in Seven Steps" books, the "Every Street is Paved with Gold" books, and the "Successful Manager in Three Minutes" books fell out of favor. Such prescriptions were no cure for the weakness of the ailing Iranian heart. Matters had become too dire to be able to extricate oneself from today's tragic situation by an invitation to positive thinking. It was as if the Iranian person needed a manifesto for enduring failure more than a manual for quick and accessible successes. The bitter reality and the bitterness of reality had devalued the currency of positive thinking and cast the lot of fortune in the name of one whose message was a glad tiding for coexisting with suffering and attaining peace. Now the flood of positive-thinking books, which were the prescription of the American capitalist lifeworld for a developing Iran, had subsided, for such kindling could probably no longer warm the cold oven of Iranians' morale. Given such a day and state, it is clear that, for example, Schopenhauer and company's prescription for the good life would seem more tried and tested than the prescription of Anthony Robbins and associates. It is in this sense that I imagine The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was published at the most suitable and most favorable time possible. Now I do not know which was luckier: was luck with the book that it was published at a good time, or was the time luckier that such a book came to its aid? Whatever it was, the door and window fitted together well.

I should not pass over this point either: the wave of attention to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was not unique to Iran, and it has had numerous readers all over the world. In this regard, what Mark Manson has found and included in his book does not necessarily have a geographical character and has been sweet to the palate of the global citizen. Every reader has become its companion from their own perspective and found themselves in its mirror; Iranians in one way, and non-Iranians in another.

Other translations of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck have also been offered; the work of those translators, too, for better or worse, has more or less been noticed and found favor. This in itself indicates that Manson has something worth hearing for the Iranian person, even if the translation is not what it should be.

Third

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a book of few words! Its main point and the essence of its argument, according to my reading and interpretation, are two things:

First, suffering is the “ineradicable wart of life.” What a shocking and bleak expression. If only the world-adorner had made the face of the cosmos smoother and not begrudged removing this tormenting wart—but he did begrudge it. The author of the book, with a kind of regret, says something close to this: suffering is like a clothesline upon which the pieces of the world’s laundry are spread. Without the line, the world becomes a shapeless, meaningless, and terrifying mass of bare things “lying there” that nauseates and sickens a person. Suffering in the world is like the staff line that warms and arranges the cold, wandering notes and melodies, turning sound into song and noise into music. Mark Manson is not a philosopher, but in his book, he seems to accord suffering a metaphysical status. As I was reading his views on the position and status of suffering in the world, I felt for a moment as if I were reviewing the cosmology of the pre-Socratic philosophers, where they said the world is made of water, or fire, or number, or… Manson, too, says the world is made of suffering!

Second, suffering is neither deniable, nor eradicable, nor escapable. Denial is a childish folly or a deceitful betrayal; pinning one’s hopes on the end of suffering is idiotic wishful thinking; flight, too, is a futile, fruitless, and cowardly struggle. So do not harbor fantasies of becoming a Buddha and finding an escape from the samsaric wheel of suffering. This prison has windows and gates but no “way out”; although Manson has no map for escaping the prison, he advises that the proper course for the children of Adam is to stare into the eyes of suffering, to gaze steadily into its harshness, and to accept that one can give life meaning and be happy even with this bitter thing. This eye-to-eye confrontation creates a kind of liberating awareness; something Manson, with an obvious gibe at the Buddha, calls “pragmatic enlightenment.” It is as if he wants to make the students of the school of Buddhism understand that peace lies not in liberation from suffering, but in indifference and disregard toward it, and this is the very subtle art the book seeks to show the reader.

Manson’s invitation is for us to become neighbors with suffering, to fulfill the rights of neighborliness, and to make our existence meaningful with it. He goes even a step further and speaks more plainly. He wants to convince us that the condition for happiness is not the absence of suffering, but the changing of suffering. It is as if he preaches to us that if you are weary of the suffering and tedium of life, do not seek the cure in eliminating suffering, but rather change your sufferings. Choose “meaningful sufferings” and greater, higher sufferings so that better values may find their way into your life, and this is how you will experience more pleasure. Once you have done this, be assured that you will no longer need to pursue happiness; happiness itself will run after you and cling to your skirts. When Manson wants to encapsulate this entire process in a conceptual capsule, he uses the term “not giving a f*ck” and names his prescription “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.”

In my opinion, the author’s entire message is contained in these two points; all fifty thousand words he has gathered over two hundred pages are for the elucidation and explanation of these two words of sound advice. It is clearer than daylight that no one should be satisfied with these two or three pages of my writing and, content with this brief review, forgo the detailed exposition. To say these two things, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck employs a whole world of snake-charming and crowd-pulling techniques, and it is this artful treatment that has caused the book, upon entering any gathering, to make the crowd part like the Nile and open a path for it. But whatever the case, in my interpretation, Manson’s core message is these two sound, sensitive, and sensation-stirring points.

The book is brilliant and memorable in certain passages, for instance, where in the final chapter it speaks of the elixir of death for immortality and introduces the impermanence of the world as the foundation of happiness and not giving a f*ck. In some passages, the book also loses its depth and turns into a psychological sermon, for example, where in the fifth chapter it discusses the subject of “choice.” I cannot claim that reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck brought me closer to pragmatic enlightenment or, as Babak Abbasi, the book’s meticulous editor, puts it, ignited the experience of “openness and acceptance” within me, but in that it has offered a new narrative of coexistence with suffering and has not sought to puritanically flee from it or feign obliviousness, I confess that I had many very pleasant hours with this book and gained blessed insights and flashes of inspiration from it.

From a critical perspective, I suspect that Manson, contrary to what he says in seeking to critique American consumerist-positive culture, has a deeply American-pleasing approach and method. He writes like the positive-thinking authors; he is more after impact than argumentation and proof; he has no patience for deep, theoretical discussions; and when you gulp the book down to the end, you have no idea whether what you just tossed back was philosophical, psychological, biological, sociological, or what? But whatever it was, it was palatable and homey. There is a bit of everything in it; just like the works of the proselytizing positive-thinking writers. This is one of those, but with its own Mark Manson!! Nor does he make clear which lost human end he is ultimately pursuing: happiness? peace? success? virtue? or....

With all that, the publication of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in our culture today is an event. As a book lover, I had a very pleasant experience reading it. The book's merit is that it gives its audience the opportunity for a critical encounter. By virtue of its friendly and intimate tone, it does not trap the reader in the predicament of social niceties, so they approach the book with shame and embarrassment. Like anything else American, it is frank and comfortable, and practically stimulates the reader, in touching the book and its claims, to behave instinctively and not be bound by authoritarian prohibitions. Reading this book crafts for you an experience of keeping company with pain and moments full of peace and reconciliation. And when this companionship comes to an end, you just find yourself as that little orange-clad boy whose picture is on the book's cover; a happy little boy who, with a white smile, mocks his black luck and, with the cabbage he holds in his arms, contentedly boasts to the world. This is kalandari, this is enlightenment, this is the subtle art of not giving a f*ck.

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Manson's invitation is to come, be neighbors with suffering, fulfill the rights of neighborliness, and make our being meaningful with it. He goes even a step further and speaks more plainly. He wants to convince us that the condition for happiness is not the absence of suffering but the change of suffering. It is as if he preaches to us that if you are sick of the suffering and tedium of life, do not seek the cure in eliminating suffering, but rather change your sufferings. Choose "meaningful sufferings" and greater, higher sufferings so that better values may enter your life, and this is how you will derive more pleasure. Once you have done this, be assured that you no longer need to pursue happiness; happiness itself will chase after you and cling to your lap.

The book is brilliant and memorable in some passages, for example where, in the final chapter, it speaks of the elixir of death for immortality and introduces the impermanence of the world as the foundation of happiness and not giving a f*ck. In some passages, the book becomes devoid of depth and turns into a psychological sermon, for example where, in the fifth chapter, it speaks of the category of "choice." I cannot claim that reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck brought me closer to a pragmatic enlightenment or, as Babak Abbasi, the book's meticulous editor, puts it, ignited the experience of "openness and acceptance" within me, but in that it has offered a new narrative of keeping company with suffering and has not sought to puritanically flee from it or feign ignorance, I confess that I had very pleasant hours with this book and gained blessed insights and flashes of inspiration from it.

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About the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson