Does there have to be a manual for everything?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/07/2011 (5507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the steadiest and most reliable sectors of the publishing industry is self-help books, those handy little volumes that assure us that every day, in every way, we can get better and better, if only we buy this book and try hard.

There is almost no subject under the sun on which there is not a book offering hints on how to improve ourselves.

They range from How to Be a Better Husband all the way to How to Make your Husband Better — the latter is the better seller — and they are hugely popular among incorrigible optimists.

One might think such books are the product of a 20th-21st century world where men are no longer men and women are almost unrecognizable, but the truth is they are almost as old as inadequacy. The 19th century, for example, abounded in books advising women on how best to endure the sexual side of marriage — lie back and think of the Empire. To cater to more traditionally masculine interests, in 1885 the anarchist Johann Most published Revolutionary War Science: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, etc., etc., which I believe is, regrettably, now out of print, although it could hardly be more timely in today’s market.

I say regrettably because I would have been tempted to use the book last week when I was confronted by a broken toilet. The little chain thing that makes it flush was broken. I couldn’t fix it and it confounded even my son, who is sometimes sort of handy in a six-fingered way. I had to call in two sisters-in-law who finally got it working. The humiliation was, I suppose, preferable to blowing up the bathroom, but it underlined for me just how deeply we are emerged in this age of ineptitude when you need to either call a professional or buy a self-help book to do even the simplest chores.

There is even a self-help book on how to plan a picnic. Personally, I hope I never to have to go on a picnic again in my life.

Unless you are a calf-eyed 17-year-old boy so desperately infatuated with a 16-year-old girl that you are willing to endure ant bites, wasp stings and sunburn for the sake of fantasies that will never be fulfilled, picnics are pure hell.

But even so, surely we are not so heavy with hopelessness that we can’t go on a picnic without expert advice — can’t we just throw some beer and sandwiches in a cooler, grab a blanket and find some place free of asphalt? Apparently not. The Free Press this week listed at least 10 must-dos in planning a picnic and one suspects that’s just the beginning. Which means, of course (good news), that I couldn’t go on a picnic even if I wanted to, unless, of course (bad news), I called in my sisters-in-law to organize it.