You used to see this chap's books a lot in the 1970s - Edward de Bono
Pioneer of what would be later called "thinking outside the box" but what he dubbed "lateral thinking".
This was the big one:
But he milked the idea over the course of God knows how many books - below is just a small sampling.
He even branched out into illustrated children's books (at least that's what I think this is)
Actually, it's not quite a children's book as in a book written for children - it's a book created by children:
"Children aged four to fourteen were asked to design.a dog exercising machine. This unique book is the result: a collection of extraordinary and wonderful designs incorporating every inconceivable device--from a special vibrating loop to exercise the tail to a twenty-foot electric bone."
Damn, now I wish I'd picked up the copy of the edition above I saw in the Berkhamsted branch of Oxfam.
This Penguin incarnation also attractive.
In fact de Bono wrote 85 books, translated into over forty languages - and he carried on doggedly churning them out into the 1980s and beyond, almost right up to his death in 2021. Not all of them about lateral thinking, but the majority in the vicinity of that idea.
I vaguely associate de Bono with a genre of popular non-fiction that I'm rather wistfully fond of - the social malaise identifying paperback blockbuster (The Organisation Man, The Hidden Persuaders, Future Shock et al). The middlebrow discussion point and bone of contention, thousands of copies of which lurk yellowing and forgotten in middle class basements across the world, or go cheap in charity shops. Sometimes I think of taking in these orphaned best-sellers of yesteryears with their obsolete overviews and diagnostic prescriptions for reform and giving them some kind of home. (There's an upper middlebrow left-leaning / progressive intelligentsia equivalent - Neither Jesus Nor Marx, the Marcuse books, Erich Fromm, The Female Eunuch, etc etc - collecting these also appeals).
But probably this is a mis-categorisation, as the lateral thinking books - while designed to work against sclerotic habits of mind and inertial procedures within institutions - should really be filed alongside self-help literature, motivational books, positive thinking etc. Or business world texts that facilitate problem solving, conflict management, negotiation, etc.
For all the technocratic sheen of the presentation (mind-as-mechanism, potentially superlubed and turbocharged) it's not far off those ads you used to see in the newspapers talking about how to boost your memory or techniques for speed-reading. The pitch is "here's One Thing, easily learned, that's going to totally transform your life, increase your productivity, make ambitions achievable".
The emphasis on non-linear thinking, and the polemic against rigidities of all kinds conceivably makes Bono-ism a bit like a managerialist, non-utopian counterpart to the flux and mutability anarcho-politics of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Sidestepping the step-by-step deductive thinking of what de Bono called "vertical logic" - that sounds akin to the D&G opposition of the rhizomatic versus the arborescent.
Fun fact - de Bono was a famous Maltese-r
A great call-back! I had completely forgotten that guy, but as you say he was *everywhere* in the 70s. Whenever I had been dragged to the home of some of my parents' boring friends, I could usually rely on finding a de Bono book to keep me, if not amused exactly, certainly diverted.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't realised just how prolific he was, though. 85 books! He was a one-man industry. A single author essentially dominating the territory now covered by everyone from Michael Lewis to Malcolm Gladwell to James Clear to Jordan Peterson to John Gray (either version). Incredible.
Haha that is a great spot about Marcuse, too. Huge respect for the publishers heroically trying to package Frankfurt School Marxism as a kind of pop psychology. I used to have a 60s paperback of One Dimensional Man with a sexy Pop Art cover that you might have found on a book of Beatles lyrics. Like many of its owners, I suspect, I don't think I got beyond the first couple of pages.
ReplyDeletePsychology was one of Penguin's best selling genres in the post-war period, along with history. Interestingly, it was much less popular in the US market, where comparative religion usually took its place.
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DeleteI didn't know that about it selling well, but yes there are so many Pelicans with interesting-looking titles to do with psychology and psychoanalysis. (Also sociology, social problems, deviance, youth, sexuality etc). Feel like I read a few at the time and certainly with the art work and high-minded, earnest aura they have a collector appeal. I think I would find it hard to actually read them nowadays, though. Literally hard to read - the print is rather small. But also I think my capacity to read the purely educational has withered a lot.
DeleteI do remember getting my hands on a Pelican book about the mechanics of sex at a crucial age and finding it extremely clarifying (although translating theory to practice was another thing altogether). Was I brave enough to borrow it from the local library? Seems highly unlikely. Not sure how else I would have come by it.
I highly recommend "The Rise And Fall of the British Manager" by Alastair Mant - a rollicking read from the late 1970's. Usually available for peanuts.
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