Beachcombing at Miramar or The Narcissist's Lament

2/5 stars simply because there is the occasional sentence that doesn't make me want to tear my hair out.

Maudlin, self-involved whining disguised as wisdom.  Richard Bode apparently spent his time passing judgment on other people's marriages, jobs, beliefs, and hobbies.  Bode comes across as an insufferable man-child who believed anything that cramps his style is evil and he is justified in everything hurtful he does to other people because the only thing that matters is pursuing your own happiness, regardless of the consequences.  Everyone should do whatever they want, no matter the effect on others.  #noragretsnomesayin

UNLESS you're the guy with the surfboard on his car who passed Bode on the road way too aggressively.  Upon that man he quietly wishes death and destruction.  And by quietly, I mean devotes multiple paragraphs to him in a published book.  But surfboard jerk is just living his truth, man!  He's just living out what Bode preaches.  It's all about ME.  I don't want to have to work but I'm so worried about paying my bills.  I'm so lonely, but I gave up my marriage and moved away from my family.  Why am I so unhappy?  I want a woman, but not one who is human in any way.  I just want one who fishes and adores me and doesn't speak until spoken to.  Like Gauguin's girlfriend.

Yes, as if I hadn't already figured out how empty Bode's enlightened philosophies were, I found an astounding passage in chapter 14 about Tehamana*, Gauguin's Tahitian mistress.  Bode praised her to the skies because she was so quiet and asked absolutely nothing of the artist other than to wait upon him.  This is in sharp contrast to Gauguin's wife and the mother of his children, whom he left on another continent.  She was inexplicably bitter towards him.  Gag me with a seashell.

So Bode during the course of the book, goes about passing judgment on all he sees or has seen and pretending this was how he would find himself.  Funny place to look.  He never seemed to realize that criticizing others is perhaps not the way to finding inner peace.  Actual quotation: " I can indulge in endless prattle about my friends and neighbors, dissipating my life's energy a little at a time."  And boy, can he!  Oh wait, he included this in a list of things he doesn't do.  Did this dude even read his own book?

*If Wikipedia is to be believed, Tehamana was 13 when Gauguin "married" her and was one of three temporary wives he had during his idyll, but that's a whole different issue.  Bode's my problem today.