Pythian pratar review

The point being, we live in a culture with a ridiculous amount of advice being offered by people who have other reasons of their own for offering it, monetary or otherwise. Liv Strömquist produces books aimed at identifying and explaining social phenomena from a feminist left-wing perspective using the graphic novel format and a dose of satire. Previous themes have included romantic love, extreme wealth, astrology and appearance. The Pythia Talks fits in very well. It’s not a book you can read at one sitting: there’s a lot to process in terms of content. One reason is visual: there is a lot of text here, and at times it seems to be battling the images rather than cooperating nicely with them to move the narrative along. While some sort of tension between form and content is inevitable, it feels like the text wins a little too often.

Another reason is the sheer scope of the subject matter, which would probably have been enough for two books, with the second more focused on consumerism. While her earlier book The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV (translated into English by Melissa Bowers) very much did what the title promised with a cast of characters that included Leonardo Di Caprio, Emily Dickinson and Jabba the Hut, The Pythia Talks is looser in structure even though it keeps to an over-arching theme of advice and wellbeing. She takes us through several examples of advisers over the centuries, including Catherine of Sienna, Carroll Righter, astrologist to many including the Reagans, Theodor Adorno, several modern-day influencers and the original Pythia at the temple in Delphi, and looks at what they advised – and what reasons they had for advising it. As the introduction with the skincare woman suggested, it is striking how uninteresting the influencers actually are – Strömquist admits to choosing one because she liked her necklace.

It’s often funny, often informative, and often very good at offering little insights that you find yourself agreeing with, especially if social media algorithms are in the habit of throwing influencer content at you in your daily life. Why is it so important to always be able to say you’re happy? Why do we feel under pressure to be improving ourselves constantly? Because happiness is considered a duty, says Strömquist, and constantly trying to live your best life is an obligation that is just as oppressive in its way as religious rules might have been in centuries gone by. The reason looming behind this constant self-improvement drive is that it helps us avoid thinking about our inevitable death. Death is a character too: a ginormous skeleton carrying a phone and a gun and wearing a shirt and tie.

The Pythia Talks is an enjoyable read that also taps into wider issues. What can a reader take away from it? Possibly a combination of Don’t Follow Advice, Have No Personal Goals and Go Out, and definitely nothing about skincare.