Solace for the Disenchanted

Michael Ignatieff’s On Consolation could not be more urgent. The book is subtitled Finding Solace in Dark Times, and who would dispute that these are dark times?

But consolation is a tough sell in the results-oriented marketplace of self-help. “The consolation prize is the one you don’t want to win,” Ignatieff writes. “A culture that chases success does not devote much attention to failure, loss, or death.” Elsewhere, he admits that “consolation may be the work of a lifetime.” You might as well title a book “The Sisyphean Futility of Tidying Up” or “Think and Grow Old.”