The Alchemist

What a strange, contentious little book! I must own up to the baggage I brought to it. On one hand was contemptuous dismissal by some highly intelligent, educated people in my life (perhaps coincidentally, they were also dull and without poetry). On the other hand were some of my heroes of radical individuality, Brene Brown, Krista Tippett, Elizabeth Gilbert, that seemed to revere Cohelo and this book. What was I going to think?

I think that a half allegory is a difficult thing to love. Why bring in religious language when Cohelo seems to believe that the forces of destiny he writes about are beyond religion? Why engage with Orientalist fantasies of warring tribes, bandits at the pyramids, fertile oases, if they ultimately do not carry meaning? With this eye, The Alchemist is too long, and not a short book after all.

Maybe I can be this jaded because the message of fearless self-actualization that Cohelo preaches has permeated into the culture. I'm just not sure that this is going to melt the heart of a cynic any longer, if it ever did.

One small minded quibble: for a book that paints its story with such a broad brush, has there ever been such a tin-eared phrase as “personal legend”? I can't decide if Cohelo was deliberately writing around the word destiny, or whether it's just a clumsy translation from the Portuguese.