The Road Less Travelled
M Scott Peck
1978
Arrow Books
pp. 304
The road less travelled is a non-fiction book that provides life lessons. I haven’t read what other people think about the book, but I believe it is a best seller. I am surprised that I had not heard of this book earlier. I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend. Frankly, I haven’t quite enjoyed it. It is a gentle reminder to me that I should not fall for best sellers. It has taken me forever to read this book.
The book is divided into four sections: Discipline, Love, Growth and Religion and Grace. After the first section, I have literally had to drag my feet through the rest of the book. I feel that if I had given up on it, I would have used my time to read other books that I actually enjoyed. I was quite excited about the first section as it seemed to connect to what many psychological theories also mention. However, it went downhill very quickly. There is an unnecessary use of unpopular jargon that makes the book difficult to comprehend. While it was initially quite insightful about understanding relationships, and his reference to clinical cases was quite relevant, at later stages the attitude appears too overbearing and cocky. In many places, I was surprised to find it quite judgemental.
This may be a problem of my attitude more than the author’s but I find it hard to digest someone being so self assured in his one size fits all approach to understanding relationships and taking decisions for others. The book is particularly didactic and would probably hold better value for people who want someone else to make sense of their lives rather than making the effort to live through the comlexity themselves. Either approach is good. The former does not hold good for me, so the book does not work for me. But to give the author credit, there is a lot of research and years of hard work that has gone into the book.