NONFICTION - March 26, 1995

LIVING WITHOUT A GOAL: Finding the Freedom to Live a Creative and Innovative Life by James Ogilvy (Doubleday Currency: $22.95; 197 pp.). Lifestyle advice from Friedrich Nietzsche? Indeed: former philosophy professor James Ogilvy quotes him a number of times in this book, inspired in part by a passage from Nietzsche’s “Will to Power�: “It is only late that one musters the courage for what one really knows. . . . When one moves toward a goal it seems impossible that ‘goallessness as such’ is the principle of our faith.� Ogilvy, now an international consultant based in the Bay Area, has written “Living Without a Goal� for a business-oriented publishing imprint, but it’s hard to envision his intended audience: Skeptical readers would say it’s philosophy-professors-turned-business-consultants following midlife crises.

The book, Ogilvy writes, is “about designing life artistically rather than engineering life mechanically,� and that feels about right, although the idea’s development isn’t very effective. He devotes a chapter to Howard Hughes, telling the familiar tale of how Hughes’ achievements--wealth, fame, the ability to control his world--didn’t bring fulfillment. Ogilvy creates Lila and Spike, characters following, respectively, a “Grand Goal� and almost nihilistic goallessness, and describes how their behavior short-circuits any chance of lasting personal satisfaction. Ogilvy praises--surprisingly--sublimation (“an artful and creative boot-strapping operation that generates more from less�) and a degree of narcissism (“The celebration of self becomes a song for the ears of the other, not for the sake of self-aggrandizement but for the benefit of shared acts of artful self-creation�), and touches on ideas from Freud, Marx, Ferdinand de Saussure, et alia and one often wonders how strongly these references are tied to the author’s central theme. Bottom line: Newt Gingrich will probably invite the author to a well-catered weekend retreat, while others will speculate that Ogilvy has put business-as-usual wine in New Age bottles.