Few devotees of Martha Stewart are going to build a Palais de Poulet, then match their wall colors to the aubergine eggs laid by her free-range chickens. And it's unlikely that Abundance's 2.2 million copies are in the hands of many people who actually hauled junk out of the basement last Tuesday. So much so that just thinking about it is enough to lift the spirit. Because there is so much self-help mush out there, journalists like me see authors like Ban Breathnach wearing a KICK ME sign. Sitting in the living room of her comfortable brick house in a middle-class Washington suburb without a touch of wretched excess from her newfound wealth, she readily agrees to show me where she writes her first drafts, even though it's in bed.
Tears are the same whether they fall on silk damask or cotton.
She has current proof of that. She and her husband, a government lawyer and the mayor of Takoma Park, Md., have just separated. Back in 1991 when she started writing Abundance, Ban Breathnach was angry and envious. The thought of continuing to write books about Victorian doilies and manners filled her with dread. She turned to a survey of philosophy, religion, history and poetry, and one day made a list of 100 things that were good in her life.