David Brooks Comes to Portsmouth Next Month

The Music Hall’s Writers on a New England Stage series is thrilled to welcome the renowned columnist and New York Times #1 bestselling author, David Brooks on Sunday, May 3, according to a press statement.

Brooks will discuss his highly anticipated and provocative new work, ”The Road to Character,” an elegant weaving of politics, spirituality, psychology, and confessional that confronts our current definitions of success and worth and urges us to redefine how we understand the meaning of fulfillment.

The 4 p.m. event in The Music Hall’s Historic Theater in downtown Portsmouth, includes an author presentation and on-stage interview with Virginia Prescott, host of New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth.” The Writers on a New England Stage series’ house band Dreadnaught will play live music during the one hour event.

“Through his well-loved weekly columns, his commentaries on NPR and PBS and celebrated books, David Brooks has emerged as one of the most significant voices in today’s political and social science sphere. He never ceases to turn our eyes towards the extraordinary condition of our everyday lives, often revolutionizing our notions of ourselves and how we live,” said Patricia Lynch, Executive Director of The Music Hall. “We are honored and thrilled to welcome him and his latest provocative work to our community and to The Music Hall stage.”

About the book

With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in ”The Road to Character,” he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our “résumé virtues”—achieving wealth, fame, and status—and our “eulogy virtues,” those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, and faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have formed.

Brooks demonstrates how we’ve become a self-preoccupied society; and how the noise, the fast and shallow communications, makes it hard to hear the quiet voices that steer us beyond our immediate needs. Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, we can build a strong inner character.

He does not offer a seven-point program on finding inner worth or virtue. Instead, he says we learn from inspiration and emulation and inspiration. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.

Brooks traces how these men and women were able to face their weaknesses and transcend their flaws. Each embraced the simple but counterintuitive truth: in order to fulfill yourself, you must learn how to forget yourself.

“We are all stumblers, and the beauty and meaning of life are in the stumbling,” writes Brooks. “Joy comes as a gift when you least expect it. At those fleeting moments you know why you were put here and what truth you serve… Those moments are the signs and the blessings of a well-lived life.”

Deeply personal and profoundly affecting,”The Road to Character,” provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.

Tickets to Writers on a New England Stage: David Brooks on Sunday, May 3, are $13.25 ($11.25 for members of The Music Hall and NH Public Radio). For each 1-2 tickets sold, the purchase of a book voucher ($28, hardcover edition) is required. Event tickets can be purchased at The Music Hall box office in the Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, or over the phone at 603-436-2400.

Signed copies of the author’s discussed work, ”The Road to Character,” can be reserved in advance with the purchase of a book voucher ($28, hardcover edition). Vouchers can be redeemed on the night for a signed book. Additional copies of the book can be purchased as available that evening. Book vouchers are not available online. Call or visit the box office to purchase or for more information.

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