I've recently been referencing this book with a pull quote from a recent review: What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?
About the book, Lewis Black says: I have never been Mr. Happy, but after reading Against Happiness, I felt a lot better about myself. It almost made me happy. An important book and a stunning reminder, in these troubled times, that there are important lessons in our pain and that a smile may make a better moment, but not a better world.
Publishers Weekly says: This slender, powerful salvo offers a sure-to-be controversial alternative to the recent cottage industry of high-brow happiness books. G. Eric Wilson claims that Americans today are too interested in being happy. (He points to the widespread use of antidepressants as exhibit A.) It is inauthentic and shallow, charges Wilson, to relentlessly seek happiness in a world full of tragedy. While he does not want to romanticize clinical depression, Wilson argues forcefully that melancholia is a necessary ingredient of any culture that wishes to be innovative or inventive. In particular, we need melancholy if we want to make true, beautiful art. Though others have written on the possible connections between creativity and melancholy, Wilson's meditations about artists ranging from Melville to John Lennon are stirring. Wilson calls for Americans to recognize and embrace melancholia, and he praises as bold radicals those who already live with the truth of melancholy. Wilson's somewhat affected writing style is at times distracting: his prose is quirky, and he tends toward alliteration (To be a patriot is to be peppy: a person seeking slick comfort in this mysteriously mottled world). Still, beneath the rococo wordsmithing lies provocative cultural analysis.
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy |
