Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

published	January 22nd 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0374240663 (isbn13: 9780374240660)
ebook
pages	160
description	Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, o...more [close] Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life: Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy. More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let’s embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. It’s time to throw off the shackles of positivity and relish the blues that make us human. [close]
date added	06-23-07 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 312)

Katherine rated it:

05/17/08

bookshelves: moods, newer-nonfiction

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: freshman comp classes, as a companion volume (negative examples) to strunk & white.

It's no secret that I'm into books about our inner mental states, and the trouble they sometimes give us. So when a review copy of "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy," by Wake Forest University English professor Eric G. Wilson came to the office, I greedily snatched it up.

What we've got here is a collection of four essays plus an introduction and conclusion. Wilson lets on that he's experienced depression, which he prefers to call melancholia, all his life. He doesn't go i...more It's no secret that I'm into books about our inner mental states, and the trouble they sometimes give us. So when a review copy of "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy," by Wake Forest University English professor Eric G. Wilson came to the office, I greedily snatched it up.

What we've got here is a collection of four essays plus an introduction and conclusion. Wilson lets on that he's experienced depression, which he prefers to call melancholia, all his life. He doesn't go into his own personal experience much, but enough to let us know that he's slowly decided to take pride in his mental constitution. He is a melancholic and proud of it.

When he's not talking directly about himself, Wilson is using examples from literature (he likes Melville and Coleridge), or making broad sociological/philosophical claims about America at large. These claims fill most of the first essay, and I think they're the weakest part of the book. They're sweeping and not backed up, so I found myself disagreeing with him every step of the way, just out of crankiness. He argues that the majority of Americans are what he derogatively terms "happy types": not genuinely happy, but sort of Stepford-sitcom-hyperconsumerist happy. That's not a super new argument, I don't think, but it's one that I could probably have much sympathy for if it were presented in a subtle, persuasive way. Instead, Wilson takes such a superior, we-sensitive-souls-versus-all-those-vulgar-Americans tone, that I'm dying to separate myself from hm any way that I can. When he talks about the "mall mentality" afflicting these sanguine Americans, I feel like I'm reading something from the late '80s or early '90s. When is the last time you heard someone inveigh against malls? Wasn't that all the rage 15 years ago? One gets the feeling that Wilson's critique has been forged without a lot of direct observation of the world around him. I would have appreciated more specific details: show me a "happy type," for real, or else just stick to talking about yourself and/or the books that you know.

Overall, Wilson's point is that melancholy can be a fertile state of mind. He talks quite a bit about famous artists and writers who struggled with their moods. He seems to be saying that melancholics perceive the world more deeply than other kinds of people. But here we get to the root of my problem with the book: it's not his message, which is sort of fine-but-not-earthshaking. It's his tone. I didn't know that anyone still made prose in this particular shade of purple. Wilson writes, I'm afraid, like the lifelong English professor who's finally getting a chance to write the "creative" book he's always wanted to do. At last, a chance to be poetic, to give free rein to the imagination! Batten down the hatches, people. Wilson's hyper-aestheticized version of melancholia is enough to make the J. Peterman catalog sound staid. (And yet, it does sound like the language of advertising. He's got the almost-Victorian maudlin thing down cold.)

"We melancholy souls no doubt feel keenly the loss of our great old cityscapes and our forests and marshes. We love the beautiful ruins of aged buildings. We love the intricate architectural designs, the carvings and the mosaics and the rough stones. We love high ceilings and crown moldings. We love worn-down hardwood floors. We love the smell of rusting radiators. We love rickety windows that rattle in the wind. We also adore those ancient and lovely woodlands where we can walk alone and hear distant geese honking over the horizon. We can't get enough of trees in winter, of the thin brownish pines wisping among the oaks that never move. We are mad about the mucky earth covered in dead leaves. We inhale the nostalgic air and feel alive." (58-59)

Okay. So "we" love crown moldings. Even if Wilson weren't presuming to ascribe his bourgeois tastes (I mean, he knows they're bourgeois, right???) to all of us, I'd still prefer 20,000 words about J. Peterman's weathered but loyal leather mailbag.

"Against Happiness" is a good example of a book whose delivery and sloppy argumentation completely turned me off from some conclusions that I'd usually more or less agree with.
...less

Like this review? yes

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

discuss this book

friend reviews (0)

lists with this book

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 312)

book data (includes all editions)

blog this book

popular shelves

other editions