Books : Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

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Author name: Eric G. Wilson

: Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 152.4
EAN num: 9780374240660
ISBN number: 0374240663
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: January 22, 2008
Publishing house: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 54914
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux



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Product 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, 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 yesterday 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. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.




Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Happiness is a bust!
It's a bit of a dry read, but the overall comfort and joy of knowing I'm OK and not alone in my inability to ever truly reach an extended period of happiness is worth it.


Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - Interesting in parts, but misses the elephant in the room
This book attempts to tackle an interesting and important subject, but ultimately it's a somewhat difficult read unless you are an English/History/Philosophy Major. The book appears to wander around for a while, eventually settling on the notion that it's ok to be `melancholoy', because that state of mind is a requirement of creative genius.

As I see it, the real 'happiness crisis' in the US and Europe yesterday is that we are bringing up a whole generation of children who think that there's something wrong with being sad/disappointed/melancholoy from time to time. We award trophies for merely taking part in sports as if no-one must be allowed to 'fail'. We tell our children that they are `brilliant' at everything, when they patently are not, and *could not* be. Our schools (at least k-5 and beyond) and health care professionals appear to be active participants in this 'happiness and achievement delusion'.

When I grew up in the 60s/70s, failure to win at something was greeted with parental guidance such as "never mind, as long as you did your best [get over it]" or, "its taking part that matters [not just winning]". Today, our kids get a silver-colored cup and a certificate of achievement just for showing up.

So what happens when it dawns on these children (or young adults) that they aren't destined to play for the Yankees or swim in the Olympics? For some, it appears to be depression and a feeling of lack of self-worth. Why do so my teenagers - particularly girls - harm themselves? Perhaps because we've given them an unrealistic view of themselves in the world: We have failed to impart that it's ok to feel sad sometimes; that's its ok not to look like a fashion model; that its ok to lose sometimes; and, that we can't all be the `best at everything' so long as we give it our best shot. The current parenting solution to this self-created crisis appears to be to pharmacological.

This book could have considered these issues and possible solutions in much more detail, which I had originally thought was part of the thesis.

Still, in my opinion the book certainly deserves three stars for raising a difficult subject and I hope the author follows up with something that's a little less academic.



Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - I like the book's big picture, but some of the details seem skewed...
An intriguing book, and I found myself agreeing with much of it, so I'll start with that. The author describes a scene from his teenage years, in which he enjoyed spending summer days in the darkness of his bedroom, blinds drawn, contemplating the cracks in the ceiling, "brooding over lost memories, now envisioning impossible futures." I did exactly the same thing (and still do, sometimes), constantly daydreaming in the dark, daydreaming in school, on the bus, anywhere. Always inside my head. Alas, he eventually "killed reverie and endeavored to succeed," leaving the darkness for the garish sunlight, exiting the "winter of my own mind's making", and so did I.

This book is beautifully written...I'm not sure why so many critics are disdainful of that. Anyway, I also appreciated his description of Jesus, "not a jovial minister but a tortured prophet, a man who realized from early on that the only way to gain salvation is to enter the deepest shadows." How true. I've never thought of Jesus as a "happy" person, for he was often angry (at the market being open in the Temple on the Sabbath, for example) and afraid (to be crucified). Happiness does not make you a good person, a perfect person, a smart person. Several of the world's best inventors, writers, artists, and musicians cannot be described as "happy people". In fact, melancholia makes one more introspective, looking deeper into oneself to find one's identity, to look for answers. Or as Carl Jung wrote, "neurosis is knowledge".

I liked the chapter about Terrible Beauty. "All pretty things are almost exactly alike, while all beautiful events are distinct," writes the author. This makes me think of Tolstoy's opening to "Anna Karenina": Happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Unhappy families are more interesting - no one wants to read a book about a happy family because it would be boring. Pretty things are often boring and similar to other pretty things. No rough edges, no darkness. But the beautiful is unique, deep, powerful. Also, the musician Tori Amos said "Pretty is never beautiful." I agree.

The author likes to criticize capitalism, and while I understood some of his points (capitalism destroys the beauty of nature to build buildings/homes, capitalism ruins American education (in preparing students for capitalism, not the value of education itself), there are positive things about capitalism. Building provides jobs and helps the economy; students should be prepared to live in a capitalist society. That is the reality. Who would sponsor theater, the symphony, and other arts without donations from large corporations? Who would provide the money needed to restore old buildings to save their historical value? A crumbling facade (such as the author's home) may be melancholically beautiful, but not if it becomes unstable as a structure. Capitalism doesn't always destroy. And I think that American education prepares students for capitalism and to value their education..it's a combination. Sure, a lot of students go to college with the main goal of earning a degree that gets them a high-paying job. But that doesn't mean that the student didn't thoroughly enjoy the education. And there are capitalists who don't see money as the equivalent of happiness. Most people know that money doesn't buy happiness, although some marketing firms would disagree.

The other problem I had with this book was the quotation about anti-depressants: "We can take Paxil or Prozac and in a few days enjoy an unreal gratification." NOT true. These medicines may take as long as 2 months until the patient feels a difference...and it may not be a "happy" feeling. I have been on these drugs and they are not "happy pills" but "functional pills". They allow me to get out of bed in the morning, provide energy, allow me to get a good night's sleep. I have never felt great happiness through them. The Prescribing Information for most anti-depressants will not even mention the word "happy" as an indication. The wording is more like this: "May improve your mood, energy level...decrease nervousness and the number of panic attacks." The author does acknowledge, earlier in the book, that he knows clinical depression is more severe than melancholia and may require medication. But he still goes on to criticize "happy pills." A good physician will inform the patient that these pills won't immediately make you happy, or even happy at all. But they will ease the symptoms of depression, which allows one to function in society. I blame the media for proclaiming these pills as "cures" to depression. The manufacturer never made such a claim.

The author also demonizes the suburbs as a "flight from the real," "a virus", an "exit plan." But not all suburbs are homogenous places of escapism. Cities may be more melancholic, but they are also often dangerous, dirty, and expensive. People like fresh air and grass. Cities ... Read More


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Beautiful, important book
As a society, we are in love with happiness. We lust for it, we search for it, we will do anything to have it. And it's almost never questioned. In fact, if you don't want happiness, your own or at least someone else's satisfaction, most people probably think you're crazy and you'll probably never be respected. Here, finally, is an intelligent, philosophical and beautifully written defense of the viewpoint that melancholy is a natural state, that, to a certain extent, being unsatisfied is being true to yourself. Wilson uses examples from literature and history to show that melancholy makes one more sensitive to the beauty of the world and a more authentic, alive human being. For those that want to make the most of life, who want to understand why we're here, this is an essential perspective. An almost perfect book.


Rated by buyers 2 out of 5 stars - One Man's Opinion of a Hugely Complex Issue
The rather simplistic premise here is that we in the West are being medicated into blandness and conformity, becoming zoned-out zombies with "flaccid grins" and that, as a result, our creative spark is being extinguished. What would Beethoven, Van Gogh, Keats, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Wolff, Hemmingway, John Lennon (you get the idea) have produced if plied with Prozac or Paxil? Whilst I wholeheartedly espouse the belief that massive, often debilitating depression has produced our greatest works of art, it is patently obvious that there is a huge price to be paid for such beauty and truth, and that Wilson tends to romanticize the states that oftentimes lead to madness and untimely demise. Nearly all the examples he cites were patently afflicted by clinically depressed states and not just "sweet sorrow" and melancholy, and this distinction is not clarified. The tome contains painful (oftentimes laughably pompous) prose and could readily have been compressed into essay form, more appropriate for a nationally syndicated magazine. Good starting point for a lively, in-depth discusion of a hugely complex issue. However, for the scholarly amongst us, look elsewhere.

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