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Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
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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.
DESCRIPTION:
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 152.4
EAN: 9780374240660
ISBN: 0374240663
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
SIMILAR ITEMS:
• The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Vintage)
• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
• The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder
• The Age of American Unreason (Vintage)
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
Customer Rating:
Summary: An ode to the power of negative thinking
Comment: In this candid and unconventional book, English professor and humanist Eric G. Wilson positions himself as melancholy's champion. He does everything but wave gloomy pom-poms as he extols its role in creativity and invention. As counterintuitive and loopy as his view may seem, Wilson makes a strong, lucid case for feeling glum. Indeed, reading Wilson's book may inspire you trade in your grin for a wholehearted frown. If you seek a change from the deluge of cheery self-help tomes, or if you want to expand your outlook, then step out of the sunshine and into the shadows with this iconoclastic book. Although Wilson sometimes rambles or digresses in making his argument, getAbstract finds that his book thoughtfully affirms the power of negative thinking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A powerful corrective to some modern trends
Comment: I found this book to be a very helpful clarification and expansion of vague thoughts I have had about melancholy over the years. It has always seemed to me that this life and the nature of the world we live in provide reasons both to be joyful and amazed, but also to be sad and deeply despondent. Every day's news provides copious grounds for both reactions.
If one is consistently to exclude either reaction, it's nothing short of dishonesty.
The fundamentalist Christian Church has a lot to answer for in this area.
Wilson's rich prose had me reaching for the dictionary on a number of occasions, but when I came to the end, I felt very grateful to Wilson for a stimulating and convincing read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shiny happy people
Comment: I couldn't tell what have I expected from this book. I mean, what can be wrong with happiness? Few answers come to mind, but they do not bear grudge against happiness in itself. It's more of a looking at the world trough pink glasses, with a blue-eyed idealist mind, making no mention of complexity of the world and it's sorrow that comes as a problem. There are too many people out there, and I think that you can draw from your experience as well, that are out there just having a laugh, rumbling trough the life with a single minded pursuit of happiness and nothing can stand in their way. And there's nothing wrong with that either. Only other possibility is to barricade oneself within oneself, following some kind of Zen, or buddhistic (or existentialist for that matter) way and isolating oneself from the confinements of the world. But, the main problem as I see it, which comes clear upon reading of this book, is not pursuit of happiness - it is the notion of Prozac nation that presents itself as a main theme here.
Now, I'm not American (which can be seen from my usage of language) and I see Wilson's text as an introductory note for understanding of one culture. It has been stated throughout the reviews that it is one-sided text, and that can be clearly seen even from my point of view, but Wilson doesn't try to summarize the complexity of the culture in few lines of text, neither he tries to say - look at me, follow my path and you'll do well. Wilson is talking about problem, one that America has been associated with, but which can also be found in many other countries as well. It is the problem of easy solutions, anti-depression pills, radical medical treatment of feelings that could be imagined as somewhat blue. Following in the footsteps of shiny happy people, those who walk untroubled and are afraid to look into the abyss (in Nietzches words), Wilson tries to shout - "stop! look back and feel the world. There is much more out there than get up at seven, work eight ours and go back home. There is much more than creating "healthy environment" in your workplace. Read! Think! Don't be a mule all of your life." In contrast with self-help manuals (and whatever you think of them as stupid, funny or neglectable, fact remains that they are being written and sold in heaps)Wilson's uses language that draws itself from 19th century, he uses phrases and words that could never be found in those books, forcing its reader to dwell upon them, to decipher them, to feel their poetic beauty. In contrast with self-help manuals, Wilson states that instant happiness cannot be achieved, and even if it could it would be meaningless. It is the process that matters, process that inevitably uses sorrow and longing to be complete and meaningful.
Wilson's book is an interesting read, not big on high philosophy, but piercing enough to captivate it's reader. It is doubtful whether it can make it's reader a better person, but it sure tries hard enough. In any case, it is an interesting perspective upon culture coming from within. Culture on which many hate mail has been written in past years. Wilson's book is a counterpoint for all US haters out there, point which teaches us (if for some reason we still don't know that) that generalized assumptions is something one should avoid.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "The road to hell is paved with happy plans." (?!)
Comment: When I first purchased "Against Happiness," I was expecting a book premised on critiquing the excessive and obsessive "happiness" industry of self-help gurus, over-marketing of prescriptions for every minor ailment, and the "feel good" curriculum. What I got instead was the ramblings of a very self-rightous college professor that, like the gothic teenager, wants to tell us that he is too deep to be happy, and how shallow the rest of us are.
The first thing I notice is that, like so many other "head in the clouds" tenured professors, Eric G. Wilson has a really big problem with both capitalism and anything that does not resemble the life of the mind. He falsely conflates capitalism with the "culture of convenience" (failing to note that many of capitalism's greatest supporters, from Adam Smith to his oft-cited Ben Franklin praised capitalism as a promoter of modesty and termperance).
Second, and perhaps most importantly, Wilson seems to very much conflate the idea of "sadness" and "discontent." He suggests that one of sadness's virtues is its ability to lead to change and artistic invention (Springsteen wrote his best songs, apperently, when depressed; Jung offered his best "insights" when in crisis). But there is a difference between being discontented with what is and being miserable. Had Wilson any psychological wherewithall, he would know that depression leads more often to stasis and staggering feelings of futility than it does to creative innovation. (Innovation is most often created not from sadness, but from discontent with what is.)
The single biggest contributor to this books difficulty of reading was simply the author's "holier than thou" attitude. Wanting to be happy relegates on, it seems, to be realm of the "mindless masses," and preferring tv over poetry is indisputable proof of one's inferiority. Here it is from the author's own words:
"They've [those who want happiness] probably never moved among autumn's mulltihued lustrousness, through the serrated forms of orange and amber and crimson, with heart's irreperably ripped. They've probably not stared steadily at the sparrows lying stiff on the soiled snow. They've not walked by a nocturnal mirror and have been stunned by the face they saw." (Kindle edition, loc. 3623).
To me, this reads like the laughable musings of the gothic teenager who wears their "sorrow" as a badge of honor so that they appear to be intellectually deep. In all honesty, it is hard to read with a straight face.
I suppose that we should all do as the author says and "move among autumn's mulltihued lustrousness," so that we can feel the pain allegedly required to truly feel alive. AFterwards, though, I hope that we all take our heads out of the author's cloud of misery and get back to the human desire to have a decent time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Strangely... Happiest Book Ever!
Comment: This book took me by total surprise. Yes it talks about the value of melancholy. Yes it makes you think about all the darkness that exists. It talks about death... but in a really nice way. It kinda makes you happy. It's about taking life as it is... appreciating the dark and gothic... loving the beautiful mess that is life. I highly recommend this book. It's a quick read that you'll want to go through again and again.
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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. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.
DESCRIPTION:
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 152.4
EAN: 9780374240660
ISBN: 0374240663
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
SIMILAR ITEMS:
• The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Vintage)
• The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
• The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder
• The Age of American Unreason (Vintage)
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
Customer Rating:
Summary: An ode to the power of negative thinking
Comment: In this candid and unconventional book, English professor and humanist Eric G. Wilson positions himself as melancholy's champion. He does everything but wave gloomy pom-poms as he extols its role in creativity and invention. As counterintuitive and loopy as his view may seem, Wilson makes a strong, lucid case for feeling glum. Indeed, reading Wilson's book may inspire you trade in your grin for a wholehearted frown. If you seek a change from the deluge of cheery self-help tomes, or if you want to expand your outlook, then step out of the sunshine and into the shadows with this iconoclastic book. Although Wilson sometimes rambles or digresses in making his argument, getAbstract finds that his book thoughtfully affirms the power of negative thinking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A powerful corrective to some modern trends
Comment: I found this book to be a very helpful clarification and expansion of vague thoughts I have had about melancholy over the years. It has always seemed to me that this life and the nature of the world we live in provide reasons both to be joyful and amazed, but also to be sad and deeply despondent. Every day's news provides copious grounds for both reactions.
If one is consistently to exclude either reaction, it's nothing short of dishonesty.
The fundamentalist Christian Church has a lot to answer for in this area.
Wilson's rich prose had me reaching for the dictionary on a number of occasions, but when I came to the end, I felt very grateful to Wilson for a stimulating and convincing read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shiny happy people
Comment: I couldn't tell what have I expected from this book. I mean, what can be wrong with happiness? Few answers come to mind, but they do not bear grudge against happiness in itself. It's more of a looking at the world trough pink glasses, with a blue-eyed idealist mind, making no mention of complexity of the world and it's sorrow that comes as a problem. There are too many people out there, and I think that you can draw from your experience as well, that are out there just having a laugh, rumbling trough the life with a single minded pursuit of happiness and nothing can stand in their way. And there's nothing wrong with that either. Only other possibility is to barricade oneself within oneself, following some kind of Zen, or buddhistic (or existentialist for that matter) way and isolating oneself from the confinements of the world. But, the main problem as I see it, which comes clear upon reading of this book, is not pursuit of happiness - it is the notion of Prozac nation that presents itself as a main theme here.
Now, I'm not American (which can be seen from my usage of language) and I see Wilson's text as an introductory note for understanding of one culture. It has been stated throughout the reviews that it is one-sided text, and that can be clearly seen even from my point of view, but Wilson doesn't try to summarize the complexity of the culture in few lines of text, neither he tries to say - look at me, follow my path and you'll do well. Wilson is talking about problem, one that America has been associated with, but which can also be found in many other countries as well. It is the problem of easy solutions, anti-depression pills, radical medical treatment of feelings that could be imagined as somewhat blue. Following in the footsteps of shiny happy people, those who walk untroubled and are afraid to look into the abyss (in Nietzches words), Wilson tries to shout - "stop! look back and feel the world. There is much more out there than get up at seven, work eight ours and go back home. There is much more than creating "healthy environment" in your workplace. Read! Think! Don't be a mule all of your life." In contrast with self-help manuals (and whatever you think of them as stupid, funny or neglectable, fact remains that they are being written and sold in heaps)Wilson's uses language that draws itself from 19th century, he uses phrases and words that could never be found in those books, forcing its reader to dwell upon them, to decipher them, to feel their poetic beauty. In contrast with self-help manuals, Wilson states that instant happiness cannot be achieved, and even if it could it would be meaningless. It is the process that matters, process that inevitably uses sorrow and longing to be complete and meaningful.
Wilson's book is an interesting read, not big on high philosophy, but piercing enough to captivate it's reader. It is doubtful whether it can make it's reader a better person, but it sure tries hard enough. In any case, it is an interesting perspective upon culture coming from within. Culture on which many hate mail has been written in past years. Wilson's book is a counterpoint for all US haters out there, point which teaches us (if for some reason we still don't know that) that generalized assumptions is something one should avoid.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "The road to hell is paved with happy plans." (?!)
Comment: When I first purchased "Against Happiness," I was expecting a book premised on critiquing the excessive and obsessive "happiness" industry of self-help gurus, over-marketing of prescriptions for every minor ailment, and the "feel good" curriculum. What I got instead was the ramblings of a very self-rightous college professor that, like the gothic teenager, wants to tell us that he is too deep to be happy, and how shallow the rest of us are.
The first thing I notice is that, like so many other "head in the clouds" tenured professors, Eric G. Wilson has a really big problem with both capitalism and anything that does not resemble the life of the mind. He falsely conflates capitalism with the "culture of convenience" (failing to note that many of capitalism's greatest supporters, from Adam Smith to his oft-cited Ben Franklin praised capitalism as a promoter of modesty and termperance).
Second, and perhaps most importantly, Wilson seems to very much conflate the idea of "sadness" and "discontent." He suggests that one of sadness's virtues is its ability to lead to change and artistic invention (Springsteen wrote his best songs, apperently, when depressed; Jung offered his best "insights" when in crisis). But there is a difference between being discontented with what is and being miserable. Had Wilson any psychological wherewithall, he would know that depression leads more often to stasis and staggering feelings of futility than it does to creative innovation. (Innovation is most often created not from sadness, but from discontent with what is.)
The single biggest contributor to this books difficulty of reading was simply the author's "holier than thou" attitude. Wanting to be happy relegates on, it seems, to be realm of the "mindless masses," and preferring tv over poetry is indisputable proof of one's inferiority. Here it is from the author's own words:
"They've [those who want happiness] probably never moved among autumn's mulltihued lustrousness, through the serrated forms of orange and amber and crimson, with heart's irreperably ripped. They've probably not stared steadily at the sparrows lying stiff on the soiled snow. They've not walked by a nocturnal mirror and have been stunned by the face they saw." (Kindle edition, loc. 3623).
To me, this reads like the laughable musings of the gothic teenager who wears their "sorrow" as a badge of honor so that they appear to be intellectually deep. In all honesty, it is hard to read with a straight face.
I suppose that we should all do as the author says and "move among autumn's mulltihued lustrousness," so that we can feel the pain allegedly required to truly feel alive. AFterwards, though, I hope that we all take our heads out of the author's cloud of misery and get back to the human desire to have a decent time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Strangely... Happiest Book Ever!
Comment: This book took me by total surprise. Yes it talks about the value of melancholy. Yes it makes you think about all the darkness that exists. It talks about death... but in a really nice way. It kinda makes you happy. It's about taking life as it is... appreciating the dark and gothic... loving the beautiful mess that is life. I highly recommend this book. It's a quick read that you'll want to go through again and again.
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