Week 28: Against Happiness by Eric G. Wilson (Sarah Crichton Books, 2008, hardcover)
I picked up this book two years ago when I was at the College Composition and Communication Conference (CCCC) in San Francisco. A publisher’s booth had a sale of $3 for any of their recent publications, and this one caught my eye.
What drew me to Wilson’s book was his argument-that melancholy is an important feature of the human psyche. Wilson’s is much more than a defense of melancholy. He in fact argues that without it, we are lacking in mental and emotional balance and are delusional in our perception of life. He believes that the importance of melancholy is that is allows us to truly appreciate the beauty of life because we recognize, without being destroyed by, the reality of life. That reality includes troubled times, failures, and the omniscient recognition of death.
Wilson argues that the intense focus on finding happiness that he believes dominates American culture and the self-help section of the bookstore is based on an empty premise-that we should seek out happiness to overcome sadness. He finds in the melancholy individual the necessary tensions between positive and negative that produces true happiness. Those individuals that struggle with faults and doubts about life and enjoy that good times are much more peaceful and content that those that only seek happiness.
Wilson makes a compelling argument about the need for balance between the highs and lows of life. He uses artists across the spectrum-visual, musical, written-as examples of his argument. I think this weakens, in some ways his argument. He tries to walk the line between an enabling melancholy and the destructive forces of depression. A true melancholic balances ups with downs, good with reality; the depressive cannot escape the valleys. Tying his argument to artistic temperaments puts him in the heart of the stereotype about the depressed, suicidal artist. He tries to avoid this stereotype, but in my mind he doesn’t clearly separate his vision of a melancholic personality from the depressed, unhappy individual who seems lost in the negative. I think his argument for balance is very compelling, but I needed stronger examples of the successful melancholic person.
Although his argument needed more development and examples outside of the artistic arena, I found this treatise thought-provoking. I appreciated his argument, even if I didn’t fully buy into it.
Next week . . . The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLulan and Quentin Fiore.