Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

by Eric G. Wilson

Book Overview

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:Stumblingon Happiness;Authentic Happiness: Using the New PositivePsychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment;TheArt of Happiness: A Handbook...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374240663
• ISBN13: 9780374240660
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Good for perspective

I really liked reading this. It was short but well written and gave me a lot to think about. My biggest take away was that we all need sadness/despair to truly appreciate happiness. It’s not reasonable to be happy ALL the time.

An ode to the power of negative thinking

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.

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.

buy it...or not.

If you look at this book, read an excerpt, and _still_ scratch your head about it...this book is, quite simply, not for you. If, however, you heard about it on NPR or read an article or read an excerpt and it immediately called to you on a fundamental level, this book absolutely is for you. This book was a fantastic way of describing the "me" that has always been indescribable. I found in its pages a reassurance that I was not alone and it was perfectly acceptable to be this way. The author does not simply rail against the "delusions of happy" today's world tries to spin for us, it opens up and describes the melancholy soul as well. I found this book as a salve to the questions of my own inner melancholy.

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

Quick and interesting read, yet with a timely, powerful, and important message -- a message that may not be initially welcomed by many (most), yet surprisingly refreshng and healing. A much needed tonic for an epidemic of self sabatoging social denial. Along with Wilson's well written description and explanation of the sane reasons to respect meloncholy, it is enhanced with short biographies and examples from literature which make it interesting as well as informative. I'm the better for having read it, as well as personally "justified" and "validated" in what have been my general observations on the subject -- observations that are not widely welcomed, yet were they to be welcomed would prove to be an elixer and boost for individuals and society at large. Thank you, Eric G. Wilson. Well done. I am grateful.

The Muse- Melancholy

This book is in one sense a diatribe against the Happiness Industry , the whole Positive Psychology shtick, the mentality which says you have a right to happiness, and you should be happy, and if you are not happy something is wrong with you, and you must do everything possible to make yourself happy, and show the world that you are happy , because happiness is success. It is against the Culture of Superficiality which would make us all plastic robots pleasure- hooked forever. On the other hand and more seriously it is a study of Melancholy and its uses in literary and artistic creation. This positive side of the work seems to me a much more persuasive than the attack on the Happiness Industry. My own sense is that there is so much suffering and pain in the world, and that each human being at some point or perhaps throughout their lives has so much of it, that it doesn't make much sense to attack those who are trying to alleviate that suffering. Or to put this another way. I don't buy the figure which is cited that eighty- five percent of Americans consider themselves happy, unless that is we combine that with another figure that ninety- five percent of people lie at one time or another. In any case this is pretty much irrelevant to the heart of this book which again provides examples of the way the use and transformation of Melancholy create great Art and Literature. Wilson is not simplistically and stupidly advocating that people become depressed. He writes, "Depression (as I see it, at least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything one way or another. In contrast, melancholia generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing." Wilson writes beautifully in showing the way the great poet of Melancholy Keats was also a person of tremendous courage in contending with the very many losses and trials he had in his brief life. As Wilson understands it Melancholy leads us to struggle with the polarities and complexities of Existence. He speaks about how it moves us toward striving towards perfection, using our freedom in a fragmented reality to move towards greater connection and wholeness. He is of course not alone in seeing how the darker side of our heart and mind has moved us to great literature. Kay Redfield Jamison one of the world's foremost experts on Manic -Depression has written on this subject. The great Art-Historian Rudolf Wittkauer studied the Saturnic dimensions of Creation. The writer Amos Oz often says that almost all great Literature comes out of suffering, of difficulty. I do not buy the 'Against Happiness' straw- man part of this book as I do not believe the the world is in danger of being overcome by universal happiness. The studies in fact show that Americans are not on the whole more happy today than the