One More Theory about Happiness

by Paul Guest

Book Overview

"In these lyrical, searing pages, Guest manages to break our hearts and put them back together again."
--Ann Hood

In the tradition of Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face, One More Theory About Happiness is a bold and original memoir from the acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Paul Guest, author of My Index of Horrifying Knowledge. A remarkable account of the accident that left him a quadriplegic, and his struggle to find independence,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061685186
• ISBN13: 9780061685187
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

"What Awaited was the Rest of Your Life"

This gripping memoir is an homage to resiliency, strength and courage. It is written by Paul Guest, now 27, who had a cataclysmic accident when he was 12 years old. While riding his teacher's old 10-speed bicycle, which had no brakes, he crashed and broke his neck. Since that day he has been confined to a wheelchair, virtually a quadriplegic. Paul is a poet and this book is written in a straight-forward, no-nonsense manner. The memoirs's themes are tough and some of the book is painfully difficult to read. However, he is at no time maudlin and the poetics of his words cry out from the page. This is a man who knows his vocation, who was born to write. "The first poem I ever wrote came to me like an accident of the mind. A blip, noise that had no apparrent cause." Paul was "thinking of nothing particularly literary, watching the sky and the visible world happen outside the window, when he began to hear in his head the rhythms of language, the propulsive patterns of a poem, and though he had no idea why, it was suddenly imperative that he write it down." "There was no doubt, none, that I had stumbled on to something essential about himself, who he was and who he might become, and all around him the future seemed to crackle like a storm. This is what I am supposed to do, he thought,. After that moment, he never doubted it." Paul's journey to self-discovery begins when he is twelve years old. He is graduating from sixth grade and is invited over to his favorite teacher's house. She gives him a reading test which he is able to ace from beginning to end. He is in the gifted program and is obviously verbally gifted well beyond his years. His teacher loans him a very old bicycle, so old that it is covered with cobwebs. Paul knows the brakes don't work but figures he can steer the bicycle to safety when the time comes. However, when the time comes, Paul lands in a drainage ditch with the third and fourth vertebrae of of his neck broken. The treatment he received at the time of the accident was not state of the art and may even have made his situation worse. He spends months in an Atlanta rehabilitation facility undergoing extensive and painful therapies and surgeries. He is able to remain in rehab until he reaches the point where they feel that he will no longer make any improvement. This comes sooner that Paul would like. He is released to his home where his wheel chair is too narrow to fit into the bathroom and he has to be carried by his mother. His pride is in shambles. He likes naked a lot of times for washings, examinations, changing of urine bags, etc. Though his family is tender with him, Paul feels remote and 'other'. In the rehab center he felt like one of the others, as though he fit in. "Disability isn't so much about the loss of control as it is about the transferal of it. From yourself to someone else, to loved ones, strangers. To devices." Paul begins to regain some sensation in his body, most at chest level

Best memoir I've read

"One More Theory about Happiness" is a moving memoir of Paul Guest. As a kid, he is severely injured in a bicycle accident that leaves him a quadriplegic. . Despite being unable to physically move and all the health problems that come with it (disreflexia, muscle degeneration, etc), he has been able to accomplish more in his life than most able bodied people. Mr. Guest takes the reader through the most intimate aspects of his injury and life. When reading a memoir, I have to feel as though I connect with and like the author. I definitely liked Mr. Guest and connected with his writing. He is a poet by trade and uses his poetic skills to bring depth to his memoir. The title of his memoir makes it seem like Mr. Guest is going to expound on happiness and how to achieve it. However, this memoir is nothing like that. It's not even about overcoming adversity. The reader is free to take from the memoir what he/she wants without the author pushing a theory down the reader's throat. In other words, don't judge this book by its title. Overall, I thought this memoir was great and is probably the best memoir I have read. I wish it had been longer, but Mr. Guest is able to convey great depth in this short book.

Literary memoir of building a life after a tragedy

After breaking his neck bicycling down a hill at 12, the author somehow has to rebuild his life as a quadriplegic. Years of surgeries and rehab and trying not to hope too hard, but unable not to, leave him acerbic, witty, somewhat detached from life, yet desperately wanting, like all of us, to find his place. The author is fantastic at using few words to give a complete picture of a scene, and his writing is crisp and keeps you glued to the page. If you've enjoyed other literary memoirs, like Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking or Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty, then you'll know the kind of analytical, emotional but never soppy or melodramatic, sparse yet beautiful prose you'll find here. It's the author's emotional journey to find his place in the world. What this book is not: it doesn't try to be inspirational or uplifting, and the ending doesn't feel complete in any real way. I kind of think the author's too young to finish a memoir, which could be good news if he writes another one as his life unfolds. I personally would have liked more - more details, more stories, I'd love his poetry to have been integrated into the book, and possibly some photos - it's a slim book and feels incomplete. But the writing is so crisp and beautiful, and the author's skill at observing life and portraying it in words makes this well worth the read.

Moving memoir; poetic, but not melodramatic

The official copy says, "Paul Guest was 12 years old, racing down a hill on a too-big, ancient bicycle when he discovered he had no brakes. Trying to steer into anything that would slow down the bike, he hit a ditch, was thrown over the handlebars, and broke his neck." The story follows his recovery and his progress into adulthood as a quadriplegic, up to and culminating (save for a brief epilogue) with his publication and public reading of his first book of poetry. But there's no need for me to summarize the book. You can read the description anywhere. You want to know if it's good. Yes. This is a fascinating memoir. Guest is candid - almost ruthlessly so, when describing his youth when his wounds were raw - and gifted with the ability to focus on the things that matter, the moments that defined his existence. The book is spare, coming in at under 200 pages, but while it isn't a diary of his daily existence it doesn't feel incomplete. That's a poet for you, I suppose. There are things he doesn't describe - like the mechanics of dining that send him to the far corners of the cafeteria - but simply by noting that to the far corners of the cafeteria he goes he manages to convey so much. We feel the isolation, and it's enough. The book is often disquieting. Guest doesn't remotely wallow in pity, but you'd have to be completely devoid of empathy not to feel the weight of his situation yourself. The sometimes matter-of-fact, sometimes almost philosophical method of his presentation, though, kept me at least from feeling overwhelmed by it. This is a masterful skill, I think. If it gets to be too much, we disengage automatically--overload and desensitize for self-preservation. He kept me engaged from page one, kept my feelings open and present, kept himself human and real. He's not a symbol, either of tragedy or triumph. He's just a guy who went through this who is willing and able to tell you what it's like. Is it the book for you? It depends, I think, on your stomach for poetry. Not that there's any of that (not literally) in here and this book is concrete enough in places, but overall it's far more reflective, introspective. Downright beautiful, I think. But melancholy. It is not reassuring or uplifting or inspirational - not in the way that, say, Joni Eareckson Tada's biography is. It reminded me more, in a way, of James Joyce's "The Dead." This is more than a look at a person's body, his life. It's a glimpse of his soul.

Deeply personal, moving, and powerful

If there ever was a person who is the embodiment of the trials of the refiner's fire, it would have to be Paul Guest. This memoir only cements my opinion that his is an incredible person blessed with a wonderful gift, and some would say cursed with the most terrible of curses. At the age of 12, Paul was involved in a foolish childhood accident that led to a broken neck. From then on, his life was spent in hospitals and rehab centers, home, colleges, and away on his own. Whild many of us would curl into our minds and lock ourselves away, Paul has managed to take his imprisonment in a quadriplegics body and turn it into an amazing journey of freedom. After reading this memoir, I am convinced there are few people more sure of themselves, their abilities, and their potential than Paul Guest. The book starts of as a depressing, heart-wrenching journey from a 12 year old whose life is changed once blazing summer afternoon, and ends with a man who has matured and is wiser by far that many of us on this planet. Along the way, we are taken from the highest of highs (love and fumbled attempts at intimacy) to the lowest of lows (being mugged in an elevator). Through it all, Paul retains his sense of self- his humor, his heart, his pain, his anguish, rage, and resignation. I can't really describe this short memoir more than this. On a page within, Paul is having an emotion conversation with his father- in which his father references the biblical verse of Job 23:10 - "When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Paul Guest is gold indeed- a wonderful example of strength in adversity and victory of spirit amongst the most crushing defeat of the body.