I wondered, when I first examined the title: what kind of person would write such a book?
Existentialists no longer mope about cafes, so I doubted he was a philosopher. Perhaps a mental health professional? No, happiness is their golden goose.
None too surprisingly, a professor of literature (Eric G. Wilson, called Manic G, by his homies) wrote the book--more precisely, a professor of Romantic literature. What a depressing field of study. Wordsworth running through the Lake District chasing his sister. Coleridge cut off in the middle of "Kubla Khan" the world's most artistically productive opium trip, by an insurance salesman. The collapse of the French Revolution in 1789 and the subsequent interruption of the Tour de France for a few years.
Guess which Eric G. Wilson doesn't like happiness
Happiness is a word--like crankset, nipple wrench and lube--with various connotations. Ambrose Bierce, in his "Devil's Dictionary" defines happiness as "An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." Plato's eudamonia has been translated as happiness, but is expresses the notion of possession or control by good spirits. The Beatles said happiness is "a warm gun."
Happiness is related to happenstance and the fortuitous intervention of chance or fate. Oedipus, after happenstance has ruined him, warns us to "count no man happy until that day he goes down into the grave." The old limerick states:
See the happy idiot
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were an idiot.
My God! Perhaps I am.
Happiness is a state of mind. Ignorance is bliss (i.e., happiness). Happiness is sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
The connotations of happiness suggest confusion and disagreement about it. The place to start is not by disavowing happiness, but by agreeing that there is something we all desire, and then trying to define it.
We all want happiness, we just may not know precisely what me mean when we say that. Perhaps if G-Manic had titled his book "Defining Happiness," I could condescend to read it, but as it is, I think I'll ride my bike instead.
2 comments:
Wilson's speculation about early man:
While the healthy bodies of the tribe were out mindlessly hacking beasts or other humans, the melancholy soul remained behind brooding in a cave or under a tree. There he imagined new structures, oval and amber, or fresh verbal rhythms, sacred summonings, or songs superior to even those of the birds. Envisioning these things, and more, this melancholy malingerer became just as useful for his culture as did the hunters and the gatherers for theirs. He pushed his world ahead. He moved it forward. He dwelled always in the insecure realm of the avant-garde.
/quote
Depression: every bit as annoying in the prehistoric as the present. Someone please drag this man from the cave and "mindlessly hack" away until he shuts up.
Ha! Notice the annoying alliteration in Wilson's prose: "sacred summonings, or songs superior" and "melancholy malingerer."
Hey Wilson, you should shut your shtinkhole, shad shmuck.
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