Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy | 
| Author: Eric G. Wilson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 24013
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0374240663
Dewey Decimal Number: 152.4
EAN: 9780374240660
ASIN: 0374240663
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
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Product Description
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. 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 One Man's Opinion of a Hugely Complex Issue June 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The rather simplistic premise here is that we in the West are being medicated into blandness and conformity, becoming zoned-out zombies with "flaccid grins" and that, as a result, our creative spark is being extinguished. What would Beethoven, Van Gogh, Keats, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Wolff, Hemmingway, John Lennon (you get the idea) have produced if plied with Prozac or Paxil? Whilst I wholeheartedly espouse the belief that massive, often debilitating depression has produced our greatest works of art, it is patently obvious that there is a huge price to be paid for such beauty and truth, and that Wilson tends to romanticize the states that oftentimes lead to madness and untimely demise. Nearly all the examples he cites were patently afflicted by clinically depressed states and not just "sweet sorrow" and melancholy, and this distinction is not clarified. The tome contains painful (oftentimes laughably pompous) prose and could readily have been compressed into essay form, more appropriate for a nationally syndicated magazine. Good starting point for a lively, in-depth discussion of a hugely complex issue. However, for the scholarly amongst us, look elsewhere.
Confused June 2, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
The author seems to be confused on several points. First, he can't seem to decide if he's writing to instruct or writing to entertain. It can get frustrating wading through paragraphs of adjectives looking for premises to support his conclusions.
He also seems to be confused about the connection between melancholia and creativity. He first claims that melancholia is "a major cultural force, a serious inspiration to invention, the muse behind much art and poetry."(4) But he later makes the stronger claim that melancholia is necessary for creativity, as its eradication would "lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse."(5)
Please keep in mind that I stopped after the first chapter. Although some reviewers liked later chapters, I couldn't bring myself to wade through further confusion and overinflated prose.
 buy it...or not. May 25, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
 Very Reflective April 18, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
After reading Garrison Keillor's review in the New York Times, I still decided to purchase the book for myself. I have felt that happiness has been overrated in our culture and the author expands on my feelings and gives it life. Who would have thought that melancholy would evolve as a desirable quality? I never did but I experience it everyday. I thank the author and his insights. Thank you. By the way, now I'm happy.
Yes, but..... April 13, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
This slim, dense, nutrient-packed volume is profound, revolutionary, and potentially life-changing. I don't think it ever uses the word "Zen" but it wants you "in the moment," because the moments are going to end -- pretty soon. If you're not very aware, it could alter your consciousness some.
And....we are always on the lookout for stories of Extraordinary Comebacks, to share with others, and collect (some day) in a volume 2, and we found a few more in this book, notably Handel, who was fallen on hard times (1741), and burst his way out of them with a 24-day compositional marathon, stinting on both food and sleep, to create the timeless marvel, Messiah. We enjoyed the forays into Keats, Beethoven, John Lennon and Georgia O'Keeffe.
But this is not a self-help book, make no mistake. It is rather, the anti-self help book. It's ok to be sad, is the message in essence, in fact, it is the human condition. (We knew that, and you did, too). That may be a bit mundane, and obvious, but the author riffs on it at length. Most books tackle how to get of those straits, this one says 'not gonna do that, not gonna go there.'
Crossing the river from individual psychology to sociology and politics, the author asserts that avoiding feelings, especially the bad ones has its consequences: that the ironic, unfeeling Seinfeld generation ("no hugs, no learning") was tailor-made to look the other way for a "corrupt administration's" forever war with almost no protest. (Jerry would shrug at this point....)
Still, it seems to me the human is hard-wired to want something more, a lot more, a greater destiny, something beyond getting on that "little black train that's rolling down the track, the little black train that's not going to bring you back." Brilliant writing here?, yes, perceptive, insightful, and all the rest? Yes, often, but even though it doesn't chart our way to a bliss, happiness, or even a Zen chill, nor does it purport to, sometimes it left us a little.....dare we say it, sad.
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