“Those after complete happiness very likely wish for complete autonomy; the ability to transport life’s inevitable shocks to some ethereal plane from which they can pick and choose whatever meanings they wish to endorse. This distant place is unreal, unseemly, scared. The happy man is the hollow man.” (Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness)

melancholyOne thing about popular culture: there’s a lot of happy. You can’t turn on a TV or go to bar or attend a church service and avoid positive energy, especially on matters of family, careers, causes, and spirituality. It’s really wonderful, but I must confess that at times, I don’t feel happy, and I don’t feel like feeling happy. At times, doubt prevails, sadness reigns, and happiness rings hollow. At times, I feel the need to escape the incessant pressure to smile.

Are you like me? If so, you will, paradoxically, find Against Happiness, by Eric G. Wilson, to be enormously uplifting. His 150-page, simply written essay decries our cultural insistence on a superficial happiness that robs us of our humanity. We must, he believes, embrace our sadness because it is in our nature to have fear and doubt and confusion in our souls. It is only by exploring our melancholy moods that we can recognize and appreciate our truly happy moments. It’s OK to be sad.

To demonstrate the connection between melancholia and joy, Wilson cites many historical examples of melancholy personalities who achieved miracles of creative and inspiring brilliance. His accounts of the careers of such figures as Keats, Beethoven, Coleridge, Melville, Virginia Woolf, and John Lennon are fascinating. Always careful not to overstate his case, Wilson notes that not all creative geniuses are melancholy, and not all melancholy personalities are creative geniuses. But his character studies are proof positive that our pain and suffering have meaning, bring us and others fulfillment, and are emphatically not things to be buried under a heap of cheap smiles.

Wilson seems to be something of a rationalist and a skeptic, holding firm to the notion that we cannot and should not be certain of anything. He sees life as a state of perpetual doubt, and one one level his book is a how-to manual for coping with this distressing condition. However, Wilson also has a sensitivity to and an appreciation of religion and faith, which serve to make his arguments accessible and reasonable to a wide audience. I do believe he makes a mistake by thinking that religion gives people a false and superficial sense of security. For some this may be true, but for others, faith raises more questions than it answers. At the same time, the confidence of a skeptic may be equally blind and equally superficial.

But I digress. Wilson’s purpose is not to make a case for any particular philosophical or spiritual system. He is simply trying to warn us that a collective attempt to stamp out sadness with mood altering medications and new age panaceas and vapid entertainment is paralyzing and dehumanizing. It is blinding us to real problems in our world that will grow to cataclysmic proportions unless we waken from our smiley face slumber and confront life as it is.

My one major criticism is a matter of style. Wilson is quite a fan of alliteration, and uses it to the point of distraction.

“But some people strain all the time to break through their mental manacles, to cleanse the portals of their perceptions, and to see the universe as an ungraspable riddle, gorgeous and gross.” (page 24)

Four or five sentences of this type in a work of this length are more than enough for me; Wilson tosses them off in batches of two or three a page when he gets rolling. Aside from that, though, I think you will find his style engaging and his command of philosophy, history, and literature impressive. He will force you to examine your soul with brutal honesty. It may not be easy, but in the end it is something we all must do – don’t you think?