Against Happiness

[Dave Monroe]

Wilson, Erik G.  Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.
   New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

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. It's time to throw off
the shackles.

http://www.fsgbooks.com/fsg/01_happiness.html

Introduction

http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/FSG/Book/BookDisplayExerpt.asp?BookKey=6432832

Arguing the Upside of Being Down

All Things Considered, February 11, 2008 · Author Eric G. Wilson has
come to realize he was born to the blues, and he has made peace with
his melancholy state.

But it took some time, as he writes in his new book, a polemic titled
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy....

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18885211