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In Praise of Melancholy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
February 2008
On Sale: January 22, 2008
176 pages
ISBN: 0374240663
EAN: 9780374240660
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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 of positivity and relish the blues that make us human.
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