Whatever I do end up reading, it won't be this.
06 June 2008
Writing like this just doesn't do anything for me:
"The American dream might be a nightmare. What passes for bliss could well be a dystopia of flaccid grins. Our passion for felicity hints at an ominous hatred for all that grows and thrives and then dies--for all those curious thrushes moving among autumn's brownish indolence, for those blue dahlias seemingly hollowed with sorrow, for all those gloomy souls who long for clouds above high windows." (p. 9.)
Now there's nothing I really disagree with there, and it's from a book titled Against Happiness (by Eric Wilson), which is an interesting title. But could you actually finish reading the paragraph above? (I only could because I was typing it, although I nodded off a bit at "brownish indolence.") I couldn't, and the whole book seems to be like that.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'm hoping for bigger things from Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.
Have a good cantankerous weekend, everyone.