our nation’s happiness

“Driven by a desire for happiness at the expense of sadness, bolstered by capitalistic seeing and virtual reality, obsessed with abstraction and delusion, most of us are walking around half blind. Does this blindness partially account for a recent study, reported in Psychological Science, that found that happy people are more likely to be bigots than sad people? Does this inabiity to see clearly further account for the fact, revealed in the 2006 Pew Report on Social Trends, that Republicans, who can be a somewhat warlike bunch, are happier than Democrats? Is our nation’s happiness, its crass self-satisfaction, its wretched contentment, partially responsible for its getting behind a recent war that never should have occurred?”

—Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.

the big yellow smiley face

“Everywhere we look, we see the big yellow smiley face. Everywhere we listen, we hear ‘Have a nice day.’”

—Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.

the true road to earthly joy

“It should not be surprising that [Benjamin] Franklin worked on the Declaration of Independence. In this document, of course, we learn that everyone enjoys an inalienable right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ What many of us don’t know, though, is that ‘the pursuit of happiness’ is secretly connected to the ownership of property. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), John Locke, the great British philosopher, claimed that everyone has a right to ‘life, liberty, and property.’ This statement lies behind the famous sentence in our declaration. This covert connection between happiness and property confirms what Franklin proposed throughout his work: the true road to earthly joy is through the accumulation of stuff.”

—Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.

a never-ending chain-reaction freeway pileup

“The crowd in the great hall had swollen. Boys and girls, practically all of them white, were crammed together from one end to the other. The heat was worse than ever. The girls grinned with their mouths open and laughed at anything and nothing at all. The music was a never-ending chain-reaction freeway pileup with slivers of human cries and shrieks.”

—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004.

a cerise shirt

“‘That’s not Sarc Three, Bev, that’s only Sarc Two. I mean, it’s almost as obvious as Sarc One. I can’t believe they let you out of Groton without passing Sarc. Sarc One is when I look at you, and I say, “Ohmygod, a cerise shirt. Cerise is such an in color this year.” That’s just ordinary intentionally obvious sarcasm. Okay?’
    [. . .] ‘Now . . . in Sarc Two you say the same thing, only in a sympathetic voice that sounds like totally sincere. “Oh, wow, Bev, I love that color. Cerise. That’s like so-o-o-o cool. Unnhhh . . . no wonder it’s so like . . . in this year.” By the time you get to the “So in this year,” your voice is dripping with so much syrup and like . . . sincerity, it finally dawns on the other person that she’s getting fucked over. What you’ve really been saying is that you don’t love the color, you don’t think it’s cool, and it’s not “in” this year. It’s the delay in it dawning on her that makes it hurt. Okay?’
    [. . .] ‘Okay. In Sarc Three you make the delay even longer, so it really hurts when she finally gets it. We’ve got the same situation. The girl’s getting ready to go out, and she has on this cerise shirt. She thinks it’s really sexy, a real turn-on, and she’s gonna score big-time. You start off sounding straight—you know, flattering, but like not laying it on too thick. You’re like, “Wow, Bev, I love that shirt. Where’d you get it? How perfect is that? It’s so versatile. It’ll be perfect for job interviews, and it’ll be perfect for community service.”’”

—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004. The bracketed ellipses are mine, the others are Wolfe’s.

Fool’s Paradise

I used to live on an iceberg

“‘My fellow Americans, I drank a pint of walrus milk once for a bet.
I speak fluent Eskimo. I once ate all the gherkins in Belgium. My brother’s
got a yak in his loft. I fell asleep on a night bus once and woke up in
Munich, and had to get a lift back on a camel. I used to live on an iceberg.
I’ve got a waffle-maker that works underwater.’”

Temporary Village

our visual ray

—Henry David Thoreau, quoted by Victor Carl Friesen in A Tonic of Wildness: Sensuousness in Henry David Thoreau; from Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, edited by David Howes, 2005.

the warm colors

“Of the warm colors, red is Thoreau’s favorite: he loves to see any redness in vegetation. It is the color of colors, he says in ‘Autumnal Tints,’ and speaks to our blood. Red foliage, he writes, shows nature as being ‘full of blood and heat and luxuriance.’ While Thoreau delights in the feast for the eyes provided by reds, oranges and yellows, he realizes that they cannot be the staple of his diet. Thus he writes of yet another warm color, but one sober in its aspect: ‘Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the color of the poor man’s loaf. The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only for October feasts.’”