the secret of life

“Melancholy is a the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”

—Henri Frederic Amiel, quoted by Eric G. Wilson in Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, 2008.

memento mori

“It is now that we understand the great profundity of the old idea of the memento mori (remember that you will die). Meditative souls of the Middle Ages often adorned their tables with skulls or kept close by etching of skeletons engaged in the danse macabre. Later, during the early Renaissance, funeral art featured grim reapers or skull and bones. Even later large clocks had engraved upon them mottoes, such as ultima forsan (perhaps the last) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat (they all wound, and the last kills) or, perhaps the best known, tempus fugit (time flies). Seen in the light of Keat’s linkage of melancholy, death and beauty, these motifs do not appear to be morbid but rather celebratory, vibrant gestures toward life’s ambrosial finitude.”

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

XTT Part 3: The ‘Black Art’

a new swoosh deal

“The Wave obviously thought of Buster Roth as a lower thing, a big-time college coach who made more than a million in salary plus at least twice that in endorsements, public appearances, life-is-like-a-basketball-game motivational speeches for businessmen, and swoosh deals, as they were known because of the swoosh symbol of the Nike company, still the biggest swoosh dealer of them all. In a swoosh deal, the coach dresses the entire team, from top to bottom—jerseys, shorts, basketball shoes, and socks—in the company’s products, with each item identified by a logo—in return for . . . nobody ever seemed know exactly how much. But it was known that Nike all by itself had a $200 billion advertising budget and that swooshing, also known as ‘branding,’ was their most important form of advertising. As coach of last year’s national champions, Buster Roth had just signed a new swoosh deal, this time with the up-and-coming And 1. The numbers being bruited about were phenomenal. Whatever the sum, every cent of  it went to Coach.”

—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004.

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