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Happiness TM by Will Ferguson (view source)
Revision as of 16:18, 29 August 2020
, 16:18, 29 August 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Happiness TM
|author=Will Ferguson
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=320
|publisher=Harper Perennial
|date=Jun June 2003
|isbn=006052510X
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>006052510X</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=006052510X|aznus=<amazonus>006052510X</amazonus>
}}
''No one laughed. No one cried. It was, in the truest sense of the phrase, Heaven on Earth.''
... or hell?
Will Ferguson's novel is a what-if exercise based on a question more fascinating than it might seem at the first sight: what would happen if self-help books really worked? It is a clever, funny and gleeful satire on the publishing world and the self-help industry. It also has a bit of a love story and a thriller to it, and on top of that it attacks - even if it wasn't the author's intention- not only the self-help industry as such but the underlying mindset, the concept of ideal person and perfect happiness (or bliss, as some would have it) as removal of all external and internal conflict and excess. And in doing so, Happiness TM also asks rather serious questions about who we are, and what makes us human. The answers provided are not exactly of great depth, but never mind that: after all , it's a funny novel, not a philosophy treaty.
It is also well written, very post-modern, clever book chock-a-block with literary and cultural allusions - after all the three of the main characters are editors and the ultimate source of the events is a compulsive reader. These references are provided in a very self-conscious way, almost as if fulfilling Umberto Eco's prescriptions for a novel written in times when everything has been said before. But somehow it doesn't grate but works rather brilliantly.
Edwin de Valu, a cynical Gen-X-er works as an editor of help-help at Panderic, a B-rate American publishing house. He's married to an ex-prom queen turned financial analyst, a self-help junkie with a penchant for post-it notes and lusting not so secretly after his boss and only friend at Panderic, May Weatherhill. We also have Mr Mead, an aging ageing baby-boomer and MD of Panderic and Dr Ethics, an ex-pillar of Panderic's self-help list, now in prison for homicide.
Edwin fishes out 'What I Learned on the Mountain' from Panderic's slush-pile in a desperate attempt to fulfil a task that Mr Mead had given him. What ensues is the beginning of the end. Of the world as we know it.
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{{commenthead}}
|name=Sue
|verb=said
|comment= You knew I would have to find a copy, didn't you? '''
}}
{{comment
|name=Malu
|verb=said
|comment=''' Nice one! I wonder what gave you the idea to read this book? :-) Cheers, Malu.
}}