Happiness by Will Ferguson - Book Review (22)

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What would happen if the Americans would stop pursuing happiness because they had found it? The Canadian author Will Ferguson asks the question in the form of "What if all self-help books actually worked?". People buy them because they‘re not satisfied and unhappy. What if they became satisfied and happy? Meet Edwin Vincent de Valu working with the American publishing company Panderic Books Inc. His task is to edit self-help books. One day he finds a manuscript with the title ‘What I Learned on the Mountain’. On the bottom of the title page the author, Tupak Soiree, has written ‘Live! Love! Learn!’. In his letter he claims that his book “will provide happiness to anyone who reads it. It will help people lose weight and stop smoking. It will cure gambling addiction, alcoholism and drug dependency. It will help people achieve inner balance . . . Make money, enjoy life and improve their sexual lives, etc. etc.” Edwin stuffs the manuscript together with a letter of rejection into the envelope and throws it into the bin. What he’s completely forgotten is that he has promised his boss to come up with a suggestion for the next season’s catalogue. He has prepared nothing and in the meeting he can only remember the manuscript of ‘What I Learned on the Mountain’, so he stammers something about having found a gem. The boss is intrigued and tells Edwin to show him it. Edwin goes back to his desk and finds the bin empty. Disaster! A wild, slapstick-like chase ensues. He eventually gets the manuscript back and the order to work on it. When he’s done structuring and editing down the manuscript to a length (shortness) that makes it sellable but hardly resembles the original any more, Tupak Soiree points out that Edwin himself has written into the contract that the manuscript is not to be tempered with. Despair! Edwin decides to have only 3000 copies printed as cheap paperbacks to keep the financial loss at a minimum. But the book does not bomb as expected. On the contrary, it develops into the galactic, mega super seller of all times! And what is the result? Ah, think for yourself, it’s the only logical one. You have no idea? Well, then you have no choice, you must read the book. There is no real plot. It is a one joke book and one wonders which twist the author is going to use to bring it to an acceptable end. (A critic) “You can’t help but suspect that Ferguson set up this marvellous premise and realized he’d painted himself into a corner.” I don’t mind! I’ve enjoyed the book throughout, the reason being that Ferguson is a wonderful writer, full of irony, wit and sarcasm. He makes fun of the American obsession with self-help books and writes a vicious satire on the publishing industry. The characters he portrays are hilarious. Edwin, an American Gen-X anti-hero, his boss, a baby boomer who never misses an opportunity of mentioning his Woodstock adventures, Edwin’s wife who sticks Post-it notes all over her naked body so that Edwin knows what to do when making love to her, a librarian who hates books. A reviewer calls ‘Happiness’ "just that wee bit too clever for its own good" Oh no, I disagree! The book is just right. The thing is that the readers should be on the same wave length as the author. They should belong to the clerisy, the literati, the people who cannot only read but do so frequently and for pleasure. You should love language and be able to rejoice in words. ===== If you're interested in my other book reviews, click on the green line at the top of the site (Malus Book Reviews)