>Why do we think of W.C. Williams as happy, and Eliot as not.
because we think of all that weight bearing down on Eliot, & of all that
lightness & airiness just sort of rushing through Williams?
Shakespeare's an upper because it's just delirious, all these people
speaking in this incredible way
I find Frank O'Hara a downer, but most people seem to think he's an upper
then i find Kafka and Beckett and Thomas Bernhard to be uppers; but I find
the plays of Noel Coward to be mostly downers, outright tragedies... Blithe
Spirit
>It is a curious subject, 'happiness' - somebody was talking about a country
that now does an annual Gross National Product index for "happiness".
there's an interesting ethnography, gladwin & sarason's Truk: Man In
Paradise (from the 50s) about a small-scale society on the island of Truk (a
place known now for scuba-diving) where all material needs are supplied -
plenty of fish, no nearby aggressors - but the society is torn by fights &
accusations & psychological insecurities of all kinds - It's a stumbling
block for a political theory of happiness...
Edmund
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