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May 2002

Malice in Wonderland

Two engaging novels that suggest that there can be too much of a good thing.

HAPPINESS **
by Will Ferguson
Canongate, 2002
Edwin de Valu is an editor at publishing giant Panderic Inc., and he is in trouble. He needs to come up with a big hit for Fall, fast. Fortunately, the very thing has just landed on his desk, or, more accurately, in his wastepaper basket: a huge, rambling, mother of all self-help books—one that promises to help you quit smoking, make money, improve your sex life and achieve lasting peace and happiness. When it turns out that this crackpot book actually does what it says, it’s not just Edwin who’s in trouble; it’s the end of Western Civilization. As the book sweeps America, the economy crumbles as people stop spending on tobacco, fast food and fashion and quit their jobs to join alfalfa-farming co-ops. Even the drug dealers go out of business. But who, and where, is the mysterious author-guru, Tupak Soiree? Will Ferguson’s book is a romping satire on what ails America, his twist being that the cure could be worse than the disease. Along the way he takes some delightfully savage swipes at sacred cows from The Name of the Rose to The Celestine Prophesy (“A stupid person’s idea of a clever book”). He exposes the blandness of happiness as prescribed by self-help books. Ferguson bemoans the fact that people don’t want “freedom, with its heavy, burdensome responsibilities … they want to be happy.” He argues that it is the pursuit of happiness that drives progress. If we actually achieved happiness, society would collapse. Ultimately, this is a paean to dysfunction, a plea for living passionately, with all the trouble that it brings. Ferguson saves his most biting satire for the publishing industry (he must have had a remarkably forebearing editor). He throws in postmodern self-mocking jokes: “I hate it when a writer disguises exposition as dialogue,” comments one character, after Ferguson has done just that. He is a clever writer, if sometimes rather too pleased with himself. Although this book raises some big questions, it is in the end just a light, entertaining read. There is a comic-book sense of irreality about it that prevents it from packing a real punch as satire. It could also have benefited from some judicious cuts. In fact, it just needed a good edit.

HOW TO BE GOOD ***
by Nick Hornby
Penguin, 2001
Nick Hornby has carved an enormously successful niche as the documenter of modern man, through his emotionally confused yet lovable heroes. In his latest outing he steps into a woman’s shoes, as he narrates from the point of view of Katie Carr, doctor, mother of two and wife on the verge of divorce. Husband David is a professional malcontent, whose constant sourness towards the world has worn Katie down to the point of taking a lover. David visits a faith healer, mainly to annoy Katie, and is amazed when his long-standing back problem is actually cured. When David goes back to the self-styled DJ GoodNews, he heals something more sinister: David’s soul. Suddenly David sees that he has been Bad, and resolves to be Good, not only to Katie, but to the world. To Katie’s dismay, he starts by taking in the recently evicted GoodNews, persuades his children to give away their toys and sets about convincing his neighbors to give their spare rooms over to homeless kids. Katie finds herself stymied. Her liberal middle-class philosophy cannot find any objections to David’s enterprises, yet she finds them entirely unreasonable. The pious, guilt-ridden David seems just as insufferable as the angry, sarcastic person he used to be. While Will Ferguson attacks the blandness of being happy, Hornby exposes the humorlessness of being good. Like Ferguson, he pushes to extremes a “what if?” scenario that make us question our values and aspirations. Hornby sidesteps the broader political questions that his book raises, bringing the focus down to a discomfiting personal level. This is not just a book about morality in the modern world, though; it is primarily an incisive portrait of a long-term relationship, with its comforts, pathologies and contradictory emotions. This is a more thoughtful book than Hornby’s previous outings. While his books have always confronted the darkness in his characters, How to be Good has less of the comic relief. There is still humor in his fine observation of human behavior, but the sadness is closer to the surface, and harder to shake off, and Hornby denies us a feel-good ending. This is a book that admits that life is more complicated than that.