Throughout history, humans have felt pain, boredom, and dread. How about happiness? Evans tells us that ‘widespread happiness has never actually happened. The gospel of joy might just be a scam.’
After establishing his question (‘is happiness all it’s cracked up to be?’) Evans spends the rest of the book exploring ideas around ‘happiness’, supporting his case with evidence and anecdotes drawn from the wisdom of ancient and modern history, culture, religion, capitalism, education, childhood, KPIs, television, hormones, psychology, science and social media (‘feelings of inadequacy are now available on demand, for free and delivered straight to our phones’).
With misery at its core, the book certainly lifted my mood! Even the glum donkey on the cover made me laugh. I found myself reading selected paragraphs aloud to others, the ideas and humour immediately resonating. The language and phrasing are agreeably everyday, conversational and informal. Delightful are the regular insertions of witty direct address to the reader. A joyous moment was realising the 24 chapters are named after popular songs (e.g., I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Under Pressure).
Since the average person appears to be ‘drowning in anxiety, stress and despair’, it’s the perfect book for our time! The Importance of Being Miserable challenges our assumptions about the pursuit of happiness, approaching the history of human sadness and misery with humour, intelligence, compassion and enthusiasm.
Reviewed by Mark Parry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eamon Evans is the author of fifteen books, one or two of them pretty good. He’s written about history, sport, scandals, words, films, alcohol and urban legends, but until The Importance of Being Miserable he’s not done much with his philosophy degree, apart from bore people at parties. Eamon lives with his family in Melbourne, where he writes, teaches, overwaters his garden and worries about going bald.
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