by
n+1
5
Not everyone in the 19th century went down the long slide to happiness, endlessly. Novelists said again and again they would never represent happiness. Tolstoy’s opening line about all happy families being the same is the best known, but Balzac, too, said, “Le Bonheur n’a pas d’histoire,” happiness has no story. The novel’s only actual version of happiness—marriage—came to seem, toward the end of the century, something of a dark joke. After all that trouble, went the joke, you marry Gilbert Osmond. Those who tried to get away from the marriage plot by seeking their own happiness—Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina—got just what they didn’t deserve. The novel didn’t make you any promises. Quite the opposite: it could have scared you off of life. But somehow its congenital unhappiness actually made you want to live.
Not everyone in the 19th century went down the long slide to happiness, endlessly. Novelists said again and again they would never represent happiness. Tolstoy’s opening line about all happy families being the same is the best known, but Balzac, too, said, “Le Bonheur n’a pas d’histoire,” happiness has no story. The novel’s only actual version of happiness—marriage—came to seem, toward the end of the century, something of a dark joke. After all that trouble, went the joke, you marry Gilbert Osmond. Those who tried to get away from the marriage plot by seeking their own happiness—Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina—got just what they didn’t deserve. The novel didn’t make you any promises. Quite the opposite: it could have scared you off of life. But somehow its congenital unhappiness actually made you want to live.
6
In a row under the bed, a bit dusty, is the motherlode. Books upon books. So many candy-colored University of Minnesota paperbacks—Lyotard, de Man, Irigaray—actually, all kind of the same color as the pills. These books were going to be a rebuke to everything false. We were going to bring this false civilization down. Well, to hell with you, Foucault! And to hell with you, Lacan!
The bookstore clerk looks at his watch. “Theory’s dead,” he says. “A year ago.”
“Does that mean you aren’t going to buy the books?” we ask.
“If you’ll take store credit.”
The colossal face of Derrida stares up at us, in death, as in life, made of granite. This face was made for Mt. Rushmore. Derrida seems to say: “Take store credit.”
In a row under the bed, a bit dusty, is the motherlode. Books upon books. So many candy-colored University of Minnesota paperbacks—Lyotard, de Man, Irigaray—actually, all kind of the same color as the pills. These books were going to be a rebuke to everything false. We were going to bring this false civilization down. Well, to hell with you, Foucault! And to hell with you, Lacan!
The bookstore clerk looks at his watch. “Theory’s dead,” he says. “A year ago.”
“Does that mean you aren’t going to buy the books?” we ask.
“If you’ll take store credit.”
The colossal face of Derrida stares up at us, in death, as in life, made of granite. This face was made for Mt. Rushmore. Derrida seems to say: “Take store credit.”