Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness

The title of Willard Spiegelman's enchanting, literate, and deeply happy-making "Essays on Ordinary Happiness" (this the sub-title) is "Seven Pleasures." Why Seven? It seems to mean something here. But what? The number is a lucky one, and recalls the Trivium and Quadrivium of medieval learning, or suggests an addendum to the Kama Sutra: a few positions that somehow escaped categorization. All of these seven pleasures, we discover from the table of contents as well as from the essays themselves, are gerunds: reading, dancing, swimming. The introduction, not one of the seven, is "Being." Sevenness as a meaningful notion, the reader gradually comes to understand, is a red herring: it could just as well have been five (though the book too short) or twenty-seven: the point is, pleasure is all around us, in all that we do--at least potentially, if we know how to find it. The key to finding this pleasure seems to be: lower expectations, cease lusting after the exotic, be happy with what you have, content yourself with "ordinary happiness," rather than extraordinary.The book combines easy, appropriate references to high art (Klee, Serra, Balanchine) with its consideration of middle-brow art (ballroom dancing, that the author learns in middle age) and no art at all (swimming): Jane Austen, for example, is evoked to consider the social aspects of swing dancing. These easy, digestible refrences to art and literature in the larger flow are everything the MLA journal is not: deft, interesting, useful. And they're part of the book's "message," if we can speak in such didactic terms about so graceful a performance: that the educated, aware, life, with art and literture, motion and sport, is its own end.I don't say nay: I don't have a better answer, though I admit to a lingering fondness for the blind energy of the young as another form of happiness. (Spiegelman admires it too, though from something of a distance, the way the world-weary writer Tonio Kroeger in Thomas Mann's eponymous novella looks at the beautiful blond child-adults he can never be: all those young people dancing, for instance.) So the very literateness of the prose is a bit melancholy: the more you know about the world, the more connections you can draw, the less likely you are to be headstrong and high on life, and the more likely you are to be able to content yourself with the everyday.The young typically lack this capability, and I'll be surprised if this book gets many readers under 40.For this reason and in this spirit, we may try to indicate the essential melancholy of the prose and say that this is an Autumn Sonata--though not the battle of wills between Ingrid Bergman (mother) and Liv Ullmann (daughter) of Ingmar Bergman's movie of the same name--something more like Tudor's ballet "The Leaves are Fading," drenched in nostalgia amid the swirls of bodies and youth. Nostalgia in the midst of plenty: it's a Keatsian concept, that melancholy is most acutely felt when the rose is fullest--from here it can only begin to decay. Or maybe it's John Lennon: that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Or doing something. Like swimming.Spiegelman seems set on finding the pleasures of the everyday, in his achievement of "ordinary happiness"--as if to say, this is all there is, you'd better enjoy it. And the people typically do. His essays are full of moments of people focused on their activities: "a portly middle-aged man with a ponytail effortlessly tosses his partner over his head and betwe his legs, all the while keeping up the beat." If this is not victory over mortality and death, this inner absorbtion in activity, what is? At least, to the extent that anything is. Caught in a kind of practical version of Heidegger's "thrownness," the ineluctable whoosh of existence, Spiegelman nonetheless offers the consolation of the mundane--which, if entered into passionately enough, becomes the answer to the question. If happiness is something you have to seek, you'll never find it: this point was Keats's as well. If you realize you have only to reach out your hand to have it (just do something!), you have already solved the problem.Still, it's melancholy: it would be nice if we could actually achieve extraordinary happiness, rather than just ordinary, as Spiegelman so articulately seems to do here. Life is full of activity, and potentially of ordinary happiness. But, not to kvetch, it all ends like a borscht-belt joke about not wanting to be a member of any club that would take you: we could, of course, be satisfied with what we have. But then we wouldn't strive--we'd be happy. Happy in the ordinary, sensible that past a certain point, it's wiser not to ask for more.Highly recommended.

Anyone with an open mind regarding what it means to lead a happy, satisfying life will find this brilliant book both enlightening and entertaining. Many readers - including, I hope, some of the two dozen or so friends that my wife and I have now given a copy of this book - might even actually learn to find pleasure in new ways through everyday activities. According to the author, the trick seems to be: Approach those activities that interest you with a positive attitude, a certain level of intellectual curiosity, and a commitment to achieving at least a basic level of knowledge and expertise. In certain respects, Seven Pleasures seems to me to be the normal person's response to Malcolm Gladwell's contention in his recent book Outliers that "success" is a function of investing "10,000 Hours" in training for any particular activity. To all those of us for whom the idea of spending 10,000 hours training to do any one thing sounds more grueling than appealing (or realistic), this book is an uplifting illustration of how much joy can be derived from any activity in which you are interested enough to invest the time and energy to become moderately proficient.Could reading this book really help you, personally, to be happier? For many people, I believe the answer is "Yes". In choosing his subjects, Professor Spiegelman wisely sets aside the "higher order" aspects of happiness - love, family, friends, career, religious beliefs - and focuses on seven "ordinary" activities (reading, listening, dancing, swimming, etc.) that are within anyone's grasp on an everyday basis. "The individual essays build on the assumption that parts of my life may interest others, who will find in it aspects of their own... Although I describe myself, I write about activities that anyone can perform." Dr. Spiegelman is a professor of English, and his chosen activities naturally revolve heavily around humanities and the arts. But your own personal interests do not have to align directly with those of Professor Spiegelman for you to enjoy this book and benefit from its insights. The same lessons offered here regarding how to experience something beautiful -- or how to perform something beautifully -- could apply to any activity from stock car racing to butterfly collecting.Is it easy to read? Professor Spiegelman utilizes a vast array of cultural references, and seems to know everything. Some readers may wonder if they will be intimidated: "Will I need to know everything about music, art and literature to understand this book?" Not to worry: All of the material is presented in such a charming, informative, and accessible way, that no great prior knowledge of specifically referenced cultural topics is required. (As one of Professor Spiegelman's former students, and having heard him speak on a wide variety of topics, I can attest to the fact that he actually does know just about everything. He is a terrific lecturer and conversationalist, and the book reads the way he speaks.)Seven pleasures is also just plain fun to read. Professor Spiegelman writes in the tradition of great essayist/storytellers like Twain, Johnson and Montaigne - every page is filled with witty, insightful observations and memorable anecdotes.Ultimately, what we learn from Professor Spiegelman's book is that happiness on a day-to-day basis is largely within our own control. To quote Samuel Johnson, "He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness in anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts." Professor Spiegelman: "More than a gift, happiness is also a custom, something that can be cultivated... The things we can do to produce cheerfulness - these are the subjects of this book. We can start out happy, but we can also make ourselves happy." All around it's a great book.

Book described as Very Good. I wouldn't have rated it that high. The pages faded and yellowed. The cover age softened. Maybe a little better than Good but not Very Good which gives the impression of nearly like new.

Typical Spiegelman--engaging, thoughtful, never a word wasted. He dazzles with his entertaining wit. This book doesn't disappoint.Seven Pleasures turns the American obsession with the pursuit of happiness inside out. Rather than focus on religion or pharmacology, Spiegelman advocates thoughtful activity and engagement with the world. The book is a collection of essays each titled with a gerund: Reading, Walking, Looking, Dancing, Listening, Swimming and Writing--all, with the exception of dancing, solitary pursuits. The seven essays, in the words of Spiegelman, "explore activities that come from and lead to `ordinary happiness.'" It's not a memoir, but it is deeply personal. Read this and you'll not only fall in love with Spiegelman, but with life again.

Don't waste your money on it .. completely out of the context. Even seven secret are normal habits like reading dancing.