When I saw the title of longtime New Yorker writer and cultural essayist Adam Gopnik’s slim new volume, “All That Happiness Is,” the song “Happiness” from the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” popped into my head.
I recall singing it in sixth-grade choir, and can even remember the opening lyrics:
Happiness is finding a pencil.
Pizza with sausage.
Telling the time.
Happiness is learning to whistle.
Tying your shoe for the very first time.
I wondered how closely Gopnik’s vision of happiness might track with the sensibilities of the crew from Peanuts.
Pretty closely, as it turns out.
Gopnik opens the book by asking, “What is happiness?” and suggesting that happiness is a pursuit, as in that key clause from our country’s Declaration of Independence. What that pursuit entails, and how we know if we might have arrived at the desired destination is the meat of the book, with Gopnik working from a personal moment of great happiness, when he locked himself in his teenage bedroom with a guitar and pursued the knowledge of a handful of rock ‘n’ roll chords from the Beatles songbook.
Gopnik declares that 50 years on he is “not much better” at the guitar than he was at the end of that first week, but also that the period of self-study in which he discovered some measure of the Beatles magic for himself became the “foundation for almost everything meaningful thing I’ve done in my life since.”
Gopnik draws a distinction between “accomplishment” and “achievement,” where accomplishment is rooted in an internal sense of having done something interesting and worthwhile, while achievement is rooted in external reward, having fulfilled the imperatives of the demands coming from an outside force.
Because I spent many years teaching writing, and remain significantly involved in education in regards to how we teach writing, I couldn’t help but think about how much of the experience of school has become focused on achievement over accomplishment, and the obvious detriment this has when it comes to our pursuit of happiness. Students must relentlessly achieve without the accompanying satisfaction of accomplishment. It’s not mysterious why students are more and more disengaged from school.
“All That Happiness Is” becomes a kind of call to respect the necessity and benefits of experiencing that sense of accomplishment and how once that happens, the work necessary to garner achievements comes more naturally. If you look at the lyrics to “Happiness,” you’ll see a similar sentiment. Finding meaning in what you accomplish is the key to happiness. The song ends with:
For happiness is anyone and anything at all
That’s loved by you.
Ultimately, to be happy, both Gopnik and the Peanuts chorus suggests, you have to gravitate towards that which truly fulfills you. I can relate. Even after a dozen years, I still get a kick out of the achievement of writing a column in my hometown newspaper.
But I get more pleasure out of the accomplishment of starting with a small notion – like the link between a song you remember from childhood, and the book you just read — and trying to follow that notion until I’ve discovered something for myself that I could in turn share with others. This is one of the most pleasurable things I do every week, which is why I never take a week off.
It took me maybe 20 minutes to read “All That Happiness Is,” not much of an achievement, but the full worth of a book isn’t in how long we took to read it, but in how long it lingers in our lives. In this case, Gopnik has accomplished much.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Bullet That Missed” by Richard Osman
2. “Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange
3. “Lakota Woman” by Mary Crow Dog
4. “Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red” by Harry Kemelman
5. “Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase” by Roger G. Kennedy
— Dixie D., Lincolnwood
For Dixie, I’m feeling some Geraldine Brooks, with the specific pick being “Horse.”
1. “Middlemarch” by George Eliot
2. “Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850” by Linda Colley
3. “The Eyes and the Impossible” by Dave Eggers
4. “The Edwardians” by Vita Sackville-West
5. “Voltaire in Love” by Nancy Freeman-Mitford
— Michal S., Chicago
For Michal I’m going with a novel that’s the first of a trilogy. If it connects, he can then keep going: “Fifth Business” by Robertson Davies.
1. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz
2. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
3. “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman
4. “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett
5. “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride
— Harriette E., Wheeling
Harriette is getting a recommendation for one of my favorite reads of the last few years, the deeply comforting “Search” by Michelle Huneven.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
Update: This story has been changed to correct the name of author Hernan Diaz.
