Sunday, June 16, 2002
Title: Happiness TM
Author: Will Ferguson
Publisher: Canongate
Edwin works in a publishers, just another editor in a cubicle environment - under paid, living beyond his means, unhappily married, hating the hell that is the city. Spending a morning going through the mountain of unsolicited submissions, he is a little distracted when he is called to a meeting. Which leads to him being caught out when the company's owner asks him for a book to fill a place in the season's catalogue. Panicking he comes up with the last book he binned that morning - a book that claims to be the ultimate self-help book, and the way that Edwin talks it up he thinks it had better be something. Feeling the pressure he slaves away at pulling this book together, though in the end it turns out the book is intended just as a token gesture - minimum print run and zero advertising.
The book is called What I Learned On The Mountain and is by the mysterious Tupak Sharee. As the token run is sent out Eddie starts to have a bad feeling about it, a feeling which turns out to be justified. The book sells, it sells well, and keeps on selling with repeated print runs. A self-help book that works - improves people's health, sex life, helps make them money. What would happen if this was the case - well first the cigarette industry collapses, then the alcohol, then the gyms and rehab centres and it goes from there. What I Learned On The Mountain is a monster, Tupak a cult of merchandising and appearances on Oprah. Which sets up the question - what can Edwin do stop the end of the world as we know it?
Happiness TM is the first novel by Will Ferguson and comes from an interesting idea. On the whole Happiness TM is a reasonably enjoyable read, though I tended to feel that Ferguson could have spent more time getting into the spread of "happiness" and its cultural effect. Instead we spend too much time on the life of our hapless (hopeless?) hero and the setting up of the farce that is the publication of the What I Learned On The Mountain.
RVWR: PTR
June 2002
