According to the Los Angeles Times, people may have 'a basic setting on their happiness thermostat'. So don't blame your current depression on your ex-wife, your sullen children, your forgetful old father, poor exam results, a bad hair day or a piss-poor speech by the pope. Depressing real-life events come and go, but your general capacity to feel gladness is fixed. This is good news for the pharmaceutical industry, but it won't do much for publishers, who continue to believe that feelings of crapness might be shooed away for ever by reading the right book. I'm talking self-help, auto-improvement, personal growth: the corner of the bookshop where sad-eyed people, credit card at the ready, are to be seen lifting down copies of Only One Shot: Aligning the Inner Soul with Action: How to Re-engineer Your Existence, Design a Lifelong Personal Strategy, and Rediscover the Joy of Living. The hardcore books always have two colons in the title.

LRB 22 April 2010 | PDF Download