Why didn't anyone tell me?

It occurred to me last night that I might be a bit of a bummer.

I was feeling unusually bleak over the past few days and, as usual, went to my books for solace. I have a lot of books. When I approach my bookcase it is always the question “How do I want to feel?” that informs my choice. What I wanted to feel this time was happy, or at least happier. What I found was row after row of variously important books that all seem to have in common a central theme which I have heard termed as “the bummer epiphany.” I looked at my shelf of favorite novels to see, with some distress, that they are all very sad books. After 30 odd years of reading and book collecting I was noticing this for the first time. Weird.

I have never really thought of myself as more than averagely negative. Sarcastic, occasionally caustic, lover of scathingly observed irony, and given to enjoying the odd bit of schadenfreude? You betcha. But to see this manifest proof that I somehow witlessly sought out, purchased and read, and then later re-read, these beautifully written sad stories was, to say the least, sobering.

The thing is I openly disapprove of negative people and have even come up with a name for them – they are, in my lexicon, the Negadons. I imagine them as an oddly prehistoric creature, sort of a cross between a brontosaurus and Eeyore. They are large and they mope. They are difficult to escape and although not dangerous they stand too close to you which kind of freaks you out, they follow you around and just kind of sigh and look at you a lot.

I sat down in the middle of my library and I couldn’t believe it. I looked through my strange organizing system to find rows of bleak crime noir, J.D. Salinger, Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, William Styron and Steinbeck (in the American and sad section). Milan Kundera, Marguerite Duras, Tolstoy and Dickens (European and sad). Lots of Updike (in the relationships never work and now I’m old section). There was a cheerful, but meaningless in this context, children’s book selection – which only made me more depressed as, at least at some point in my life, I was clearly more carefree though oddly fascinated with stories about mice. There was 3’6” of Louis L’Amour but even these were representative of the Lonesome Dove, Cormac McCarthy, we can apparently even be sad in the old west phase. Jesus.

Tucked down low and wedged between editions of Granta and Italo Calvino there was a tiny lonely volume of David Sedaris called “Holidays on Ice.” Needless to say this book was a gift from someone who clearly knew what I needed years before I did. It says on the back that the book can be used as a coaster or an ice scraper and contains essays with titles like “Dinah, the Christmas Whore.” This was the perfect book that I needed. Thank you forgotten gift giver! I will build a happy section in your honour.