Eric Wilson

About 85 percent of Americans say they’re happy. And most of us are quite happy to be happy, thank you very much. But not all of us – Eric Wilson, Professor of English at Wake Forest University, thinks our cheery pursuit of happiness has a dangerous downside – the extinction of sadness, and with that an elemental aspect of human nature. He’s written a new book called Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, and he’s on Fair Game with Faith Salie to talk about it.