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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The
Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
by Eric Weiner |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Xanadu NPR’s
foreign correspondent Eric Weiner spent a year visiting those places where
the residents are considered to be happiest. The results of his labors are in
his new book, The
Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.
Armchair travelers will find a lot to enjoy on these pages as Weiner tells of
his experiences in Bhutan, Thailand, Switzerland, Iceland, India, Qatar and
Holland. His observations are often funny, especially for those who
appreciate Weiner’s sense of humor. Here’s an excerpt, from
the beginning of Chapter 3, “Happiness Is a Policy,” pp. 49-51: There
came a time, he realized, when the strangeness of everything made it
increasingly difficult to realize the strangeness of anything. — James Hilton, Lost
Horizon The
Airbus levels at thirty-seven thousand feet, somewhere over the Himalayas.
The cabin lights glow soft and warm. The flight attendants glide down the
aisle, gracious and attentive. I
am looking out the window, for I have been advised by Those in the Know that
an aisle seat just won't do. Not on this flight. For
a long while I see nothing but a solid blanket of cloud. I am beginning to
question the wisdom of Those in the Know when suddenly the clouds are gone,
and the mountains reveal themselves.
Towering, mesmerizing mountains. The Himalayas make all
other mountains look like bunny hills. People
around me are craning their necks, reaching for cameras, ahhhing and ooohing.
My thoughts, however, are elsewhere. I'm thinking of another airplane and another
time. The year is 1933, and this airplane is a rickety propeller
plane. It, too, is flying over the Himalayas, not far from where I am now,
but the cabin on this plane is cold, the seats hard, the flight attendants
nonexistent. The passengers—three Brits and an American—need to shout to make
themselves heard over the engine noise. The trepidation in their voices, however, is
unmistakable. The pilot, brandishing a revolver, is way off course, flying
toward some unknown destination. They are being hijacked. The destination turns out to be
a remarkable place of "sumptuous tranquility." A place of eternal
peace where monks meditate, poets muse, and everyone lives impossibly long
and satisfying lives. A remote place, cut off from the horrors of the outside
world, though not from its tactile comforts. The place is Shangri-La, the
four passengers characters in the book Lost
Horizon. Shangri-La
is, of course, an invented place. James Hilton, the author, never ventured
farther than the British Museum in London for his research. But the idea of
Shangri-La is very real. Who hasn't dreamed of a place simultaneously placid
and intellectually invigorating? A place made for the head and the heart,
where both live in happy unison to the ripe old age of 250. When the book and the movie
came out in the 1930s, Lost Horizon captured the imagination of an
American public in the grips of the Great Depression, reeling from one world
war and bracing for another. Franklin D. Roosevelt named his presidential
retreat Shangri-La (later renamed Camp David). Hotels, grand and fleabag
alike, called themselves Shangri-La, hoping to bask in its utopian glow. Shangri-La contains all of the
classic ingredients of paradise. First of all, it is difficult to reach.
Paradise, after all, is not paradise if you can take a taxi there.
Furthermore, there must be a clear demarcation between paradise and ordinary
life, separated by a netherworld that only a few fortunate souls can
traverse. Paradise, in other words, is a selective club. Just like business
class, which owes its pleasures, in no small way, to the presence of other
travelers less fortunate than yourself, back there in coach gumming rubbery
chicken and fishing in their pockets for exact change (which is always
appreciated) to anesthetize themselves with miniature bottles of vodka. You
can't see these poor souls—that's what the curtain is for—but you know they
are there, and that makes all the difference. And so Shangri-La's enigmatic
High Lama proclaims: "We are a single lifeboat riding the seas in a
gale; we can take a few chance survivors, but if all the shipwrecked were to
reach us and clamber aboard we should go down ourselves." As would an
airliner, no doubt, should the curtain fail and the unwashed masses stream
forward, toward business class. Though invented more than
seventy years ago, James Hilton's Shangri-La is a very modern kind of
paradise. It contains the accumulated wisdom of the east, yes, but also the
accumulated plumbing of the west (bathtubs from Akron, Ohio). Not to mention
a reading room with leather-bound volumes of the great books. Comfortable
accommodations. Food that is plentiful and delicious. Shangri-La, in other
words, was the first soft-adventure destination. Paradise lite. The thing about paradise, though,
is we don't always recognize it immediately. Its paradiseness takes time to
sink in. In Lost Horizon, most of the kidnapped
foreigners plot to escape Shangri-La. They are desperate to return to
"civilization" and are suspicious, justifiably so, of the excuses
proffered by the lamas. Bad weather. Not enough supplies. But one of the
group, a misfit British diplomat named Conway, is enthralled by Shangri-La
and chooses to stay. When I first read Lost
Horizon, I related
to Conway and would have given anything to trade places with him. Lost
Horizon spoke
to me, but I didn't speak back for many years. Not until I heard about
Bhutan. I was living in India at the time, the early 1990s, as a
correspondent for National Public Radio. I was the network's first correspondent
in that country; the path was unbeaten. Monkeys occasionally wandered into my
apartment. Snake charmers dropped by. I was having the time of my life. While I
found parts of The
Geography of Bliss to be engaging, I found myself getting bored quickly
as I adjusted to Weiner’s wit. I wanted him to move on sooner than he did. If
you liked the excerpt, chances are you’ll enjoy the rest of the book. Steve
Hopkins, April 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Geography of Bliss.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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