This is Happiness: When Life is the Story

In this episode, we discuss Niall William's This is Happiness. A charming and wholesome read, this book gave us a lot to think about! Join us for a conversation about what it means to live, as well as how literature can be therapy,  how to cope with change, and healthy vs unhealthy Christianity. Come along for the ride! 

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Transcript

 No matter what the state of your head or heart say, this is happiness because of the simple truth that you are alive to say it.

 Hi and welcome to the Literary Lamppost Podcast where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlyn. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature.

And I'm 

Ashley, an assistant editor for Magazine and a writer. Today we're going to be discussing, this is Happiness by Nile Williams and published in 2019. So it's kind of a newer book. It's probably the newest, most recent book that we've done. 

Actually, we chose this book because it. Was the best seller of one of our favorite local bookshops, and we figured we should probably do a popular book at some point.

. So here we are with, this is Happiness. It's set in 1958, and it's a coming of age story written as a memoir told from the perspective of Noel or No Crow. At age 75, reflecting on his life when he was 17, around the arrival of electricity in a remote Irish town called Farha.

And the way that 

he writes is very cool. It blurs the line between what he remembers and what he imagines. To have happened, and it's this unreliable narrator, but he realizes that he's unreliable. It's, it's quite a cool writing style. 

Yeah. I love it. And it's very subtle. It's super well written with this beautiful language and really interesting descriptions about.

Everyday things 

and it's given us a lot to think about from reading it. So a few of the things that we're going to be talking about in this episode are literature as art, because this book really is a piece of art, and we're also going to talk about what it means. I. To live. And that references back to that very first beginning quote that we read.

We're also gonna be talking about religion, which is a reoccurring theme in this book, as well as change. So let's get started with a book summary. It's not really a book that has spoilers. There's not much of a plot. It's very much 

slice of life. It's very character driven rather than plot driven. So feel free to listen to this episode as kind of an introduction to the book and hopefully then maybe you can go on and read it.

So, but don't worry about it being spoiled because. We are not going to spoil the ending. 

So it is a novel, not an actual memoir. So it's historical fiction set in the small rural village of Farha in County Clare during the 1950s in Ireland, just as electricity is arriving and it's 

narrated by this guy named Noel who goes by.

The nickname No Crow, who is now an elderly man, and he's reflecting on this pivotal year in his youth when he dropped out of seminary and went to stay with his grandparents when he was 17. 

And this book is really a celebration of. A slower, simpler time when life was shaped by weather, tradition, and community.

The story 

kicks off when this mysterious man named Christie shows up in Farha with the coming of electricity. He's a worker for the electricity company. He helps put up the poles and helps get. All of the legal stuff sorted and he boards with no's grandparents and that's how he gets to know. No.

Christie's also come to right a wrong in his past. Reconnect with a lost love of his from years ago. That becomes a theme in the book. Yeah. 

This idea of second chances, forgiveness, and reflections on a first love maybe. Yeah. 

During the year, the book is set, no comes of age. Through his observations of the world around him, about love loss and the ordinary beauty in life.

And William's writing is very lyrical, and there's actually some very funny lines in it. I have laughed out loud multiple times just by these quirky descriptions of normal things, but just the way that he describes them, it's just. Brilliant. They're so funny, and he paints this really poetic and sometimes quirky picture 

of normal village life.

Oh. I don't often underline things in books, but this book I have underlined everywhere left and right. There's just a quote which stands out to me just because it's. Just phenomenal. I 

feel like on every single page there's at least one, if not more sentences that are just these iconic quotes. It's, I have, I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this before.

Yeah, me neither. It also explores intergenerational relationships, um, especially between No and his grandparents and between No. And Christie, and I think that one of the main themes in the book is that happiness. It's not found in grand events, but in the small shared moments of joy and community. And so 

yeah, there is no real plot.

There are things that happen, but there's such ordinary things. It's really hard to give a plot summary because it's just, 

it's kind of a meditation of memory and change and finding joy through life's struggles 

and just a bunch of those little struggles and how they're navigated. It's a very interesting book, but it's very slow and thoughtful.

So if you're looking for a thriller, you probably won't enjoy this, but it's one of those books that makes you feel, oh, okay. 

Life. Yeah, yeah. But it also makes you feel like. You're gonna be okay. Yeah, it's, it's one of those 

re. Restorative books. I want to say restorative is the word I'm looking for. So when I was thinking how to describe this book, the first word that came to mind was a tapestry, because it has these little hints of themes that appear and then disappear and then reappear again.

I'm like, ah, I see where you picked up that thread from two chapters ago, and just these little hints. It's like all of these little threads being woven together and it just creates this beautiful, cohesive picture. Mm-hmm. Sign of a good author. And the writing is just. So pretty, it describes things like a sundrop dress of lemon linen.

Oh, that's so good. Like it's, oh, I just love the alliteration. It's just this, it's beautiful to hear, beautiful to say. And the mental image 

is so beautiful. I just ah, I love it. Another one about rain that came off the gray vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again.

And so there's all of these descriptions about 

normal things, but the way he describes them just makes them seem extraordinary. 

Brilliant author. It's one. 

Go ahead. 

It's one of those rare books that makes you look at your life and see the beauty in all the ordinary things. 

It's almost, it's almost like a similar vibe as Studio Ghibli, but with words and prose rather than images.

So I guess we wanted to explore this question. Why is literature as art important? 

I think the books are really cool 'cause they can do so many different things. They can entertain, they can educate, they can challenge, like you can use them as a way to learn or you can use them as a way to just be brained.

So really. It's a medium that's just so versatile. I think that they can be very powerful. And there's this quote from this philosopher, Joel Oly that says, they'll tell you that the arts and humanities aren't practical, and then read poetry at funerals and weddings, cry over films and search for meaning in ancient philosophy.

Surviving is one type of practicality. Knowing why we bother is another. 

I think that art and. Insane art. I mean, everything that falls under the creative kind of humanities spectrum of things. Not just, so whether that be writing or visual arts. Or Music. Music, yeah. Or theater. Yeah. So I think art is how we process the things that we experience beyond.

The material beyond the physical world, 

you know, however you slice it. We are actually more than just matter, like no matter what your beliefs are about the nature of human beings, it's undeniable that. We are more than just the physical atoms that put us together. And we have this need as humans that the things that we experience have meaning beyond just, oh, it's chemical reactions in our brain that make us feel this way.

And art, I think, is one of the ways that we make sense of that aspect of being human. I love this is happiness because it engages with some of the everyday challenges and struggles and hurts and joys and makes sense of them in a really new way. And it, I don't know, reading, it just made me feel really grounded and like peaceful and 

settled.

I don't know if I can put it into words. No, I feel the same. And I think that's the effect of a really. Well written piece of literature. It changes the way that you look at your own life, and that can be really 

therapeutic 

sometimes. Oh, yes. 

There's two quotes that I found that I think fit really well.

The first one is from Tumblr user Howell Jenkins, which I love. And they say reading the right book is like seeing a chiropractor, and then they share the quote by I gii, who is a Ghanaian American novelist. I learned absolutely nothing. Some minor adjustment was made within me, some imperceptible shift that occurs only when I encounter wonder and awe the best art.

I think that that's just like, that completely captures that. It does. Another quote that I found is from a, I think it's a Twitter. I think it's Twitter, not sure it's it. It came up on Pinterest for me, so who knows where it's from. The user, decadent Quill says, for people addicted to self-help books, I prescribe.

You read one poem every day and recite it until you have it memorized. You people need an infusion of beauty, not more neurosis, 

and that's so true. 

Uh, another user, Bose the literary Owl. Love that says, no one wants to hear this, but you will find more wisdom in an old fairytale, a monologue from Shakespeare, a chapter of Jane Austen, than in all the self-help books in Barnes and Noble.

You don't need more life maxing. You need myth, poetry, and beauty. 

I agree as someone who doesn't read self-help books and has tried and failed, I go back to fiction every single time. 

So, yeah, literature can be really healing and how we engage in literature can be part of how 

we choose to engage in life.

There's a really good quote from The Dead Poet Society, um, medicine, law, business Engineering. These are all noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, but poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. And as someone who is a creative, I've often felt that. What I have to offer the world is less important than say, a doctor who saves lives or an engineer.

And I've tried to fight back against that feeling because in a way I feel like art can save your life. Think of COVID lockdown. What did we turn to in those dark times? TV shows, books, content creators, music. We turned to the artists to help us live, not just. Survive to make it easier. Yeah, 100%. This is Happiness is one of those books which made me really appreciate how words can be spun to make sentences and ideas and stories which impact you deeply, and they can shape the way that you approach situations and life in general through other people's creativity.

You can find yourself. And there's this really good quote from. This is happiness. Listen closely story was the stuff of life and to realize you were inside one allowed you to sometimes surrender to the plot to bear a little easier, the griefs and sufferings, and to enjoy more fully the twists that came along the way growing up.

I think is a tough time in your life and the whole genre of coming of age can help us with our growing up as we engage with other people's stories. And this 

is Happiness is a coming of age book. It's about how the character's identity changes over time and their process of self-discovery, uh, know is learning how to live in this 

world.

And I feel like that's something everyone goes through. They have to figure out what they believe their, their purpose, what they're supposed to do in life. And it can be a daunting process and not just when you're young throughout your life. No, says pretty early on in the book, I was too afraid of the world to love it.

I felt that keenly as someone who gets anxious about things, anxious about not living to the fullest, anxious about not taking advantage of all my opportunities, anxious about making the right decisions, choosing the right path in life, but that fear I've learned can really hold you back. Just what no says.

It can make you feel too afraid to love things in life. There's another quote that I thought was really good. No. Says, I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you've been given. 

I think there's a fair amount of pressure on young people Oh yeah.

To figure out what they're going to do with their lives. I feel like 18, when you finish high school and choose what you're going to study at college. I think that that's really young to try and make decisions about what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. And you have to make sure it's something that you love, but also that will make you money.

You know that it's something considered worthy in the eyes of society. And I feel like there's also this pressure to to live a certain way, to reach a certain standard. People strive for things like status or power, money. Instagram likes popularity, materialistic things. Even experiences like being able to say, of traveled to X amount of countries or have checked off everything on your bucket list.

And there's this quote from the book that I think is the most pivotal. I mean, it's the title quote, right? Yeah. The, the best quote in the book, Christie says to know this, this is happiness and no, doesn't really understand him, and no, doesn't really understand him initially, but as he's reflecting on it, writing about it from an older perspective, he says.

I came to understand him to mean that you could stop at not all, but most of the moments in your life. Stop for one heartbeat and no matter what the state of your mind or heart say, this is happiness because of the simple truth that you are alive To say 

it. Dang. That's why this book is. Life changing. It makes you look at your life differently.

Like it definitely has made me look at my life differently since reading this book. I've realized it's true and I've started picking up moments just like. In the car driving at sunset and being like, yeah, this is happiness. And when I'm pushing through, like with my master's study or whatever, and I feel really stressed and I'm just like in survival mode, I have to remind myself of whatever pain or joy or stress that you're in, like this is your life and you need to enjoy it while you're living it.

And I think that sometimes with the anxiety of what to do with your life, you can forget that what you're doing right now is meaningful. And if you're religious, like the characters in the book, there can be this pressure of what does God want me to do with my life? And there's this worry that you'll choose something wrong and God will disapprove.

The book opens with no dropping out of seminary and losing his belief in God. And this theme comes up a few times throughout the book. 

That process of stepping outside of your faith and reevaluating, I think is something that a lot of people in our age group can resonate with. I. And there's this quote that no says in the book, when you've been raised inside a religion, it's not a small thing to step outside it.

Even if you no longer believe in it, you can feel its absence. 

And I think that stepping outside of your faith to evaluate it is a pretty massive process, which I'd say most young people who are raised in faith go through today, especially with. Some of the turmoil happening in the world 

at the moment and how faith is connected to that.

Nobody's gonna believe that that was actually spontaneous. 

This is, this is proof that we are actually sisters. 

No, you know, share the same brain cells. You just witnessed one bouncing from me to her, me to her. 

Anyway. The word that is used now for that process is deconstruction, and that process either leads people outta faith or back to it in a completely new way.

And I actually think it's a really healthy process to go through a hundred percent. 

Many people who deconstruct their faith, like you know, they take it apart, real reevaluate all the different aspects of it are doing so. In order to save it. 

And I think that everybody needs to go through this process if they're gonna have any kind of genuine faith.

I know I have, and I feel like I had to take apart some of the faith that I grew up with and put it back together in a way that was meaningful for me personally and was my own. And I actually completely understand why a lot of people leave faith when most of their experience. With faith has been negative.

There's definitely ways in which faith can be abusive. I came across this quote on Pinterest a while back, and it goes, you are worthless without him. You need him in your life. You are unlovable and unworthy of love. You are evil and nothing you can ever do is good enough to be accepted by him. But he will love you anyway despite your state of unlovability, worthlessness and evil.

Obey everything he says to do. He knows what is best for you despite any plans, hopes, or dreams that you have of your own. That is not part of how he thinks you need to behave and what he thinks you should do with your life. You need to completely submit to his will. When will Christians realize that their doctrine, they adhere to that, their mindset and everything that they think is right about their lives is exactly what the DSM four classifies as Battered wives syndrome.

And that's from a Facebook page called The Thinker. And while that may not be the most, you know, credible source. On the internet. I think it raises a really good point, and I know it's not all Christians, but this idea of being worthless without God and all of this, it's a vein that runs through certain types 

of Christianity for sure, and one that we encountered a lot growing up in Midwestern America.

And I think that this 

is actually a really unhealthy way of understanding human beings. I think it probably came from the Christian doctrine of original sin that is, our goodness is damaged irreparably and we can't fix that. And it got oversimplified and twisted from there. And you know, in the Christian understanding, humans are created in the image of God who is the ultimate source of good.

And so this idea that we are worthless and unlovable without him is actually backwards. We are good because we were created to be like him, and that has been perverted through sin. But we as human beings are still capable of incredible goodness, and we're all valued as humans, like just by definition.

And even those who don't believe in God can be good. Human beings do good and have the same value, and I think that a lot of Christians actually miss that and. There are obviously gonna be a range of opinions on this. The theological debates rage across centuries, but I think this idea has done a lot of damage to a lot of people.

I'm really thankful that in our family we didn't grow up with this perception of faith. Yeah. But I have friends who have really struggled with this and struggled to engage in faith once they reject this kind of thinking, because it seems like. Such a big part of how they learned faith. They don't know what it looks like without that.

Yeah. And this idea seems to be quite prevalent in very traditional Christian spaces, which is the type of religion we see in Farha. 

No says about faith in his community that there was this question of unworthiness. This had been ingrained in the church from birth with recourse to a pure Aristotelian logic.

The bishops understood that making people feel lesser was a way of making the almighty mightier. 

And this sense of unworthiness, I think, translated through the rest of Noah's life as well. He felt. In general, that he was unworthy of love, like when he meets a girl and falls in love with her. 

And I think that the use of this approach to faith by some of those who teach Christianity is incredibly damaging.

Mm-hmm. 

And it also fosters this idea of faith because of fear rather than love. Despite all this language about loving God in this religious setting, at the end of the day, faith was driven by fear. You know, there was this sermon. In 1741 by a pastor called Jonathan Edwards called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

And this sermon was the catalyst for the first Great Awakening, which was a series of revivals across Britain and the United States colonies. And it painted this image of sinners who were dangling just above hell by a threat, and God could cast them into it. Any moment that is trauma, a hundred percent.

And personally, I'm a follower of Jesus, but I don't believe in hell. I don't believe there's actually biblical evidence for it. The idea of eternal hell arose when Greek philosophy entered Christianity in, I think the first century. And with it came this idea of the duality of human nature. That is that humans have both a body and a soul.

And so when this became the predominant thinking, it. It became believed that the soul would be the part to go to heaven. But for those who don't go to heaven, since the soul is eternal, it had to go somewhere. And so in a nutshell, that's where the idea of eternal hell came from. 

The whole believe in me or else I will torture you forever is a terrible picture of God.

It's awful. If I believe that that was the truth about Christianity, I would've left years ago. 'cause that is abusive and cruel and why would I want to have anything to do with a God like that? Honestly. And I think that it really contradicts with this idea of God being love, which is so clear in the Bible that 

God is love.

Yeah. Because there can't be fear where there is love yet there's so much fear around hell. I 

think that we see God most clearly through the picture of Jesus who showed love and kindness to the lowest people in society. And when he got angry, it was about injustices. Yeah, he cared for people, 

healed people, he taught love.

This is not God waiting to cast you into hell. Or constantly waiting to punish you in some way. 

You know, there's a ton of things to talk about in this topic, which we don't really have time to get into, but if this is your picture of God, let me just say that's not the only way to have faith, and I would recommend the book.

What's So Amazing About Grace by Philipp Yancy More, Jesus Less Religion by Arthur Burn m Steven and Jack Felton. And toxic faith experiencing healing over painful spiritual abuse. Also by Arta Burn m Steven and Jack Felton. 

The questioning of beliefs is hard, and it can be scary because it's a massive change, and change is really hard, but sometimes it's necessary and I think that's why this is Happiness Centers on the arrival of electricity because.

That's a really cliche, like electricity change is sometimes inevitable. We're not saying that sometimes it's necessary and it's inevitable, and that's one of the themes of this is happiness, coping with change, learning to adapt and. Farha is a place where nothing really changes. The weather doesn't change, it rains constantly.

The people don't change. No one leaves, no one comes. The politicians are elected because they have the same name as their fathers who were also the politicians. Doctors' sons took over from their fathers, so Dr. Troy remained the doctor for generations, 

and the main change that comes to Farha is electricity.

I think that that's why the story revolves around that particular point in history to symbolize that change symbolically. Also, during this time, the rain actually stops. As a town, they agree to electricity being brought to them, but when the logistics of electricity start to impose themselves on the town that people dig their heels in, they don't want their lives, which have been the same for so long to undergo this shift towards a more modern life.

Life in Farha was predictable as no reflect hardship had been part of history for so long. It had become a condition of life. There was no expectation things could or would be otherwise. You got on with it and through faith, family and character, accommodated as best you could. Whatever suffering and misfortune was yours.

And, you know, living this kind of life, as he also writes, requires a soul, stubbornness, essential for surviving in the poorest west. I love the way that he describes things like the 

Porous West. So good. Like, you know, like damp and soggy. It's, it's awesome. I, oh, his writing is so good. 

But yeah, that was their, that was their lives.

They were used to these hardships. Electricity is something which is supposed to make people's lives easier, except they were so ingrained in their ways they didn't want it. The authorities had failed 

fully to appreciate what it meant to impose something as radical as posts and wires overground that had remained unchanged since creation.

What would the perplex of our particular history, it meant to let someone or something onto your land. And so I think that that illustrates how hard. Change can be when things have been a certain way for so long. But what I love about. The main message of this is happiness is that some things can endure even through change.

That being love and community and the power of stories and happiness and that human connection can help us through those rough times of change. 

Yeah, exactly. Neither Caitlin nor I like change very much. Um, we've both been through some pretty drastic changes in our lives, multiple international moves, et cetera.

And something that our mom often reminds us of is that the one thing we can count on in life. Is change. It sucks. I hate 

change. It sucks. I found it really hard when I was 20. Our family moved from America to Australia and that was a really, really hard change. Not only did I have to leave my whole life behind, there was also just everything in my life changed other than our four unit family, everything.

And that was really, really hard. And. One quote that helped me get through that was from a show called Adventures and Odyssey, which I absolutely love, and it goes, change can help you change and that can be a good thing. And I held onto that during that time because that time was really hard. 

And I think as much as change sucks, we have to change.

Life is change. Life is change. Humanity is about, life is 

change. Princess, anyone who tells you anything else is selling something. 

That's not all. The quote goes. 

I know 

I lost my train of thought. Thank you, Kate. Change sucks. But at the end of the day, if we didn't change, no more good could come in your life.

I. 

Oh, you just made me think of another quote from lock, rise to candle food. It's Robert. Robert says, if we stopped time right where it is, there would be no more moments to turn into memories. How do we cope with change if it happens in our lives? One thing that's really helped me cope with change is to process those difficult feelings through art, whether that be creating it or engaging 

with it, as Williams says in one of his other books, history of the Rain.

We tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time to leave the world for a while or go more deeply into it. We tell stories to heal the pain  📍 of living. 

And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamppost. Join us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us. We will be posting a few community things this week, so keep an eye on both our posts and our story.

We would love to hear what you think. 

Also share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy it, and stay tuned for next episode in which we will be talking about the dictionary of Lost words by Pip Williams. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and YouTube at the literary lamppost. As well as subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform to make sure that you don't miss any of our new episodes.

Thanks for listening and see you next time.  This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua EBIT for exclusive use by the Literary Lamppost Podcast.

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