zadie smith on joy vs. pleasure in the new york review of books
“Joy is such a human madness…The writer Julian Barnes, considering mourning, once said, “It hurts just as much as it is worth.” In fact, it was a friend of his who wrote the line in a letter of condolence, and Julian told it to my husband, who told it to me. For months afterward these words stuck with both of us, so clear and so brutal. It hurts just as much as it is worth. What an arrangement. Why would anyone accept such a crazy deal? Surely if we were sane and reasonable we would every time choose a pleasure over a joy, as animals themselves sensibly do.”
concerns on the medicalization of bereavement by harvard psychiatrist, anthropologist and widower Arthur Kleinman in thelancet
“My grief, like that of millions of others, signalled the loss of something truly vital in my life. This pain was part of the remembering and maybe also the remaking. It punctuated the end of a time and a form of living, and marked the transition to a new time and a different way of living. The suffering pushed me out of my ordinary day-to-day existence and called into question the meanings and values that animated our life.”
facebook vs. emotional closure in the NYT
“There’s one person who keeps coming around in the People You May Know box on Facebook where just the suggestion of this person changes my whole day,” said Pam Houston, a novelist. “It’s essential to my well-being to create the illusion that this person doesn’t exist.”
