Was in a low-down rotten mood Saturday afternoon. Went to get an oil change. Efficient oil-change clerk, a woman who I've come to admire over the years, says, "Give me 25 minutes, okay?"

I go to the book store around the corner, figuring to spend the 25 minutes moodily perusing the covers to see if anything jerks me out of my gloom.

Against Happiness, by a gloomy Wake Forest English prof named Eric Wilson leaps off the shelf at me like no book ever leaped off the shelf at me before.

I'm in Flounder's Bar with a pint of Goose Island beer and 22 minutes to read the first few delicious pages.

"I for one am afraid that our American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. ... We might think we're leading a truly honest existence, one attuned to vivid realities and blooded hearts, when we're really just behaving as predictably an artificially as robots ...."

I walked back into the Jiffy Lube with a jiffy lube of my own and in happy—yes, happy—anticipation of reading the rest of the yellow-covered book this weekend.

Of course, Sunday's reading session in front of the PGA golf tournament told the rest of the story: The book blows; it's a grumpy liberal rant whose main point was pretty much made by the end of the introduction. The book didn't even bother to make the most obvious point. So now I still must write my own essay (which I, too might expand into a book!) titled, "The Tyranny of Happiness: How Acting Happy Keeps Other People On their Heels and Off Your Back."

Anyway, that's happiness for you: You're smiling at the Jiffy Lube one day, frowning at Pebble Beach the next.