When I posed the question in class today, about whether someone could argue that John Self’s behavior was anything less than self-destructive, it was really meant as a rhetorical question because I didn’t assume anyone would argue that point. To me, his behavior is a categorical, textbook example of self-destruction. I think the difference in opinion stems from one’s definition of “happiness.”
Some in class suggested that John was “unhappy” only because he held some guilt for not conforming to what we classified as “societies norms.” I was surprised when people argued that John was in fact happy, since I see him as anything other than happy.
“Are you familiar with the stoical aspects of hard drinking, of heavy drinking?” the narrator asks the reader. “It isn’t easy,” he answers. “I never meant me any harm. All I wanted was a good time.” This sounds like a lament to me, and he openly admits doing harm. If he had been actually having a good time, wouldn’t “at least I was having a good time” be a more appropriate response.
Part of the disparity in opinion, I think, rests with the definition of what it means to be happy. John comes across as someone who lives by his own rules, not caring what anyone else thinks, doing as he pleases, a pot-bellied rebel without a cause, James Dean approaching middle age. When I was younger, happiness for me was the newly acquired freedom to make my own choices, to do what I wanted to do with my life, think and feel the way I wanted to feel and think. I didn’t want someone else telling me how to live. Being able to do what I wanted—that freedom—was happiness.
John, however, is not a kid—or even a young adult. He is in his mid-thirties, and not pledging a fraternity. If you are in your thirties, drinking at 9:00 AM, you are not a happy person. You are no longer rebelling. At the risk of moralizing, you are not living your life as you see fit. Rather, you’re escaping, or self-medicating. I’ve known people who have said they intend to live their life the way they want to live, and forget want anyone says they have to do. They said they would live their life “with no regrets.” Now, some of these same people regret every decision they have ever made.
As readers, we tend to romanticize characters that live outside of societies norms, and may tend to read John as such a character. However, John directs commercials. I can’t imagine a less rebellious, conformist way to live one’s life. I would argue that he is not a rebel at all, and would argue instead that he is a conformist, selling himself and his integrity, walking a tightrope between his humanist values and capitalist desires. I don’t see his actions in the novel up to this point as anything other than a form of slow suicide–through a million little cuts and stabs.
Perhaps my interpretation of the character will change as the novel progresses. Perhaps we will become some type of hero, whether through his actions or his refusal to act. Perhaps I will view him as being happy, however one defines the word. For me, happiness is being content, whether content to be depressed, in love, obsessed, angry, etc. Perhaps John will become content.
“You can never tell, though, can you, with suicide notes.”
