I had big hopes for this book, “The Happy Hero” that Solitaire Townsend published in October 2017. But when the book arrived I was immediately put off by the combination of the cover and the title. I don’t know about you, but I hate the places where you are greeted by one or more smiling faces and – often – by the words “have a nice day.” Maybe there is some market research showing that these things increase sales, but for me they are depressing. The first impression of this book is that it is one of those “self-help” books you find in the bookstores in the halls of airports. Sugar coated pills that help nobody.
But, no. The book is different. Reading it, a poem by Walt Whitman came to my mind, So Long, where he says “This is no book; Who touches this, touches a man“. In this case, it is a woman but, apart from that, for what I can say, this book is very much Solitaire Townsend and Solitaire Townsend is very much this book. And I can tell you that Solitaire is one of the brightest persons I’ve ever met. For one thing, her idea that the “likes” in facebook are the equivalent of money in the sociosphere has changed my view of the world (I discuss her idea in my book “The Seneca Effect.”)
Then, if a book is like a person, it can never be perfect – you may like him or her a lot, but you must accept his/her idiosyncrasies. And not all persons you meet are the kind of person you would want to marry. So, this book has defects, one is the title. Personally, I would have chosen as title the sentence written at p. 61, “Hope is not weak, hope swims”. It is nevertheless a remarkable book. Very remarkable.
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