Will Ferguson Hapiness tm

By JOHN McCRYSTAL

A GLANCE at the top 10 best-selling non-fiction books shows how significant the market for so-called self-help books is.

Number one is Dear Mum, by Bradley Trevor Greive, who also has the number two and four spots with the modestly titled The Meaning of Life and The Blue Day Book. The number three slot is occupied by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Retire Young, Retire Rich, and at number seven is Dr Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese, which has spent 31 weeks in the top 10.

That equates to a whole lot of people who think they are unfulfilled, unhappy, overweight and underpaid, and are prepared to throw fistfuls of cash at someone who claims to have the cure.

Well, imagine if someone did. Imagine if a book were to emerge that contained the answers to all of our little dissatisfactions, insecurities and unrequited longings. The results would be catastrophic, and not only - as the above list suggests - for the publishing industry.

That is the central premise of this book, a first novel (so far as I know) by American Will Ferguson.

Edwin de Valu is the self-help editor of a large US publishing house, Panderic. He hates his job, his boss, his workmates and his self-help-literature-junkie wife. He is attracted to a workmate, the plump, gorgeous, cynical and secretly desperate May, but nothing, it seems, will come of it. His life is going nowhere.

Then, one day, a manuscript crosses his desk on its way into his wastepaper basket, a towering edifice of manually typewritten pages of poorly turned prose, which promises to help people to lose weight and stop smoking, cure gambling addiction, alcoholism and drug dependency, help people achieve inner balance, release their left-brain intuitive creative energy, find empowerment, seek solace, make money, enjoy life and improve their sexual lives.

Readers will become more confident, self-reliant, more considerate, more connected, more at peace. It will also help them to improve their posture and spelling and will give their lives meaning and purpose.

In short, it promises to impart the secret of happiness and, terrifyingly, it works.

The manuscript, for various reasons, is rescued from the dump and Edwin helps to publish it. Only then does he realise the consequences: our economy is built on human weaknesses, on bad habits and insecurities. Fashion. Fast food. Sportscars. Techno-gadgets. Sex toys. Diet centres. Hair clubs for men. Personal ads. Fringe religious sects. Professional sports teams - there's vicarious living for you! Hair salons. Male mid-life crises. Shopping binges.

Our entire way of life is built on self-doubt and dissatisfaction. Think what would happen if people were ever really, truly happy. The United States would grind to a halt - and if the US goes, you don't think the rest of the Western world will follow? We're talking about a global domino effect. The end of history.

When even May is converted by the book and lost to a New Age convent, Edwin sets out on a quest to find the book's author, who shelters behind the pseudonym Rajee Tupak Soiree, put a stop to him and exact revenge.

Happiness tm is, as you will have guessed, satire, but it is not directed, as you might have expected, at those easiest of targets, the consumers of self-help literature. It has its sights on the supply-side, particularly the publishing industry, and it is, for the most part, right on the money.

For what is essentially a one-joke book, it is surprisingly funny, even hilarious in places. Ferguson has a nice, light touch and a feel for irony.

Happiness tm may not give you the secret of eternal bliss, but it will make you feel a little better about being miserable.

And if it steers you away from the self-help section of the bookshop, it will make you richer: I guarantee it.

Atlantic Books
$35

* John McCrystal is an Auckland freelance writer.