Reviews for The Complete CPA examination review, 1985-1986

The average rating for The Complete CPA examination review, 1985-1986 based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-20 00:00:00 Donald Miller It's no secret that I'm into books about our inner mental states, and the trouble they sometimes give us. So when a review copy of "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy," by Wake Forest University English professor Eric G. Wilson came to the office, I greedily snatched it up. What we've got here is a collection of four essays plus an introduction and conclusion. Wilson lets on that he's experienced depression, which he prefers to call melancholia, all his life. He doesn't go into his own personal experience much, but enough to let us know that he's slowly decided to take pride in his mental constitution. He is a melancholic and proud of it. When he's not talking directly about himself, Wilson is using examples from literature (he likes Melville and Coleridge), or making broad sociological/philosophical claims about America at large. These claims fill most of the first essay, and I think they're the weakest part of the book. They're sweeping and not backed up, so I found myself disagreeing with him every step of the way, just out of crankiness. He argues that the majority of Americans are what he derogatively terms "happy types": not genuinely happy, but sort of Stepford-sitcom-hyperconsumerist happy. That's not a super new argument, I don't think, but it's one that I could probably have much sympathy for if it were presented in a subtle, persuasive way. Instead, Wilson takes such a superior, we-sensitive-souls-versus-all-those-vulgar-Americans tone, that I'm dying to separate myself from hm any way that I can. When he talks about the "mall mentality" afflicting these sanguine Americans, I feel like I'm reading something from the late '80s or early '90s. When is the last time you heard someone inveigh against malls? Wasn't that all the rage 15 years ago? One gets the feeling that Wilson's critique has been forged without a lot of direct observation of the world around him. I would have appreciated more specific details: show me a "happy type," for real, or else just stick to talking about yourself and/or the books that you know. Overall, Wilson's point is that melancholy can be a fertile state of mind. He talks quite a bit about famous artists and writers who struggled with their moods. He seems to be saying that melancholics perceive the world more deeply than other kinds of people. But here we get to the root of my problem with the book: it's not his message, which is sort of fine-but-not-earthshaking. It's his tone. I didn't know that anyone still made prose in this particular shade of purple. Wilson writes, I'm afraid, like the lifelong English professor who's finally getting a chance to write the "creative" book he's always wanted to do. At last, a chance to be poetic, to give free rein to the imagination! Batten down the hatches, people. Wilson's hyper-aestheticized version of melancholia is enough to make the J. Peterman catalog sound staid. (And yet, it does sound like the language of advertising. He's got the almost-Victorian maudlin thing down cold.) "We melancholy souls no doubt feel keenly the loss of our great old cityscapes and our forests and marshes. We love the beautiful ruins of aged buildings. We love the intricate architectural designs, the carvings and the mosaics and the rough stones. We love high ceilings and crown moldings. We love worn-down hardwood floors. We love the smell of rusting radiators. We love rickety windows that rattle in the wind. We also adore those ancient and lovely woodlands where we can walk alone and hear distant geese honking over the horizon. We can't get enough of trees in winter, of the thin brownish pines wisping among the oaks that never move. We are mad about the mucky earth covered in dead leaves. We inhale the nostalgic air and feel alive." (58-59) Okay. So "we" love crown moldings. Even if Wilson weren't presuming to ascribe his bourgeois tastes (I mean, he knows they're bourgeois, right???) to all of us, I'd still prefer 20,000 words about J. Peterman's weathered but loyal leather mailbag. "Against Happiness" is a good example of a book whose delivery and sloppy argumentation completely turned me off from some conclusions that I'd usually more or less agree with.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-07-18 00:00:00 Adrienne Borders Just so there's no misunderstanding: I totally concur with Wilson's thesis, which is that "happiness" is not the natural human condition (indeed, it's possibly a recent invention), and suffering (or, as he keeps calling it, "melancholia" [*retch*]) is not only more valuable creatively, but closer to the human norm. But wow, this book is just godawful. First problem: he completely avoids the fertile relationship between capitalism, "happiness", and the pharmaceutical industry. This is a fatal cop-out: my guess is either he's boning some Prozac Nation grad-student waif, or Farrar, Straus and Giroux are in Big Pharma's pockets. Second problem: his jubilant pop-wank theorizing (more like reassembling) leads him into into cross-eyed parallels between Herman Melville and Bruce Springsteen, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Joni Mitchell. None of which make any sense. Third (worst) problem: this English professor just sucks at composing sentences in English. How's this for a brilliant post-narcoleptic insight: "There is of course something soul-deadening about being overly in love with oneself. When a person views the world only through his own experience, he divorces himself from the polarized flow of existence, that persistent dialogue between self and other, familiar and unfamiliar..." Rakka rakka rakka, and that's about where clueless Narcissus joins his wobbly blue twin. Or this: "Melville and Springsteen alert us to the energy of winter. We all know of this, the mind's winter. No leaves now hide the nakedness of the branches. We stare at the gnarled and exposed limbs. They shiver in the wind..." I can't go on. Just a shyte writer, worse than Norman Vincent Peale. Never trust a professor with a soul patch.