A friend forwarded me some blogs that mention this group and my next novel and think that I'm asking you to write my entire novel. This is not the case. I'm just saying, like, yeah I wrote 350 pages, and you get to write about five. This is for a small section of the novel in which the main character, Zeke Pappas, wakes up to find a deluge of e-mails from people answering the question on his website: why are you so unhappy?
Just clarifying!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Be in my next novel: Tell me, why are you so unhappy?
Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don't know why--the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in the Buick station wagon you saw at the Kwik Trip, the Food Network after ten p.m.
In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field below. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.
Some samples:
Abigail H., 41, medical software trainer, Verona, WI:
Unhappy? Well, I suppose I am. I suppose it has something to do with, well, work. Actually, in a all seriousness, I’ve been unhappy since I was about nine. One day, this gray, damp January day, I remember waking up and getting upset because I had to go to fourth grade that day. And then, in one of those bizarre flash forward moments you sometimes get as a kid, I saw the older version of myself, me, now, and I thought, there I am, getting up for work, going somewhere I don’t want to go. And at that moment I realized that there was my life, all of it, and almost every day of my life I would have to get up and go somewhere I didn’t really want to go. And now, the other morning, I was dropping of my daughter, Zoe, she’s four, at preschool, and I was like, oh look at this, here we go again, her too. God.
Seth S., 30, bike messenger, New York, NY:
Cars, the great American automobile, pal, that’s what has me down. Not only do I come close to getting clipped once an hour by some cell phone talking prick in a Land Rover, but I have to breathe all that shit we put into the air. When my son Silver inherits this earth, it’s gonna be totally fucked. There. Sorry you asked?
Simms P., 39, retail clerk, Cleveland, OH:
Well, if you mean, why am I so depressed, look around you. [Interviewer’s note: conversation took place at a shopping mall in an Ohio suburb.] Food courts. Shitty fast food places posing as Asian-fusion and Latin-fusion bistros. ATM surcharges. That rent-a-cop hitting on that high school girl. The Pretzel Peddler, where I just had lunch. Think of it: I’m almost forty, I’m on my lunch break from a place called Famous Footwear. And where did I eat lunch? The fucking Pretzel Peddler, man? I eat pretzels with fake cheese dip for lunch. And you want to know what makes me unhappy? Me. I make me miserable.
Melinda, 37, self-employed, Boise, ID:
I’m unhappy because of the rain today. My unhappiness is always linked to the weather, and I am very hard to please, weather-wise. I hate rain and clouds, detest the heat, find the bitter cold intolerable, and consider high humidity a plague. So, in fact, for nine weeks, each autumn, I find myself deliriously happy and then, near Thanksgiving, the first bitter winds emerge, the first snow hits, and there I am again, despairing. I’m serious. If there was one place on earth that had autumn every day, I’d move there. But there is nothing like that—there are places on earth that have summer all day or winter all day, and I suppose several places like San Francisco or San Diego, maybe, I don’t know, I’ve never been, feel like spring all year round, but there is no place to go to be continually cradled in autumn’s bosom. Thank you. This feels better.
By posting an answer to this question, you give Dean Bakopoulos permission to use this quote, with a first-name-only attribution, as text in his new novel.
In 100 words or less, please answer the question, "What makes you so unhappy?" in the comments field below. Selected answers will appear in Dean Bakopoulos's new novel, My American Unhappiness, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2009 or early 2010.
Some samples:
Abigail H., 41, medical software trainer, Verona, WI:
Unhappy? Well, I suppose I am. I suppose it has something to do with, well, work. Actually, in a all seriousness, I’ve been unhappy since I was about nine. One day, this gray, damp January day, I remember waking up and getting upset because I had to go to fourth grade that day. And then, in one of those bizarre flash forward moments you sometimes get as a kid, I saw the older version of myself, me, now, and I thought, there I am, getting up for work, going somewhere I don’t want to go. And at that moment I realized that there was my life, all of it, and almost every day of my life I would have to get up and go somewhere I didn’t really want to go. And now, the other morning, I was dropping of my daughter, Zoe, she’s four, at preschool, and I was like, oh look at this, here we go again, her too. God.
Seth S., 30, bike messenger, New York, NY:
Cars, the great American automobile, pal, that’s what has me down. Not only do I come close to getting clipped once an hour by some cell phone talking prick in a Land Rover, but I have to breathe all that shit we put into the air. When my son Silver inherits this earth, it’s gonna be totally fucked. There. Sorry you asked?
Simms P., 39, retail clerk, Cleveland, OH:
Well, if you mean, why am I so depressed, look around you. [Interviewer’s note: conversation took place at a shopping mall in an Ohio suburb.] Food courts. Shitty fast food places posing as Asian-fusion and Latin-fusion bistros. ATM surcharges. That rent-a-cop hitting on that high school girl. The Pretzel Peddler, where I just had lunch. Think of it: I’m almost forty, I’m on my lunch break from a place called Famous Footwear. And where did I eat lunch? The fucking Pretzel Peddler, man? I eat pretzels with fake cheese dip for lunch. And you want to know what makes me unhappy? Me. I make me miserable.
Melinda, 37, self-employed, Boise, ID:
I’m unhappy because of the rain today. My unhappiness is always linked to the weather, and I am very hard to please, weather-wise. I hate rain and clouds, detest the heat, find the bitter cold intolerable, and consider high humidity a plague. So, in fact, for nine weeks, each autumn, I find myself deliriously happy and then, near Thanksgiving, the first bitter winds emerge, the first snow hits, and there I am again, despairing. I’m serious. If there was one place on earth that had autumn every day, I’d move there. But there is nothing like that—there are places on earth that have summer all day or winter all day, and I suppose several places like San Francisco or San Diego, maybe, I don’t know, I’ve never been, feel like spring all year round, but there is no place to go to be continually cradled in autumn’s bosom. Thank you. This feels better.
By posting an answer to this question, you give Dean Bakopoulos permission to use this quote, with a first-name-only attribution, as text in his new novel.
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