Circling a subject: chasing happiness in creative practice

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine issues arising from the attempt to record and portray happiness in a narrative. Roland Barthes writes of the impossibility of writing definitively about this most subjective of emotions in The Pleasure of the Text, in which he asserts that a writer ‘can only circle such a subject’ (34). This paper will therefore examine some of the ways in which I circle around the subject in my own creative practice, and suggest some working definitions of ‘textual’ happiness that can inform the writing process. It will analyse different conceptions and depictions of happiness, including Pater’s present tense epiphanies; depictions of states of transcendent joy; happiness as a facet of the past tense; and how Barthes’ definition of the text of bliss might be embodied within a creative text. The paper will include several excerpts from my creative struggle with this emotion, and end with a demonstration of how happiness within a text often proves contradictory and unsettling.

KEYWORDS:

• Happiness
• craft
• narrative
• Barthes
• memoir

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sam Meekings is assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of Under Fishbone Clouds (called ‘a poetic evocation of the country and its people’ by the New York Times) and The Book of Crows. He has taught writing at NYU (Global Campus) and the University of Chichester in the UK. He was awarded an Authors Foundation Award from the Society of Authors in 2015 for his current work in progress and has a PhD from Lancaster University. His website is www.sammeekings.com.

ORCID

Sam Meekings http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4644-2333