Summary
Ray Robertson: What if not?
Fifteen Reasons to Live
Essays
Just after finishing his sixth novel, Canadian writer Ray Robertson suffered from severe depression, during which he had suicidal thoughts. After his recovery, he decided to try to answer two of the biggest questions we can ask ourselves: what makes people happy and what makes life worth living?
His answers do not resemble the banal answers from self-help manuals, the advice of Life Coaches, or those from popular books by psychologists and psychiatrists; they are devoid of any didactic pathos and do not mention concepts such as money, success or fame. He, on the other hand, reminds us of the big and small moments in human life that make it worthwhile to be on this earth. Robertson is a rock & roll Montenj, as Canadian literary criticism calls him, but also a modern Stoic, Epicurean, Whitmanian, Nietzschean, who, looking back on his own life, effortlessly underlines the value of friendship and solitude, effort, duty and enjoyment, art and wit. Why not? is an anti-Sisyphean reflection on life, daring, sober and seductive.
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