Limitless Happiness & the Challenges of Narcissism

Exile Book Review: Roderick Hudson by Henry James

What are the limits of happiness? 

bb (the blue butterfly) (Exile): Hello A!

A (Self-energy): Hello bb. 

bb: A, I’m famous and I’m happy. Because I wrote about going for a walk, and then you featured my story about going for a walk in your newsletter. 

How fun do I feel and special!

A: I’m glad it made you feel special. I liked what you wrote about the walk. It was very nice, bb. 

bb: I got a good feeling inside of my belly button. It made ME like me. 

Then we got a text. In that text, someone told us that they liked what we wrote! We were like a rocket ship going to Mars with happiness! How happy can I be! What is the limit of happiness, A? 

A: I’m not sure there’s a limit, bb. I feel like there was a famous author, who said that evil is flat and boring and banal, but happiness has layers of depth.

bb: Maybe it was Hannah Arendt. That’s the name of her book, the Banality of Evil. Oh, I guess that’s a subtitle. I’ve waited around long enough to read this book! We put it on hold in the library. Enough is enough! People need information in here, A.

A: So I hear. 

bb: There are a lot of good books out there, and we got to get them into us. How can we pour more books in? Books are happiness! 

A: We can sit and read instead of being on Facebook.

bb: It’s a consideration. But we’ve curtailed how much we’ve been on Facebook lately. So we ARE doing better. But you’re right, we could probably do even better. And then we would have even more happiness. I just ate a whole book, and it was delicious!

A: What was delicious about it?

Roderick Hudson by Henry James 

bb: We got it from the little free book box, so it basically came from God. It came down from the sky into our life. And what a strange visitation. 

You never know what book will come to you through the little free book box. This book was Henry James‘ Roderick Hudson. It was a 19th century psychological exploration of narcissism, artistic genius, the impact of beauty, differences between Europe and America and between sane and personality-disordered people. You could also say it was an exploration of the difference between people who are manager-led and people who are extremely firefighter-led. I loved it!

A: What did you particularly love about it?

bb: Everything, mostly the truth—the sentences had deep, psychological astuteness and clarity. It seemed like it was being written from a Self-led place of compassion and curiosity for all the characters. But not treacly bullshit — a real questing after the truth of their fundamental personality structures, choices and ways of being. 

Narcissist Enablers 

Roderick is a narcissist, A! A rather insufferable narcissist. And all the people around him enable him. They’re enablers.

Why? Because he’s good looking? Because he’s charismatic? Because he’s a genius sculptor? All of the above? 

He’s impolite, he’s rude, he’s self-centered, he’s moody, and he’s a pain in the ass. I do not like him, and it’s rather aggravating to see everyone and I do mean everyone falling like dominoes into some kind of trance of enabling his obnoxiousness. 

His old mother can be as entranced with him if she wants, she’s his mother. And maybe some of the other artists who are less talented can revere him because he’s so talented. And Christina Light can toy with him because he’s attractive and she’s gorgeous and that’s just a firefighter dalliance. They’re both fools. 

But why Rowland? Why do he AND Mary both put up with Roderick’s GARBAGE?! That’s where I really start to fall apart at the seams, A. Why do people of good sense and reasonableness and kindness and compassion and steadiness and calmness and Self-energy fall for narcissists — enabling them in their horrible behavior?

A: That’s a great question. 

bb: Yes, it is and I’ll tell you why! Because I am Mary, and I am Rowland. I have the unfortunate difficulty of being hoodwinked by narcissists on a consistent basis, and I want it to stop. I’m going to make it stop, no matter what it takes! And that’s going to be my deep and intense inquiry, and I’m going to use the Substack to inquire so deeply, I’m going to dig and dig and I’ll dig to China if I have to! You watch me!

A: I like your plan, bb.