Read Online Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Richard Powers
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with me.
Come hike with me, eat with me, bathe with me. Come learn how to want something more than you want to write. Their first night, after burritos in a dusty dive, they holed up in their chilly room. He looked to her to set the pace. Her pace was geological. She wanted him naked under the covers with her, knees up, reading, as if their thirtieth anniversary came before their honeymoon. He was reading
The Varieties of Religious Experience
. She was deep into
Far Tortuga
. He loved when she wore her glasses, which she hated to put on. She curled over her book like in prayer, the back of her hand distractedly grazing his thigh. He did not know a body could pound like that. Reading lasted maybe forty minutes, until she turned to him, slipped one leg over his, and asked, “How’s the book?” They read no more that night.
In the morning, after gorging on complimentary breakfast, they stood on the South Rim giggling like maniacs at the bizarre optical effects: near, middle, and distant cross sections of the earth sliding decoupled against one another like bad back projection in a forties movie. He could not accept the colors, the rose irons and coppery greens. They climbed down Bright Angel into the chasm on foot, she singing Ferde Grofé’s clumping mule theme, he wanting to take her into the thickets of tamarisk and do her like deer. She was insane, insisting that they descend to the Inner Gorge, all the way down to the Vishnu Schist. They made it as far as Plateau Point and barely dragged themselves back up to the rim by nightfall. That night, as if theyweren’t dead with fatigue, they skipped the studying and went right to the exam.
He never imagined that Grace might feel any less than he did. Just hearing her hum contentedly under her breath as she drove home was like returning to a country he didn’t even know he’d been banished from. But back in Tucson, they didn’t move in together, didn’t join futures, didn’t even change their old routine except for sleeping together eight increasingly tense times before her departure to France that May.
As she left the country, she goosed his ribs and said she expected great things from him. To date, his greatest achievement has been his appearance as a most convincing character in Grace’s deeply convincing first novel.
He writes down
Grand Canyon w/ G
, and in that instant, the one-minute timer starts beeping.
Other things his happiness encyclopedia says:
Well-being is not one thing. It surprises Stone to read that optimism, satisfaction, capacity for happiness, and capacity for unhappiness are all independent. He puts his average across the four at about .235, or just shy of respectable for the North American league. Nor is he much of a long-ball hitter.
Happy people have stronger social relationships, more friends, better jobs, higher salaries, and stronger marriages. They are more creative, more altruistic, calmer, healthier, and longer lived. Russell skips the self-scoring checklist.
Happy people know that they’re happy and don’t need to read happiness books to determine how happy they are. Russell’s book doesn’t actually say this. It’s what psychologists call inferred knowledge.
People in positive moods are more biased, less logical, and less reliable than people in negative moods. Score one for what the book calls “depressive realism.”
The prefrontal cortex of happy people lights up more on the left, while the brains of the congenitally dour favor the right. This seems to Russell either profound or meaningless.
Happiness is probably the most highly heritable component of personality. From 50 to 80 percent of the variation in people’s averagehappiness may be accounted for by genes. People display an affective set point in infancy that doesn’t change much over a lifetime. For true contentment, the trick is to choose your parents wisely. No argument at the Stone household.
Yet the conflicted book insists on a role for nurture.
Come hike with me, eat with me, bathe with me. Come learn how to want something more than you want to write. Their first night, after burritos in a dusty dive, they holed up in their chilly room. He looked to her to set the pace. Her pace was geological. She wanted him naked under the covers with her, knees up, reading, as if their thirtieth anniversary came before their honeymoon. He was reading
The Varieties of Religious Experience
. She was deep into
Far Tortuga
. He loved when she wore her glasses, which she hated to put on. She curled over her book like in prayer, the back of her hand distractedly grazing his thigh. He did not know a body could pound like that. Reading lasted maybe forty minutes, until she turned to him, slipped one leg over his, and asked, “How’s the book?” They read no more that night.
In the morning, after gorging on complimentary breakfast, they stood on the South Rim giggling like maniacs at the bizarre optical effects: near, middle, and distant cross sections of the earth sliding decoupled against one another like bad back projection in a forties movie. He could not accept the colors, the rose irons and coppery greens. They climbed down Bright Angel into the chasm on foot, she singing Ferde Grofé’s clumping mule theme, he wanting to take her into the thickets of tamarisk and do her like deer. She was insane, insisting that they descend to the Inner Gorge, all the way down to the Vishnu Schist. They made it as far as Plateau Point and barely dragged themselves back up to the rim by nightfall. That night, as if theyweren’t dead with fatigue, they skipped the studying and went right to the exam.
He never imagined that Grace might feel any less than he did. Just hearing her hum contentedly under her breath as she drove home was like returning to a country he didn’t even know he’d been banished from. But back in Tucson, they didn’t move in together, didn’t join futures, didn’t even change their old routine except for sleeping together eight increasingly tense times before her departure to France that May.
As she left the country, she goosed his ribs and said she expected great things from him. To date, his greatest achievement has been his appearance as a most convincing character in Grace’s deeply convincing first novel.
He writes down
Grand Canyon w/ G
, and in that instant, the one-minute timer starts beeping.
Other things his happiness encyclopedia says:
Well-being is not one thing. It surprises Stone to read that optimism, satisfaction, capacity for happiness, and capacity for unhappiness are all independent. He puts his average across the four at about .235, or just shy of respectable for the North American league. Nor is he much of a long-ball hitter.
Happy people have stronger social relationships, more friends, better jobs, higher salaries, and stronger marriages. They are more creative, more altruistic, calmer, healthier, and longer lived. Russell skips the self-scoring checklist.
Happy people know that they’re happy and don’t need to read happiness books to determine how happy they are. Russell’s book doesn’t actually say this. It’s what psychologists call inferred knowledge.
People in positive moods are more biased, less logical, and less reliable than people in negative moods. Score one for what the book calls “depressive realism.”
The prefrontal cortex of happy people lights up more on the left, while the brains of the congenitally dour favor the right. This seems to Russell either profound or meaningless.
Happiness is probably the most highly heritable component of personality. From 50 to 80 percent of the variation in people’s averagehappiness may be accounted for by genes. People display an affective set point in infancy that doesn’t change much over a lifetime. For true contentment, the trick is to choose your parents wisely. No argument at the Stone household.
Yet the conflicted book insists on a role for nurture.
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