How to Write Happy Stories: Michel Faber’s “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” as a Refutation of Charles Baxter’s Happiness Theory

Abstract

Both writers and scholars frequently emphasize the difficulties of writing successful narratives that are expressive of happiness, but detailed and systematic inquiries into the problem are rare. An exception is Charles Baxter’s essay “Regarding Happiness.” It gives eloquent and clear answers to the questions of what makes it so hard to write happy stories that mean something, and how one can write such a story anyway. However, the propositions from “Regarding Happiness” can be challenged. Michel Faber’s short story “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” can be read as an elaborate refutation of Baxter’s theory, as it is an engaging ‘happy’ story that breaks almost every rule the essay put forward, and contradicts virtually all of its major claims. Showing that—contrary to Baxter—happiness can be communicated in fiction even when the happy character is unable to see or understand it, and that happiness does not need to be highlighted through a successfully completed activity or via contrast with pain, Faber’s short story offers important amendments to Baxter’s opus and thus makes a valuable contribution to the study of happiness and its relation to literature.