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The author of What Happened Later documents his recovery from suicidal depression, a journey during which he explored what makes people happy and what makes life worth living, in an irreverent personal account that considers topics ranging from working-class life and death to intoxication and art. Original.
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This isn't some sappy, self-help book filled with banal platitudes and new age mantras. Considering that author Ray Robertson suffers from near crippling OCD and barely weathered a near suicidal depression he's not one to espouse ideas like “to thine own self be true”. Then again fellow writer (and, perhaps in tasteless understatement, one who didn't fare as well against his depression) David Foster Wallace would go on to say that “in the day -to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.”
Instead Ray explores 15 ideas that make life worth living. The usual suspects like Love, Art, Humor, Home and Intoxication backed up by a hefty dose of quotes from literary luminaries. It reminded me of a lot of my old English days reading Northrop Frye and bouncing all over the literary canon. Here Robertson isn't just namedropping Thoreau, Camus and Flaubert but considering the War in Iraq, watching Bob Dylan hork and growing up in Chatham Ontario loving KISS.
