GAY TALESE: The Voyeur’s Motel.

Funny, this guy’s views of middle-class unhappiness seem to match James Agee’s observations from Havana in a different era. Agee was a different sort of voyeur, but I wonder: Are ordinary people as unhappy as they often seem to outside observers, or are outside observers suffering from a lack of perspective and a desire to be entertained?

And, of course, the Stoics — and, actually, most of the Greeks of various philosophical schools — would have told us that looking for what we moderns call “happiness” is a fool’s errand, and that basing a society on that would be disastrous. Luckily, they were idiots who had no idea what they were talking about. Stupid ancients.