A note of happiness rings through Updike's prose, and draws us to it, makes us happy when we read it.
But it avoids the kind of sentimentality and triumphalism that might be found in an American treatment of the same subject and ends on a note of happiness and reconciliation in the same cinema where it began.
"At this rate, it will take me a total of four to five years to get through the entire alphabet," he says, a note of happiness in his voice.
It doesn't, really; or only to the extent that the last section, with its surprise notes of happiness, seems to want to recast pathology as romance after all; a questionable reversal.
And the most beautiful notes of happiness".
The book ends on a note of cautious happiness: she had met Barry Reckord, a Jamaican playwright.
Craft, in her own way, is game for the whole project, taking note of her happiness "demerits and gold stars" and engaging in Rubin's various Try This at Home challenges.
Tears of pure sadness had become part of my everyday routine, but when I read the first email about the love notes, tears of happiness formed.
And yet, as many people have noted, the pursuit of happiness – something not mentioned in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, nor in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – seems peculiarly salient; it is the only one of the things listed that is a pursuit.
Roger and Marie, possibly the two least deserving – in her case, most narcissistic, in his, most negligent – characters, end on a note of plausible, astonishing happiness, while Sally is alone, parenting both her parents.
Studies in Europe, Asia, and North America all note an increased levels of happiness and altruism among NDE-ers, alongside decreases in materialism and fear of death.
