Outrageous Fortune

In this book William Ian Miller offers his reflections on the perverse consequences indeed often the opposite of intended effects of so-called 'good things'. Noted for his remarkable erudition wit and playful pessimism Miller here ranges over topics from personal disasters to literary and national ones. Drawing on a truly immense store of knowledge encompassing literature philosophy theology and history he excavates the evidence of human anxieties around scarcity in all its forms (from scarcity of food to luck to where we stand in the eyes of others caught in a game of musical chairs we often do not even know we are playing). With wit and sensitivity along with a large measure of fearless self-scrutiny he points to and invites us to recognize the gloomy neurotic despondent tendencies of reasonably sentient human life. The book is a careful examination of negative beliefs inviting an experience of bleak fellow-feeling among the author the reader and many a hapless soul across the centuries. Just what makes you more nervous he asks a run of good luck or a run of bad?<br>