Sad-Sack Writers’ Night at Happy Ending Finishes Up Quietly
Literature’s professionally morose gathered at the bar Happy Ending for “Depression Night” on February 16 to read and to praise St. John’s Wort tea (which Arthur Phillips said “has absolutely no effects—side, sexual, or otherwise”). Andrew Solomon recited his favorite poem from fifth grade, Emily Dickinson’s “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain.” Daphne Merkin admitted she’d written just fourteen pages of her “forthcoming, never-to-be-published book on depression,” for which she’d received a half-million dollars four years ago. And Amanda Stern announced, “In honor of ‘Depression Night,’ I have not showered and plan on sleeping in these clothes.”
—Jada Yuan