I wrote Happy, Happy as a novel after trying for years to write a memoir about my own "lunatic lightning." I failed at the memoir because every day that I worked on it I became more and more morose. I could not handle rehashing the worst days of my life. By turning it into fiction I was able to play with it; by using humor and imagination I found a distance from the more woeful aspects of my debility. I found I could mix truth and invention and find actual joy in my story. Hence the title, which is both ironic and not.
The narrator/protagonist of Happy, Happy, Col Merrysee, through luck and love, stumbles into joy with a woman perfectly suited to him. Her name is Cara Bedwell. Both work in a bookstore, which they eventually end up. They marry. have kids, travel. Life is good and Col never takes it for granted that he is blessed; he is agog at the sweet serendipity of his adult life. Then Col is struck by what he labels, "lunatic lightning." He experiences a physical anomaly, coupled with irrational fear, merely from being in public.
The simple act of leaving the house becomes a challenge. He feels as if he's leaving the human plane, and a queerness takes over that is beyond his control. He assumes he's going crazy. He thinks his panic attacks are outside the human ken, the product of a faulty brain. He tries to carry on at work and at home. But making it to the bookstore becomes increasingly difficult.
His family doctor gives the malady a name, agoraphobia, and assures Col that he is not alone; his category of suffering is well-documented. Col is sent to a clinic that specializes in the disorder, and he is assigned to a Jungian analyst. Their conversations transform Col and their sometimes contentious back-and-forth makes up a large part of the latter portions of the novel. Eventually, Col finds pockets of peace in what many neurotics before him have found peace: creativity. Col begins to write about his predicament, with hard-won self-love and even humor.