"Tolstoy Lied"

I just had to open with this passage because it resonated with thoughts and a perspective I've had for many years and I was so happy to see it in print.  I've never understood or bought into the idea perpetuated by modern fiction and film that happiness, goodness and a struggle to live according to one's values makes for an uninteresting narrative.  I just started reading the book, "Tolstoy Lied" by Rachel Kadish, and the first page enraptured me---

   "THERE IT IS.  Right there on the novel's first page.  Right there in the first line, staring the reader in the face.  A lie.
   Nothing against Tolstoy.  I'm an admirer.  I simply happen to believe he's responsible for the most widely quoted whopper in world literature. 
   "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
   Literary types swoon over that line, which opens Anna Karenina.  But have they considered the philosophy they're embracing?
   If Tolstoy is to be taken at his word, a person must be unhappy in order to be interesting.  If this is true, then certain other things follow.  Happy people have no stories you might possibly want to hear.  In order to be happy, you must whitewash your personality; steamroll your curiosities, your irritations, your honesty and indignation.  You must shed idiosyncratic dreams and march in lock-step with the hordes of the content.  Happiness, according to this witticism of Tolstoy's, is not a plant with spikes and gnarled roots; it is a daisy in a field of a thousand daisies.  It is for lovers of kitsch and those with subpar intelligence."

There's more, so check out the book if you're interested.  I'm only on page 11, so I can't attest to the rest.  But I'm so glad someone put into words what I've railed against for so long.  Not that I have anything against unhappy people's stories, I just don't believe they're the only ones whose stories are worth telling.