The book is a melange of biography, novel, and philosophical treatise, and it is basically constructed in narrative summary (structured in the form of a narrowed text, somewhat like poetry, although not, strictly speaking, for poetic reasons) often interrupted by a variety of quotations, most from the works of Schopenhauer himself, but many from the works of such Schopenhauerian figures as Napoleon, Byron, Gracian, Wittgenstein, Goethe, et al. Then there are frequent, narrative interludes, much like short stories but cumulative and thus serving the text. While invented, these narrative interludes are all based upon well-documented events in Schopenhauer s life. The book s tone often verges upon the ironic, frolicsome and light-hearted, designed to serve in counterpoint to the familiar stereotype of Schopenhauer as a relentlessly grim pessimist. But it is intrinsic to the book s very conception that this tonal counterpoint is not as incompatible with the real Schopenhauer as that of his familiar image, because the enormous vitality of his style simply could not have grown out of the quagmire of utter despair, in that the voice of despair is silence, whereas there is enormous energy and brio in all that Schopenhauer wrote."