My miserablist acquaintance, too well do I think I sense some of the reasons for your miserablism, and I can't change them --- nor, since I have passed through the Age of Anxiety, can I do much more than recall their cognates, which I do. With myself, often "cheerfulness keeps breaking in" -- or at least it tries to when it's not being stamped on.
(Anyway, so what if there is "no exit" as Jim Morrison said : something is watching the show, even if it is only you. How can that be?...)
When feeling very mordant, take two hot chocolates, and call your reflexologist in the morning.
As to MacNeice, whose fascinating work you know at least as well as if not far better than I, do you think this might be a friendly jeer at "The Wasteland" of T. Stearns Eliot?
John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.
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