In the preface for The Book of Delights, Gay writes that after a year of recording delights, he found his life “not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight” (7). Throughout the project, Gay does not ignore grief but uses it to highlight how wonderful delight really is. In “Joy is Such a Human Madness,” Gay explores how “the intolerable makes life worthwhile” (45). This becomes a theme throughout the essays as he records his honest thoughts and experiences, not withholding negative emotions like anxiety and paranoia, while consistently finding things to delight in. The symbiotic relationship between grief and joy is evident in a few topics Gay returns to throughout his essays. The first of these topics is physical touch between strangers, the second is death, and the third is his poverty-stricken childhood.

Many of his essays ramble through unpleasantness like racism, the death of a loved one, and societal and political unrest. In “Kombucha in a Mid-Century Glass,” Gay acknowledges that his delights often illuminate his afflictions, like his love for glasses reminiscent of an era centered on whiteness. Similarly, sometimes his afflictions illuminate his delight. In “To Spread the Sweetness of Love,” Gay’s anxious walking around the airport leads him to witness an act of love between friends that renews his faith in the goodness of humankind.