Reviews
I awoke this morning with a small sense of creeping dread. Nothing unfamiliar, just uninspiring. I picked this up on a whim from a pile of books to read--not even my pile, but originally my mother's. From the first few sentences, I knew that this book spoke to me and that it'd be a favorite--the first one in a while since I read Robert Goolrick's "The End of the World as We Know It." I won't go into the details of my relationship with mental health here, but Styron's words cut to the bone: "...and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness..." (42). I adore this memoir. I admire its bluntness and its brevity, all the more adding to its significance. I thank my mom for picking it up and for it somehow ending up on my pile, similar to how I came around to read Goolrick's. When I read works like this, it gives me a sense that I might be regaining some of the moments I had and have missed. I'll be keeping this book in my pile, at least in the meanwhile.
the title of this book makes it sound a harrowing, gritty look at madness and depression but it's a literature-look at the subject by a writer of literature. the formal language he uses divides readers from his humanity and suffering in a way to make it seem like dinner-party conversation about his "dance with depression". The only thing gleaned, and apt, was his focus on the idea that to someone whose never experienced the depths of depression, there is no language for the depressed to explain it. I was a bit nervous reading it would stir up old demons or bring my mind back to places i've put behind me but it failed to touch a nerve, and honestly failed to shed any light on the subject in a meaningful way.
