A meditation on Styron's ( Sophie's Choice ) serious depression at the age of 60, this essay evokes with detachment and dignity the months-long turmoil whose symptoms included the novelist's ``dank joylessness,'' insomnia, physical aversion to alcohol (previously ``an invaluable senior partner of my intellect'') and his persistent ``fantasies of self-destruction'' leading to psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. The book's virtues--considerable--are twofold. First, it is a pitiless and chastened record of a nearly fatal human trial far commoner than assumed--and then a literary discourse on the ways and means of our cultural discontents, observed in the figures of poet Randall Jarrell, activist Abbie Hoffman, writer Albert Camus and others. Written by one whose book-learning proves a match for his misery, the memoir travels fastidiously over perilous ground, receiving intimations of mortality and reckoning delicately with them. Always clarifying his demons, never succumbing to them in his prose, Styron's neat, tight narrative carries the bemusement of the worldly wise suddenly set off-course--and the hard-won wisdom therein. In abridged form, the essay first appeared in Vanity Fair. (Sept.)
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ¿ A literary tour de force that chronicles a prize-winning author's descent into an almost suicidal depression.
"Compelling ... Harrowing ... a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder ... It offers the solace of a shared experience."-The New York Times
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
1100407920
"Compelling ... Harrowing ... a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder ... It offers the solace of a shared experience."-The New York Times
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ¿ A literary tour de force that chronicles a prize-winning author's descent into an almost suicidal depression.
"Compelling ... Harrowing ... a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder ... It offers the solace of a shared experience."-The New York Times
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
"Compelling ... Harrowing ... a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder ... It offers the solace of a shared experience."-The New York Times
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
9.0
In Stock
5
1
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Or Pay
$9.00
9.0
In Stock
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169324266 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
Publication date: | 10/04/2016 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Videos
From the B&N Reads Blog