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Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

William Styron

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Apr 18, 2019 El rated it liked it

Shelves: library-borrow, mfa, science-and-medicine, 20th-centurylit-late

I started reading this on a chartered Greyhound bus with like 23 undergraduate students traveling back to Pittsburgh from Manhattan overnight which, in retrospect, is probably the wrong time to read some William Styron.

In the mid-1980s, Styron first realized that he had spiraled into a nearly suicidal depression. There are statistics out there about depression - the number of people who suffer from depression, as one example - so I don't feel the need to repeat any of them here. Studies have bee I started reading this on a chartered Greyhound bus with like 23 undergraduate students traveling back to Pittsburgh from Manhattan overnight which, in retrospect, is probably the wrong time to read some William Styron.

In the mid-1980s, Styron first realized that he had spiraled into a nearly suicidal depression. There are statistics out there about depression - the number of people who suffer from depression, as one example - so I don't feel the need to repeat any of them here. Studies have been done. Research is constantly being made into the effects of depression - what it does to the brain and the body, what is going on in the brain and the body to cause it, are there genetic issues, environmental concerns, etc. etc. Are more people suffering from depression today than they were in the mid-1980s, for example.

While it's not unusual for someone to suffer from depression, even such a paralyzing and debilitating depression as Styron suffered, what he managed to do with it is rather remarkable. He looked the depression right in the fucking eyeballs and he wrote about it. He talked about the progression and his recovery, and through it all he made it sound like something so relatable that I would be surprised if any reader didn't walk away with a better sense of how horrifying depression can be, even if it's nothing they have personally had to deal with themselves.

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this caldron [sic], because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.
(p50)

Styron's experiences may not be Every experience. If I have learned anything about depression is that it can be different for everybody, but that doesn't make any episode any less severe or important or worth discussing.

I haven't always been perfect around those I love suffering from depression. I could always have been better, more patient, more understanding. No one can get it right 100% of the time. But we should continue to try. Reading Styron's memoir helps me remember that we can always do better, be better. ...more

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Dec 09, 2008 Nadine in California marked it as to-read

Shelves: memoir-biography

Aug 02, 2013 Erika rated it it was amazing

Aug 10, 2018 Karen Michele Burns marked it as to-read

Aug 10, 2018 Lauren marked it as to-read

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