Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (Vintage classics) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

There are only a few points where this book is almost brilliant in depicting the paralyzing ways of this sinister enemy and illness - the stronger parts of the book are those that focus entirely on himself, back then, and on the effects the illness had upon him.

These are the moments when he seems to allow for total closeness to his own suffering, where he refrains from smart commenting and slick know-it-all interpretations,where his language becomes nearly simple. When Styron writes without his somewhat annoying "look i am a big author" attitude, he is at his best.

Often enough however, he resorts to distanced, rationalized interpretations of what was going on with him or to recitations of "this famous person was depressed, too" and to myths and legends or, worse even, to semi-poetic and pompously worded blabla. These are the worst parts of the book.

At times it almost seems as if Styron finds a weird kind of comfort in the fact that many famous and great people suffered from depression, just like him - as if he says, in twisted vanity, "see! I suffered, but that means i am like Camus!" This may be of comfort for some, this may raise awareness, too - but reiterating it and wasting so much space on it (in such a thin book) ...i don't know, i just couldn't see the point.

The problem with Styrons excursions into the world of the depressed and famous and with his generalisations is not that one should not tell the world about it: it is that he spins his own tale from it, draws generalized conclusions from his own story and often adds a nearly glorifying taste to his text.

For the outsider, it painfully seems as if Styron cannot handle the fact that illness struck him, unless it be a special kind of illness, one that preferably hits on poets, highly gifted actresses etc. At one point he does state actually that especially poets suffer from depression. This may or may not be true. But it may just as well be that the depression of the carpenters, plumbers and housewifes in his country are not as well-documented and publicised or, well, critically acclaimed.

Another example: from the fact that he had one psychiatrist who could not help him, he concludes that hospital is a better choice - for once totally neglecting that in hospital, he was being treated by psychiatrists too and not even pondering that a change of psychiatrist may have helped. This conclusion may have been the right one for him, but psychiatric wards are not the same everywhere just as psychiatrists are not all as incompetent as his seems to have been.

For a personal account of suffering, all this is perfectly alright: what Styron should have refrained from is the generalizations which he comes up with. These give his honorable attempt at describing what happened the aura of the world war stories of grandfathers no grandchild wanted to listen to: the stories themselves were good, intense almost, but everybody felt uncomfortable about their glorifying taste and nobody wanted to have the lessons that came with them - and in hindsight, those lessons were utterly useless.

There is one major exception to this: when Styron talks about suicide as a consequence of depression. For american standards, his ideas, his insights, are almost daring. His comparison of depression to cancer may seem unusually dramatic to some, but he does make an important point here and he does make it clearly: if not treated, this illness can be just as threatening. If for nothing else, Styron must be praised for this clarity in this context.

All in all it seems to me therefore, that this piece of writing has been welcomed so much by the critics more due to the fact that finally a well-known writer admits to and describes this illness and takes a strong position on suicide than to the formal quality of the text. Had this book been written by a Milwaukee housewife, i doubt that it would have been published at all. At least it would have undergone some serious editing.

However, the fact that it is written by a well-known author and that it has been critically acclaimed is good for the cause: after all it helps raising awareness for depression. All in all "Darnkess visible" may thus not be a very good book, but it is no doubt an important book.

For those who are still looking for a good description of what depression feels like, i recommend taking a peek at the first chapters (and only those) of "the noonday demon" by Andrew Solomon which seem to be hauntingly accurate and written without pomp and vanity.