5/10/2023 0 Comments The midday demon![]() ![]() ![]() Often this is accomplished through metaphors. One of the book's many strengths is that Solomon is adept - in ways that many physicians find themselves hamstrung - in explaining difficult concepts simply and evocatively. Solomon, a layman novelist and nonfiction writer, manages to synthesize painstaking research and personal narrative into a compelling book. On the continuum, Solomon's entry falls somewhere between Styron's - that of a layman writing only about his own experience - and Jamison's, based on her own experience but drawing on her training in psychology. Into the genre comes Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Despite the crowded field, many of these are uniquely powerful and instructive, opening a window into a world of suffering. There's William Styron's Darkness Visible, Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, and, most recently, Nell Casey's collection Unholy Ghost, among countless others. Literary personal narratives about mental illness, particularly depression, have become a sort of genre unto themselves. Perhaps because the unexamined life is not worth living, according to Socrates, writers with depression have examined their lives quite often. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |