Madness in Literature

[Bleak&Icy]

A brilliant account of madness, by a Persian novelist heavily influenced by Poe:

[Russell Nash]

Two cases that I forgot are: Vincent Van Gogh, and John Forbes Nash Jr. (A Beautiful Mind, a film based on his life). However, how many paintings did Van Gogh paint when he was totally mad? Are they really good ones? I know, art is a relative thing, but if one compares his first paintings to his last ones, which ones are better? The second case, Forbes Nash, is more intriguing, a person affected by schizophrenia is truly mad? I ask so many questions, because I don't know. I wish to know, but who am I (not having a degree on this field) to judge whether or not someone is mad?

I live close to a mental hospital, about 10 blocks from it, and sometimes I just stop (more times than it is advisable) at the corner to watch people coming in and going out from the hospital, or wandering about. Believe me, some of this people are "mad". They don't look like rara avis but like madmen. It's very depressing to see people, fellowmen, that are suffering from that mental disorder, madness, or whatever it is. Often I like to walk the streets at night, for pleasure, and the other night I saw a guy (looked normal to me) getting across the sidewalks in a zigzagging way. On the same street, he crossed several times, from one sidewalk to the other and then babbled something, and back to the other sidewalk. Was he a madman? Did he have an outré behavior? ...?

[G. S. Carnivals]

Thanks, Jeff. I am torn in two directions on this one. My father suffered from mental illness when I was younger. Wanting to consciously experience madness is like wanting to experience LSD. What lies ahead?

[Russell Nash]

One more thing, Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, was Hopkins mad? Or is he a good actor imitating a madman? I think it is the second option. The same with literature, many good writers speak about horror but no one wants to live in a concentration camp. And many discuss or write about madness, although no one wants to experience what madness really is. Writers are good imitators, but that's it, no true madness, no true horror. True horror and true madness may not be found in literature. But what do I know...?

[UG Swoons]

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. D.

Another major writer that no one has mentioned is Ryunosuke Akutagawa. His two stories, "In a Grove" and Rashamon" were used as the basis of the film also entitled "Rashamon." His mother went insane when he was a child and his father wasn't much help. Dad was a very flighty person so Ryunosuke was raised by his uncle's family. He was unstable his whole life and suffered serious emotional problems during his last years. All of his works are unusual and his later works explore his mental problems. he eventually committed suicide at the age of 35. (I think) The core of his work is a sense of cynicism and despair that became more pronounced the older he got. He was savage in his alanysis of Japanese life. (And all life, no doubt.) Needless to say, he is one of my favorite authors.

Indeed. His last work, Spinning Gears, written shortly before he killed himself, is almost like an extended suicide note. Very powerful and disturbing in its intensity of despair.

The link below summarises the tale better than I could:

http://muslin.wordpress.com/2007/07/...uke-akutagawa/

[DoktorH]

One work I'd like to add to the madness-inspired/influenced literary list: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Inspired by Ken Kesey's work on the night shift at a VA hospital while experimenting with psychoative drugs (in one of the studies back before they were banned), it could be seen as a view of what a larger society regards as madness from the perspective of chemically-induced madness.

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by DoktorH

One work I'd like to add to the madness-inspired/influenced literary list: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Inspired by Ken Kesey's work on the night shift at a VA hospital while experimenting with psychoative drugs (in one of the studies back before they were banned), it could be seen as a view of what a larger society regards as madness from the perspective of chemically-induced madness.

An excellent novel. For some reason - possibly due to the times in which it was written or Kesey's off the wall lifestyle - I was expecting a more experimental novel. It isn't. The prose is wonderful. And it is a great story, of course.

[DoktorH]

Quote Originally Posted by bendk

An excellent novel. For some reason - possibly due to the times in which it was written or Kesey's off the wall lifestyle - I was expecting a more experimental novel. It isn't. The prose is wonderful. And it is a great story, of course.

I'm glad it wasn't experimental. The prose as it stands shows that madness, or what society calls madness at the least, isn't that far removed from what it calls normal.

[Gray House]

Anyone read I Hear Voices, by Paul Ableman? It is in my "to-read pile" but is in danger of drowning (that pile keeps growing). The description that usually accompanies it online says it was "perhaps inspirational to Ken Kesey". Ramsey Campbell has said it "is a brilliant immersion in the experience of a schizophrenic"; and he should know (see the afterword to The Face That Must Die, and "Near Madness" in Ramsey Campbell, Probably).

[Judge Holden]

An interesting companion piece to Kesey's novel would be The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach, recently reprinted by New York Review of Books Classics. Rokeach's experiment on which the book was based ran roughly contemporaneously with the Kesey's composition of his novel - so it is doubtful he was influenced by Rokeach's two year experiment.

Rokeach had the brilliant idea of bringing together three psychotics with the identical delusion that they were Jesus Christ. It is at the same time hilarious funny and as lacking in all ethics as McMurphy's lobotomy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The books greatest virtue is when the patients are allowed to speak for themselves (Rokeach taped them for two years).