BOOK REVIEW: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (1990). The full-text is available on the Internet Archive.
“Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness” by William Styron (1990).
William Styron (1925-2006), a native of the Virginia Tidewater, was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the U.S. His books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie's Choice, This Quiet Dust, Darkness Visible, and A Tidewater Morning. The New York Times–bestselling memoir of crippling depression and the struggle for recovery by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice. In the summer of 1985, William Styron became. The paper will be on the book: “Darkness Visible: A memoir of Madness” by Styron, W. Mid-Term Paper: Based on your reading of one of the four selected Midterm Texts, write a 5 page (double-spaced 12 pt font, APA 6 th edition format) paper discussing the biopsychosocial complications of living with the disorder discussed in your selected text. Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness study guide. You'll get access to all of the Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness content, as well as access to.
Suffering from depression and dwelling upon old memories of Paris, the author William Styron recalls a startling conclusion he had: “I would never see Paris again.” Never again would he see the land Camus who, he notes, once wrote that the must fundamental question of philosophy is whether life is worth living.
This certitude astonished me and filled me with a new fright, for while thoughts of death had long been common during my siege, blowing through my mind like icy gusts of wind, they were the formless shapes of doom that I suppose are dreamed by people in the grip of any severe affliction. (28)
Soon he would need to answer Camus’ question. How he did so is detailed in his short book Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990), an extension of a 1989 essay he wrote for Vanity Fair. Perhaps best-known for his novel Sophie’s Choice, Darkness Visible is more than an account of his descent and eventual recovery: it’s a beautifully-written meditation on how we engage and respond to mental illness as not only the victim but as a community. While disappointed in the stigma associated with it, Styron understands that “the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists” (83). He can hold the reader’s hand but there are some places he cannot go – not by choice but because language fails us.
Styron’s descent begins with an aversion to alcohol that makes him anxious and submits him to a despair that “comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room” (50). What follows is the loss of self-esteem and his own self-reliance, comparing himself to a
four and a half [year old] tagging through a market after my long-suffering wife; not for an instant could I let out of my sight the endlessly patient soul who had become nanny, mommy, comforter, priestess, and, most important, confidante … (57)
As things grow worse he becomes tired of the platitudes of psychiatrists and “[t]he failure of these pills to act positively and quickly” (55). Everything he is told begins to feel like empty promises and so he writes, “There is a region in the experience of pain where the certainty of alleviation permits superhuman endurance” (61). Lacking it, he feels he has no other options.
Having already planned to destroy his private diary on his way to the nursing home, he realizes now that day will never come so he disposes of it feeling his “heart pounding wildly, like that of a man facing a firing squad, and [I] knew I had made an irreversible decision” (64). It’s only when he’s standing on the edge that everything changes. After his wife has already gone to bed, Styron puts in a movie where off-screen there is “a sudden soaring passage from the Brahms Alto Rhapsody“:
This sound, which like all music – indeed, like all pleasure – I had been numbly unresponsive to for months, pierced my heart like a dagger, and in a flood of swift recollection I thought of all the joys the house had known: the children who had rushed through its rooms, the festivals, the love and work, the honestly earned slumber … (66)
Rushing to wake up his wife to tell her of his revelation, the next day he is admitted to the hospital. Appallingly, in the early stages of his treatment, his psychiatrist had advised him against this “owing to the stigma I might suffer” (68). Rightfully upset, he discusses his rehabilitation and chastises a system that, nearly thirty years later, hasn’t changed – and Styron was writing before major antidepressants like Prozac made it onto the market.
Darkness Visible By William Styron
Many psychiatrists, who simply do not seem to be able to comprehend the nature and depth of the anguish their patients are undergoing, maintain their stubborn allegiance to pharmaceuticals in the belief that eventually the pills will kick in, the patient will respond, and the somber surroundings of the hospital will be avoided. (68)
This may work for some, he acknowledges, but had it not been for one brief, lucid moment this memoir would have not been written. Styron was one of the lucky ones, which he makes poignant by naming those who weren’t: Albert Camus, Romain Gary, Abbie Hoffman, and a handful of others. This is to say nothing of the thousands who live and die without even a line on Wikipedia.
Pulling from psychology, history, and his own experiences, Styron’s concise and elegant prose makes Darkness Visible a fine little book for anyone who’s ever asked, “How could somebody commit suicide?” To many it’s incomprehensible, but as Styron explains it relies upon a logic foreign to our frame-of-reference. This is his attempt to explain the suicidal logic, the language, the way of seeing the world that taints everything we are taught to revere: a beautiful day, a loving family, human life. It’s an impossible endeavor, but in publishing an intimate account of an uncomfortable subject one gets the impression that he is speaking past you and I – the curious reader – and to those, like him, who have approached the edge. His message to victims is the same Dante had rising from his melancholy, ascending at last from the depths of hell: “And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.”
This book, admittedly, caught my attention because it is short, and I have always wanted to read Sophie’s Choice, another book by Styron. Once I looked further into Darkness Visible, however, I became even more intrigued because it’s a book about a personal experience with depression written in 1990 when there was still such a stigma associated with depression and psychiatric hospitals (a stigma which still exists today, of course, but to a slightly lesser degree).
Trigger Warning
This is a book about depression and descriptions of depression and suicidal thoughts. If either of those may possibly trigger you, do not read this book, and be careful reading this review.
Summary
In 1985 Styron found himself sinking deeper and deeper into depression and at real risk of suicide. This memoir is an exploration of that battle, potential causes, and his feelings throughout. It briefly discusses his time at a psychiatric hospital, which he checks himself into after preparing himself for his own death and then realizing he doesn’t want to go through with it.
Matters of Accuracy
Darkness Visible is written from the perspective of Styron, and within less than 5 years of having experienced the events the story focuses on. It doesn’t really reference other works or surrounding events because it is very much a story focused on itself, so it appears to me to be as accurate a telling of the story as we’re going to get. You have to take into account, of course, that people have memories of events that will differ from the memories of other people, but that is of course one of the main points of a memoir: talking about an event from your own personal perspective. You also have to take into account that depression does have an impact on memory, though I don’t think it has much of an impact in this case because the vast majority of the book is describing the depression itself (and does touch on depression’s impact on memory).
Bias Levels
Styron does a good job of not putting too much of a bias in Darkness Visible. His time with a psychologist and on medication for sleep and depression did not help him very much, but he does not bash them and points out that they have been able to help other people. The whole book is clearly written from Styron’s perspective, and his opinions are very clearly his opinions.
The Feels
This is a book about depression and suicidal thoughts, so there is an overarching tone of pain and sadness. While there is a bit of a lighter note at the end, even that is overshadowed by the darkness of the whole. The book also feels slightly clinical, in that it is so clearly written a certain distance from the events and the feelings, and thus comes off somewhat analytical. I myself have struggled with depression most of my life, so in a lot of ways I related to the feelings Styron describes, and he is truly a master of description, but it also felt like I was reading it from a distance because I could relate to it but it didn’t touch me.
Themes
There are two primary themes coming out of this book. The first is that killing yourself is not worth it because, as long as you can survive the feelings it will end, no matter how much it seems like it never will. The other is to have some compassion and understanding for those who were not able to survive, who could not wait for it to end and thus ended it themselves. Depression is a horrible, painful thing to endure, and just because someone is not able to endure any longer does not make them less of a person or less deserving of respect and understanding.
Darkness Visible A Memoir Of Madness Summary
Final Thoughts
While I wouldn’t say reading this was enjoyable, it wasn’t unenjoyable. It is always fascinating to me to read about others’ experiences of depression and their descriptions of their feelings and how they dealt with them. There are always similarities and differences and it’s interesting to compare them all. While the reading did feel somewhat distanced and academic, it wasn’t difficult to understand, and Styron has a wonderful way with words. His descriptions are somehow flowery and on point at the same time. Overall, I am glad I read this book, but also glad it wasn’t longer.
I would recommend this to people who want to learn more about what depression feels like, but I would not recommend this at all to people who find themselves dealing with even deeper depression when they read about it. Please do not put yourself at risk.
Additional Details
Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Psychology
Year Covered: 1985
Point of View: First-person
Pages: 84
Copyright: 1990
ISBN: 0679736395 (ISBN13: 9780679736394)