Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

from bibliobibuli

This is a very slim volume, just 84 pages long, which started life as a lecture given at a symposium sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It was later developed into a piece for Vanity Fair before being published as a book. Styron was hit b...

from bogopea

Profoundly honest account of William Styron's life of depression, focusing on 1985, the year it became debilitating to him to the point where he almost killed himself. Styron is very literate on the subject of depression itself in the medical sense but he shines in his self-examination of his lif...

from justicefortibet

Finally, a book on depression written by someone who actually KNOWS what it is to feel this way. Although I can't share Styron's optimistic, happy ending that most people can be cured of depression, he does give real, understandable explanations of how it can feel, that can be understood by someo...

from kraaivrouw

This is my second read of this book and it's been a long time between. I read it in 1985 during the tail end of a long-term crash I survived and it was resonant, although painful - the latter is why I haven't read it again 'til now. Styron suffered from a gruesome acute episode of depression, but...

from BruderBane

As a fellow sufferer and ardent supporter of mental health issues, I found Mr. Styron's autobiographical essay on depression to be edifying. His use of such rich descriptive narrative and his propensity to be especially forthright engenders those people who aren't afflicted with depression to hav...