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Journal Entry 1 by calvarez4 from Oakland, California USA on Tuesday, December 14, 2004
 I suffer from depression, and so while I have a tendency to purchase books such as this one, I do not tend to keep them around the house. This is a very short book, only about 100 pages, but an excellent narrative on one man's memoirs through depression.
From Amazon.com:
A meditation on Styron's ( Sophie's Choice ) serious depression at the age of 60, this essay evokes with detachment and dignity the months-long turmoil whose symptoms included the novelist's "dank joylessness," insomnia, physical aversion to alcohol (previously "an invaluable senior partner of my intellect") and his persistent "fantasies of self-destruction" leading to psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. The book's virtues--considerable--are twofold. First, it is a pitiless and chastened record of a nearly fatal human trial far commoner than assumed--and then a literary discourse on the ways and means of our cultural discontents, observed in the figures of poet Randall Jarrell, activist Abbie Hoffman, writer Albert Camus and others. Written by one whose book-learning proves a match for his misery, the memoir travels fastidiously over perilous ground, receiving intimations of mortality and reckoning delicately with them. Always clarifying his demons, never succumbing to them in his prose, Styron's neat, tight narrative carries the bemusement of the worldly wise suddenly set off-course--and the hard-won wisdom therein.
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Journal Entry 2 by calvarez4 at on Saturday, January 15, 2005
Released 7 yrs ago (1/15/2005 UTC) at WILD RELEASE NOTES:
RELEASE NOTES:
This was more of a narrative of Styron's depression, and not as much insight as I was hoping for -- it almost felt as if it were written with a sense of detachment, from an outsider's point of view with an insider's information. For a more in-depth narrative of depression, I would recommend Andrew Solomon's "The Noonday Demon."
Mailing to LyekkaMarengo, as part of the bookrelay.
Read as my 2nd book for the 2005 Bookcrossing A-Z "New to me" authors challenge. :)
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Journal Entry 4 by LyekkaMarengo from Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania USA on Monday, February 28, 2005
This book was an expanded version of a magazine article Styron wrote and like the previous reader I was expecting more from him. I have read several of his books and expected his usual wonderful use of language but I guess since this was written for a very general audiance he toned it down a bit. There is good information for those that haven't read much or had to deal with depression on their own but I felt the one really big glaring fault was that he seemed to project the idea or though that he had been "cured" of his depression. Even with medication and treatment I don't feel that depression is ever cured, it is treated but it continues to be something there in the background like white noise. At least in my case there are still times, not as severe and not as lasting but there are still time.
Worth reading and at only 84 pages long not much more than an hour's worth.
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Journal Entry 5 by LyekkaMarengo at Stone Soup Market,1011 E. College Ave. OBCZ in State College, Pennsylvania USA on Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Released 7 yrs ago (4/23/2005 UTC) at Stone Soup Market,1011 E. College Ave. OBCZ in State College, Pennsylvania USA WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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Took to the meeting at my OBCZ. Left on bookshelf.
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Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness
