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/lit/ - Literature

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5651320 No.5651320 [Reply] [Original]

I'm looking for a book written by an author who is mentally ill.

I want to see the progression in the book. I want it to have started while he was sane, and then slowly see him spiral into madness. I want to feel it as my eyes flick across the page.

>> No.5651350
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5651350

>>5651320
Pic related is not really what you asked for, but something you might enjoy based on your request. It's the one thing that popped into my head anyway.

>> No.5651355

VALIS sort of

He was crazy the whole time but tones it down at first before going full mad

>> No.5651361

>>5651320
Das Kapital

>> No.5651381
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5651381

>>5651320

i'm not even kidding, this is the exact reason i've read this thing

>> No.5651412
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5651412

>>5651320
Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness

>In 1884, the distinguished German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber suffered the first of a series of mental collapses that would afflict him for the rest of his life. In his madness, the world was revealed to him as an enormous architecture of nerves, dominated by a predatory God. It became clear to Schreber that his personal crisis was implicated in what he called a "crisis in God's realm," one that had transformed the rest of humanity into a race of fantasms. There was only one remedy; as his doctor noted: Schreber "considered himself chosen to redeem the world, and to restore to it the lost state of Blessedness. This, however, he could only do by first being transformed from a man into a woman...."

>> No.5651419

>>5651320
4.48 Psychosis

>> No.5651423

>>5651381
yeah, I think the big take home from this one was that mental illness isn't really that interesting. Rodger was an unhappy, unintelligent person who got obsessed with a few stupid ideas. Not lizardmen or conspiracies, just some run of the mill sexism and racism.

In a way, that's maybe even scarier; how many people aren't that far from him?

>> No.5651466

>>5651423
I'd rather read one that dramatizes mental illness though. Even if it's making it out to be more interesting than it really is, it'd nevertheless be miles more entertaining to read.

>> No.5651482

>>5651466
oh sure yeah, completely understood, wasnt really directing that comment at you if you're OP.

have you read Crime and Punishment? debatable whether it's mental illness but that's pretty great. Notes from Underground too

>> No.5651484

>>5651350
Why are you recommending this???

>> No.5651499

>>5651482
I'm reading Catch-22 right now. It's really good, but I need to commit better to it. I was doing really well with 15 pages a day but I've been slacking. Any road, my ex-girlfriend bought me Crime and Punishment from her favourite bookstore.

So far I still need to read:
>Crime and Punishment
>Submarine (maybe, I hear it's poorly written)
>Idylls of the King by Alfred, lord Tennyson
>Everything by Alfred, lord Tennyson because I'm named after him.

Anyone know the literary equivalent to discography? Something to describe a writer's collection of works in its entirety?

>> No.5651529

>>5651499
bibliography my man

>> No.5651536

>>5651529
I was thinking that.

I thought English teachers had ruined that word. If I said bibliography to any of my friends then they'd think I meant what you put at the end of your essay.

>> No.5651538

>>5651484
As my post indicates, I understand it is not what OP requested, but I am quite baffled as to why you would ask this question. If you've read it, surely you see how it is somewhat related. And it's a great read besides.

Seriously, why would you ask this?

>> No.5651571

> I want it to have started while he was sane, and then slowly see him spiral into madness

it's quite hard to find a book where it happened to the author right when they worked on the story, also the books written by mad people while exist are usually barely comprehensible, but you may find some good stories where it happened to the protagonist, for instance gogol's 'a diary of a madman' or 'a madman's diary' by lu xun

>> No.5651626 [DELETED] 

>>5651355
+1, however, valid argumen for going through PKDs work chronologically, if this is what OP is interested in. Most of them are short, and the progression, into issues he was really, REALLY getting hung up on is obvious. I doubt any publishers nowadays would even print some of his later works.

Also, been a while since I read it (like, decades, seriously), howecer, is Zen and theArt of Motorcycle Maintenance not along these lines? A bit?! - maybe not, as said, really need to get round to re-reading that one, see how much my opinion has changed.

>> No.5651803

>>5651320
The Professor - John Katzenbach

>> No.5651806

Nietzsche's corpus.

>> No.5651970

maybe the picture of dorian gray?

>> No.5651975

You can read Diary of a madman by Gogol

>> No.5651979

>>5651320
The Bell Jar.
You're welcome.

>> No.5652284

>no PKD

Didn't he suffer from schizophrenia?

>> No.5652287

>>5651320
Hunger -Knut Hamsun

>> No.5652290

>>5651806
Nietzsche wasn't mentally ill you fucking homosexual :D

>> No.5652291

>>5651355
Yeah VALIS is bonkers.

>> No.5652296

>>5652291
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISy0Hl0SBfg
?

>> No.5652302

Dizzy Rascal actually owns lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1gl46hh3sQ

>> No.5652311

>>5651350
>>5651975
>>5651355
>>5652287
These.

I would add Chants of Maldoror as well.

>> No.5652312

>>5652287
gonna need proof

>> No.5652314

Vaslav Nijinsky's diary has been published

He was a Russian ballet dancer, the greatest male dancer of the 20th century. He was committed to the asylum towards the end of his life, suffering from schizophrenia. The diary starts at the beginning of his disease.

>> No.5652872

>>5652284
For a time he believed he was possessed by the Spirit of Elijah and reflects it in VALIS, so yeah.

>> No.5652876

>>5652314
Damn I'll defiantely look into reading this. I read about him in Colin Wilson's book "The Outsider"

>> No.5652888

Finnegans Wake - Jamba Juice

>> No.5652889

>>5651320
>I'm looking for a book written by an author who is mentally ill.

Communist Manifesto.
Guns Germs Steal, is another great example.
The Fountain Head.

>> No.5652892

>>5652889
>so edgy

>> No.5652900

>>5652889

You forgot to mention the unholy Quran

>> No.5652906
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5652906

>I'm looking for a book written by an author who is mentally ill.

this one's written by a collective

>> No.5652985

>>5652900
you didn t have to say that you edy faggot

>> No.5653000

>>5651350
this book changed my life

>> No.5653002

Guy de Maupassant had syphilis which caused mental illness towards the end of his career. I'm not sure which books exactly but I'm sure you can figure it out.

>> No.5653007

>>5651970
damn nigga that's a sharp recommendation. way to go

>> No.5653018

Antonin Artaud
Gerard de Nerval

>> No.5653037

>>5653002
La Horla is the one I was referred to (I think it was one of his last works before being institutionalized).

>> No.5653097

>>5652314
You beat me, but basically this.

>Vaslav Nijinsky spent the final six weeks before his permanent consignment to an insane asylum as something a madman in the attic. With his family--wife, young daughters and occasionally, mother-in-law--and household staff downstairs, the legendary dancer retreated to his room in a remote Swiss villa to tangle with his burgeoning psychosis. Fearful that his wife would (as she ultimately did) commit him, and highly suspicious of the physician-cum-amateur psychiatrist who daily came by to examine him, Nijinsky perceived the diary as the only safe haven for the rambling thoughts that were overtaking him. Throughout, the anxiety and anguish are palpable, as Nijinsky writes about his disillusionment with his mentor and lover, Ballets Russes director Serge Diaghilev; his alienation from and distrust of his closest family members; and his fear of insanity and its consequential confinement. His writing becomes more obscure as the weeks progress and he examines his relationship to God, writing "I am God" at one point, and later: "God said to me, 'Go home and tell your wife that you are mad.'" As his schizophrenia evolves, the pace and style of Nijinsky's prose changes radically--toward the end he writes in abstract verse--but he remains, with a dancer's sensibility, attuned to the cadences of his environment. The noises of the household, the ringing of the phone, footsteps down the hall, smatterings of conversations overheard are all registered as a sort of accompaniment to his dance with madness and function perhaps as a final tether to reality.

>> No.5653129

Sounds like you're better off writing it yourself.