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Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 · rating details · 6,536 ratings · 525 reviews

A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.

Paperback, 84 pages

Published January 8th 1992 by Vintage (first published 1990)

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Sep 02, 2007 Mikol rated it 5 of 5 stars

It was August in the year 2000. I was about to enter the room for my final exam. This was the introduction to Unix and it was coming to an end.

So was I.

Tears flowing copiously, leaning over the second floor balcony, I was overcome with darkness, the likes of which I had never experienced before.

I finished the exam and could not gather myself. I had no reason for living. In my grief I recalled an earlier experience of incredible bliss following a near death/drowning experience at Luther Burbank P...more

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Dec 03, 2007 Melanie rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: depressed people who aren't me?

Shelves: 2007

Maybe I'm being needlessly harsh in my one-star rating, but there was something about Styron's memoir that really distressed me. I read it during one of my own periods of depression, and for whatever reason I decided to pair it with The Bell Jar, and instead of feeling any sort of comfort or recognition in Styron's words, I just felt sort of angry. I became so hung up on the ways we (women, men, Americans, depressed people, etc.) talk about depression, and on what it means when we call it by dif...more

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Apr 18, 2012 wally rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: styron

This will be the 4th from Styron, having just finished The Confessions of Nat Turner. There's an author's note at the start, "this book began as a lecture given in Baltimore in May 1989 at a symposium on affective disorders sponsored by...Johns Hopkins..."

And there's this from Job:

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came.

Starts out:
In Paris on a chilly evening...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mental-health

Like me, best-selling author William Styron ("Sophie's Choice," "The Confessions of Nat Turner") suffers from medically resistant clinical depression. "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" is a brief but compelling autobiographical journey through what Chaucer described as "melancholia" in the first literary reference made to what is now called a "mood disorder."

Styron writes plainly about his experience with depression, including a lengthy hospitalization that ultimately assisted him in obtai...more Like me, best-selling author William Styron ("Sophie's Choice," "The Confessions of Nat Turner") suffers from medically resistant clinical depression. "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" is a brief but compelling autobiographical journey through what Chaucer described as "melancholia" in the first literary reference made to what is now called a "mood disorder."

Styron writes plainly about his experience with depression, including a lengthy hospitalization that ultimately assisted him in obtaining coping skills to manage his illness (an option unfortunately seldom available in modern times, as physicians resort to pharmacopeia as some sort of magic bullet that does not always help patients).

On pp 61-62 of the book, Styron shares what is, to me, the most accurate and compelling description of what it is like to live with depression as he relates preparing for a dinner party:

"And this results in a striking experience -- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devastation would be lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no option ande therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words."

I highly recommend this book for those who are dealing with depression, whether the patient or a family member; Styron's insights are healing on numerous levels.(less)

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Apr 20, 2012 Mariana Orantes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Otro de los libros recomendados y que me regaló H. H. La verdad me daba miedo leerlo, porque tengo un problema con estos temas: me recuerdan demasiado a mí misma, cuando me hundí. Recuerdo en específico tres momentos de mis más grandes depresiones. La primera, estaba muy pequeña, tendría como diez u once años y a causa de la muerte de Claudia, no sabía ni qué pasaba. Me recuerdo sentada en el sillón de mi abuela, viendo hacia adelante, con las luces apagadas, sin pensar en nada pero con un dolor...more

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May 17, 2008 Katherine rated it 3 of 5 stars

An account of an episode of suicidal depression that nearly ended the writer's life.

Good points:
+This is still one of the best descriptions of what an episode of major depression actually feels like. Styron completely nails the overwhelming sense that your life is coming to an end and you are powerless to stop it. He describes how every object in his house - kitchen knives, attic rafters, the garden hose, the bathtub - suddenly acquired a dual identity as the possible instrument of his undoing....more

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Apr 28, 2008 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

At a recent tenure party, a friend of mine leaned over to our small group sitting on the couch and revealed that she had just come from the campus bookstore where she had been perusing a colleague’s recent memoir. “I would never expose myself like that!” she exclaimed. When writers choose to invade their own privacy, as Styron puts it, by sharing a personal struggle, is that what they’re doing—exposing themselves? Certainly, on some level, when Styron sets his struggle with suicidal depression i...more

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Jun 18, 2009 Gideon marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Gideon by: Tom Boyd

One of my professors, and mentor really, bought me this over the summer and gave this to me today.

It's strange because I am both... intensely touched and horrified to read the book. Reading about depression tends to, well, depress me. The fear it drudges up is so palpable that it is almost as paralyzing as depression itself.

Still, I am very touched that he did this, aiming to help me feel better understood with the events of last year. As summer fades I stand on its edge terrified of what fall w...more

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Mar 31, 2007 Oi Yin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: The psychologically inclined

Shelves: memoirs, psychology

This deceptively slim volume is one man's account of his descent into the depths of a major depressive episode. He has the ability to convey the monumental struggles his emotional state created in his life. He leads use through each small step towards the inevitable decision to put a stop to all the pain. Like those who see the light at the end of the tunnel, he returned to tell the tale in a raw, gut-wrenching manner. Even through it all, the reader senses that unless s/he has succumb to the de...more

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Mar 15, 2013 samkrunch rated it 5 of 5 stars

Started reading this via a recommendation from a friend as a way for me to understand what she was going through. It was beautifully written enough for me to return to a few times.

Prior to this, my understanding of depression was based on whatever I'd experienced first hand (which was not nearly as serious as others feel it), and it was disheartening to see the people I care deeply for struggling with depression's more severe manifestations, what Styron preferred to call "melancholia" .. yet no...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Cărăşălu rated it 4 of 5 stars

I got to read this book after speaking to a friend about someone she knew who committed suicide. I labeled the act ”stupid”. My friend told to read the book and suggested that after reading it, I might change my mind. Well, I didn't, but it helped me nuance my view and adjust my stance as regards suicide. As the author simply puts it, one who hasn't been affected by depression cannot understand it. Cannot understand what the depression-sufferer goes through. One can guess, imagine, show empathy,...more I got to read this book after speaking to a friend about someone she knew who committed suicide. I labeled the act ”stupid”. My friend told to read the book and suggested that after reading it, I might change my mind. Well, I didn't, but it helped me nuance my view and adjust my stance as regards suicide. As the author simply puts it, one who hasn't been affected by depression cannot understand it. Cannot understand what the depression-sufferer goes through. One can guess, imagine, show empathy, but no more than that and that only to certain degree. This memoir helps the reader understand how much he doesn't understand depression. And this is useful. Awareness of one's incapacity of real understanding helps to avoid inappropriate judgements and to better deal with close ones who actually go through this ordeal by suggesting adequate ways of supporting them.

Now, as a sociologist-in-the-making as I guess I am, I disliked the individualist perspective on depression and suicide of the author. It's not only about individual psychology, genetics and childhood tragedies. Emile Durkheim has proven that suicide is also a social phenomenon, that is one influenced, if not determined, by macrosociological variables. One of the examples he brings, statistically grounded, is that the suicide rate is higher in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones. He explains this through the degree of social integration provided by the two religions. Now, my point is that depression and suicide are not only individual phenomena. They are cultural and social as well, specific to our, let's say, civilization. We can commit suicide because we have the concept of suicide, because we can think suicide. Depression is a disease, but if not its causes, at least its forms, manifestations and effects are culturally determined. It's like falling in love. A medieval lover behaved differently from a teen American one. Although both are in love, they learned different patterns of behavior for the same feeling. Limiting the study of depression only to the individual sphere, either genetic or psychological, will limit even more the already small amount of understanding we can get about this disease.

My digression concerned the study of depression and suicide as a whole, the scientific pursuit of it, and I certainly didn't mean it as a criticism of this book, which remains extremely useful. Useful for the affected ones, as it might help them see themselves more lucidly and take the appropriate steps for recovery, and especially for those of us who only have friends or relatives suffering of the disease, by offering us the honest insight of one who defeated it. I don't like the term "must-read", but if you have someone suffering of depression, this book might prove helpful in coping with the problem.(less)

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Aug 28, 2012 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars

En France, les troubles dépressifs majeurs touchent chaque année environ 8% de la population. Ce chiffre pourrait au moins être multiplié par deux si l'on prenait en compte les personnes présentant un ou plusieurs symptômes sans toutefois que le diagnostic de dépression puisse être établi. Autant dire que vous risquez d'y être confronté au cours de votre vie. Elle peut toucher quelqu'un de votre entourage, l'un de vos proches, un membre de votre famille ou vous-même. C'est le cas de l'écrivain a...more En France, les troubles dépressifs majeurs touchent chaque année environ 8% de la population. Ce chiffre pourrait au moins être multiplié par deux si l'on prenait en compte les personnes présentant un ou plusieurs symptômes sans toutefois que le diagnostic de dépression puisse être établi. Autant dire que vous risquez d'y être confronté au cours de votre vie. Elle peut toucher quelqu'un de votre entourage, l'un de vos proches, un membre de votre famille ou vous-même. C'est le cas de l'écrivain américain William Styron. Dans son milieu, le milieu artistique et intellectuel, elle a fait des ravages et pris la vie de nombre de ses membres: Hart Crâne, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Arshile Gorky, Cesare Pavese, Romain Gary, Vachel Lindsay, Henry de Montherlant, Sylvia Plath, Mark Rothko, John Berryman, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, William Inge, Diane Arbus, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Ann Sexton, Sergei Essénine, Vladimir Maïakovski.

Puis ce fut au tour de Styron lui-même de subir ce fléau, cette authentique tempête déchaînée dans le cerveau. De cette expérience, il a tiré ce petit livre (qui a pour origine une conférence puis un court essai publié dans Vanity Fair) comme un témoignage, une façon de faire briller une lueur depuis le fond des ténèbres. Il fait partager son expérience de cette maladie si fréquente et pourtant méconnue et dont le fait qu’elle soit si souvent mal comprise ou mal acceptée ajoute encore à la souffrance des malades.

Ce récit est sans concession, Styron se met à nu en tentant de comprendre le désespoir qui l’envahit. Mais il est surtout celui d'un écrivain, celui d'un homme habitué à réfléchir et à retranscrire ses pensées et ses émotions pour les livrer au lecteur. Ces deux facteurs font de ce livre un témoignage percutant et poignant tout en restant sincère et très sobre — on est bien loin du romanesque. Il se lit d'une traite et aide à mieux comprendre la souffrance endurée par les malades.

Tout d’abord cela n’eut rien de vraiment inquiétant, dans la mesure où le changement était subtil, mais je constatais cependant que le décor qui m’entourait à certains moments se parait de tonalités différentes : les ombres du crépuscule semblaient plus sombres, mes matins étaient moins radieux, les promenades en forêt se faisaient moins toniques, et il y avait maintenant un moment en fin d’après-midi pendant mes heures de travail où une sorte de panique et d’angoisse me submergeait, le temps de quelques minutes à peine, accompagnée par une nausée viscérale – des manifestations pour le moins quelque peu inquiétantes, somme toute. Tandis que je consigne ces souvenirs, je me rends compte qu’il aurait dû m’apparaître évident que déjà je me trouvais aux prises avec les premiers symptômes de graves troubles psychiques, mais à l’époque, j’ignorais tout de ce genre d’affection.

http://www.aubonroman.com/2012/08/fac...(less)

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Aug 16, 2012 Pj rated it 3 of 5 stars

I first heard of this book when I was reading a review of "Monkey Mind," a memoir about anxiety. A reviewer claimed, "Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron's Darkness Visible did for depression" (Aaron T. Beck). Having had trouble with depression myself, I wanted to read this so-called groundbreaking work about depression, but I was disappointed. Styron is rather clinical in his discussion of depression - which I suppose is a good thing for legitimizing depression - and he objectifies...more

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May 30, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

While in a lovely used bookstore in Springfield, Vermont I decided, on a whim, to look for a book I had heard of once. I remembered nothing about it, except that it was a memoir and I had wanted to read it. I did not recall the author's name, the title, or even what it was about. The owner of the store showed me to the autobiography section, which was a mere two shelves out of the entire store. I told him that I could not recall the author's name, but that I was hoping he had it and that, in see...more

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May 08, 2012 Julia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Darkness Visible was a memoir about Willam Styron's year of depressive collapse and recovery. He viewed depression from an entirely chemical/biological model. I found this interesting because a lot of authors who suffer from depression are more territorial about their illness, attributing their dark moods to a disease of the soul or to the world in general. Styron's book is unique because he wrote about his condition from the point of view of someone who recovered from an illness.

I admit, the bo...more

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Apr 24, 2012 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reading “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness” by William Styron just hours after seeing the movie “Melancholia”:

If you can sludge through the slo-mo setup to the movie, the first what-say ten minutes of abstract imagery involving horses tilting to a seated position and the ankle-deep muck of footprints across a putting green, you can make it through the rest. In the first half Justine, played by the antithesis of Kristen Dunst is a new bride, a genius advertising executive, breasts bulging fr...more Reading “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness” by William Styron just hours after seeing the movie “Melancholia”:

If you can sludge through the slo-mo setup to the movie, the first what-say ten minutes of abstract imagery involving horses tilting to a seated position and the ankle-deep muck of footprints across a putting green, you can make it through the rest. In the first half Justine, played by the antithesis of Kristen Dunst is a new bride, a genius advertising executive, breasts bulging from a wedding dress. She’s a vision. Dimples and twinkles and laughing into her hand, stealing kisses. But this fades, first slowly, then more rapidly. Her groom seems to blame himself, her sister watches over her, she makes promises to make this marriage work -- or at least the wedding reception her brother-in-law, played by Kieffer Sutherland, has shed bukko bucks to host.

She is sick. Depression. And in the second half of the film this is pronounced. She’s a stick of a thing, can barely hold herself up when her sister tries to bathe her. The mounds bursting from the top of her wedding dress -- gone as the man she married. For now she is an emaciated shell draped in a T-shirt. Food tastes wrong, even her favorite meatloaf. Sometimes when she speaks, growled cruelty comes out. Meanwhile, the earth is on a collision course with the planet Melancholia, seemingly some sort of metaphor for what it feels like to be in this state.

Effective? More than anything else I’ve ever seen that tries to bring this medical explanation to a general audience. As the planet gets closer you can feel the claustrophobia, the panic, the helplessness in the face of what will be a catastrophic event. It’s more terrifying than the most terrifying of horror films. It’s also just a little bit lovely in its severity.

The chaser: Styron’s account of a period in the mid-1980s when life circled the drain. “Darkness Visible” was written first as a speech, then as a magazine piece. Here it exists in its no longer condensed state. Our hero, the writer behind “Sophie’s Choice,” is in Paris when he feels the beginnings of the disease that will eventually tell him to kill himself. It might or might not be triggered by his sudden inability to drink alcohol. Once a perfect escapism, the drink now makes him feel nauseated to the point of high-tailing it to the hospital to have every test possible run on his body.

Styron makes a case for removing the stigma attached to suicides. That the poet who throws himself in traffic shouldn’t have his mental illness hushed and re-classified in the aftermath. His death ruled an “accident” to make things easier for his survivors. That this poet and his illness are no different than a cancer patient.

This is a quick-hitter at not even 100 pages. And it really doesn’t move beyond surface level. Sometimes it reads like a report on depression more than a man burrowing deep into his soul. Compared to “Melancholia,” it feels a little light and “Yeah, well, one time I was sad.” (less)

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Mar 05, 2012 John E. Branch Jr. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, play-project-1, suicide-studies

Read as research for a play about suicide.

Anyone who has experienced a serious degree of depression (as opposed to the downhearted feeling that we often called "depressed") knows that there's somehow much to it, though it also feels like a great nothingness. It can sap the strength of memory, making it difficult even to recall, much less to connect with, any pleasant experiences you've had, nor do you want anything of the kind now, much as you'd like to escape from what you do feel. It may kill...more Read as research for a play about suicide.

Anyone who has experienced a serious degree of depression (as opposed to the downhearted feeling that we often called "depressed") knows that there's somehow much to it, though it also feels like a great nothingness. It can sap the strength of memory, making it difficult even to recall, much less to connect with, any pleasant experiences you've had, nor do you want anything of the kind now, much as you'd like to escape from what you do feel. It may kill your motivation entirely, or you may manage to go through the normal routines while feeling like an automaton. It takes the color out of things. Assuming you manage to sleep, you awake with a glimmering of horror. Your experience is a kind of shadowy blankness. You may feel, as another suicidal sufferer put it (probably more than one has seen it this way), that you are already dead. And if you get through it, you may later find it hard to recall in detail, certainly hard to describe.

Although I feel that major depression is in some ways different for everyone, this book is one that those who've been through the experience can point to and say, "There--it was like that." If William Styron had written nothing else, he would still hold a place of honor for having achieved this.

It would be a mistake to believe, as many people nowadays do, that depression is the only reason for suicide. That point, however, is matter for other books; Styron's purpose is to pull back the curtains and reveal how it was for him, how he sank deeper into what he terms madness, reached the point of deciding to escape, and suddenly turned around. He evokes that point, by the way, as clearly as the rest, without attempting to explain it. Was it a lucky accident that he encountered one thing from the world of the living he could still connect with? Or did he have to be poised between life and death before he could grasp, through a process partly subconscious, what he was about to leave? You'll have to work that out for yourself.

Styron drew his title, as some readers will recognize, from Milton's Paradise Lost. Refreshing my memory of the context, I found lines that suggest the landscape Styron calls into being in his text:

No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges…(less)

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Dec 01, 2011 Lumpenprole added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, borrowed, psychology, suicide

I guess a very good writer can find a way to be profound, annoying, interesting, tedious, whiny, in dire need of a 2 x 4 across his forehead and also make some very thoughtful references on both the history and the language -- past and present -- that surrounds the phenomenon known as depression. Styron certainly does all this, and in a mere 84 pages to boot.

Oddly, with that last bit I would submit he hoists himself upon his own petard. As in, what, exactly, is "Madness?" Thinking that thoughts...more I guess a very good writer can find a way to be profound, annoying, interesting, tedious, whiny, in dire need of a 2 x 4 across his forehead and also make some very thoughtful references on both the history and the language -- past and present -- that surrounds the phenomenon known as depression. Styron certainly does all this, and in a mere 84 pages to boot.

Oddly, with that last bit I would submit he hoists himself upon his own petard. As in, what, exactly, is "Madness?" Thinking that thoughts are being beamed into your head by giant blue crabs inhabiting a planet circling Proxima Centuri? That there REALLY is some sort of change that takes places when Pepsi beats out Coke for the US presidency? If so, Styron never actually achieved "madness." After all, no one ever tried to get a court appointed conservator to run his affairs, so he was presumably at least that much in touch with reality, his checking account was his own, his ability to enter into contracts was not in any way removed him, and so forth. So, where's the line, and when did he cross it? (Personally... One Step Beyond works for me, but I doubt that was what he was getting at.)

Mostly likely he fell into the trap -- without realizing it -- of the psychiatric-industrial complex, wherein circular reasoning rules the roost and you're crazy if you have suicidal thoughts...and of course suicidal thoughts always means you're crazy. The sort of reasoning my dog would appreciate when he spends fifteen minutes chasing his tail. Of course, my dog must exist on a slightly higher intellectual plain than the high priests of psychiatry, since every once in a rare while he actually manages to CATCH his tail. At which point a very puzzled look crosses his face and to all appearances he is questioning the revealed canine orthodoxy via empirical evidence. (Mouth=>Teeth==>Sharp==>Own Tail = Ow! QED: WTF made me think this enterprise would be fun?) Alas, no such questioning of the revealed psychiatric orthodoxy can either be permitted or, indeed, even tolerated. And unlike my dog no effort will now or ever will be made to gather empirical evidence. Though going through the motions of tail-chasing is of course a received dogma, both canine and psychiatric.

Beyond that, I must admit chuckling at what in the 1980s would not have raised an eyebrow, but these days would bring the full, brute forces of censorship down on him like a ten million pound shithammer. See his comments on "group" and (especially) "art" therapy for further understanding. Not quite as bad as St. Logotherapy (a/k/a Viktor Frankl) referring to homosexuality as a "sexual perversion," but getting there.

So, this one was a bit too roller-coastery to rate. Certainly by turns interesting and imbecilic, but nothing I could plot any sort of correlation to, to rate.

(less)

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Nov 11, 2011 Hamid rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

کتاب خاطرات نویسنده‌شه از دوره‌ای که مبتلا بوده به افسردگی پیشرفته. جالب که پارسال همین موقع‌ها بود که من یه دوره افسردگی رو گذروندم. همینطور که کتاب رو میخوندم حالات خودم یادم میومد، و انقدر توصیفاتش دقیق بود و همه حس‌ها رو خوب بیان کرده بود که فکر میکردم چطور تونسته بعد از درمان شدن باز خودش رو انقدر به اون شرایط نزدیک کنه و ازش بنویسه. کتاب در حد یه خاطره و گزارش نمونده و یه سری جملات و بخش های فوق‌العاده داره به لحاظ بیان ادبی.

آنچه به شکلی مرموز و به شیوه‌هایی دور از تجربه ی معمول کشف کرده...more کتاب خاطرات نویسنده‌شه از دوره‌ای که مبتلا بوده به افسردگی پیشرفته. جالب که پارسال همین موقع‌ها بود که من یه دوره افسردگی رو گذروندم. همینطور که کتاب رو میخوندم حالات خودم یادم میومد، و انقدر توصیفاتش دقیق بود و همه حس‌ها رو خوب بیان کرده بود که فکر میکردم چطور تونسته بعد از درمان شدن باز خودش رو انقدر به اون شرایط نزدیک کنه و ازش بنویسه. کتاب در حد یه خاطره و گزارش نمونده و یه سری جملات و بخش های فوق‌العاده داره به لحاظ بیان ادبی.

آنچه به شکلی مرموز و به شیوه‌هایی دور از تجربه ی معمول کشف کرده بودم، این بود که نم نم غم انگیز هراس ناشی از افسردگی رنگ درد جسمی به خود می‌گیرد، ولی مثل درد دست و پای شکسته قابل تشخیص نیست. شاید دقیق‌تر باشد اگر بگویم یاس، به دلیل ترفندهای شیطانی‌ای که روان به مغز بیمار می‌زند، همچون رنج اهریمنی آدمی گرفتار در اتاقی بسیار داغ است. و چون هیچ نسیمی این دیگ بزرگ را نمی‌جنباند، چون هیچ گریزی از این محدودیت خفه‌کننده وجود ندارد، کاملا طبیعی‌ست که قربانی بی‌وقفه به فکر فراموشی بیفتد.

یا این

پدیده‌ای که عده‌ای هنگام افسردگی شدید متوجه شده‌اند، حس همراهی با یک خود ثانویه است- ناظری شبح‌مانند که بی اینکه در دیوانگی زوجش شریک شود، قادر است با کنجکاوی‌ای عاری از احساس، همراهش را که در برابر مصیبت تقلا می‌کند، یا تصمیم می‌گیرد به استقبال مصیبت برود، تماشا کند. همه این‌ها مثل یک نمایش‌اند و در چند روز بعد که با سردی خود را برای نابودی آماده می‌کردم، نمی‌توانستم از شر ملودرام خلاص شوم- ملودرامی که در آن من قربانی خودکشی، تنها بازیگر و تنها بیننده‌اش بودم.
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Sep 18, 2011 Sam Quixote rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked read this as I'm always interested in peoples' experiences with depression and how they deal with it/emerge from it, as well as how it was for them. I think sometimes I'm depressed but having read this book I think what I have might simply be the occasional blues.

William Styron makes this distinction clear in his memoir "Darkness Visible" where he says that full on depression (a term he deplores as too weak a description - he prefers the label "brainstorm") totally cripples a person. T...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Cindy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

I'm a huge fan of reality-based books, particularly memoirs that detail traumatic experiences, the more harrowing the better. So I was surprised when I had trouble getting into this book. I kept picking it up, reading a few sentences, then putting it down and turning to something else instead, figuring I'd take a stab at it when I finally conjured up the wherewithal to do so. Having run out of alternatives one night, I finally committed myself to the task. At approximately 80 pages, it wasn't to...more I'm a huge fan of reality-based books, particularly memoirs that detail traumatic experiences, the more harrowing the better. So I was surprised when I had trouble getting into this book. I kept picking it up, reading a few sentences, then putting it down and turning to something else instead, figuring I'd take a stab at it when I finally conjured up the wherewithal to do so. Having run out of alternatives one night, I finally committed myself to the task. At approximately 80 pages, it wasn't too daunting and I finished the book that same evening. Unfortunately, this was in no way an insightful or engaging read and I continued to have trouble trudging through but did so only due to the short length of the book and having run out of other options.

I'm surprised by the large number of reviews on Goodreads lauding this book for its candid exposure of depression. The only thing I found slightly interesting was Styron's noting how Emily Dickinson's "Slant of Light" poem realistically described his experience. However, even this remark wasn't explored in any depth, and I generally did not view the author's description of his experience with depression as insightful or intriguing. Indeed, I barely got any inside information about the author's personal experience with depression other than to glean that the whole business was miserable and dark in an off-hand way. The subject of depression couldn't have been handled in a more clinical and distant manner, and I can't imagine that someone unfamiliar with the experience of depression would come away from this reading with any gained knowledge or perspective. Also, the author is so unabashedly verbose, the book reminded me of nothing so much as my early attempts at writing as a teenager, thesaurus always at the ready. Of course, Styron's writing is of much higher caliber than my high school prose, but his writing definitely made me wonder why Styron's professors never hinted that he might tone it down a little with the adjectives as one of mine kindly did my freshman year of college. The ostentatious writing style also creates a considerable distance between author and reader. At first, I couldn't stop recalling the Henry Fielding novel "Tom Jones" and others like it - the overblown writing style definitely brings to mind the "Dear Reader" style of Fielding and other comic novels that hold the events and their descriptions at such a distance as to make them seem trite and lighthearted folly. After reading this, I will probably take a look at "Sophie's Choice" just to confirm - is this how he always writes? If so, was my college prof wrong?(less)

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Sep 03, 2011 Bamdad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

‏«ظلمت آشکار» کتاب کوچکی است، یک کتاب ۷۲ صفحه‌ای ِ قطع پالتویی. این حتمن خبر خوشی است برای وقت‌های بی‌وقتی و حوصله‌های بی‌حوصله‌گی!‏
این کتاب خیلی ساده گزارشی است از سیر یک افسرده‌گی؛ افسرده‌گی در شکل بیماری‌اش. گزارشی است کوتاه و خواندنی که در آن ویلیام استایرن ِ نویسنده تجربه‌ی مواجهه‌ی خودش را با این بیماری از روزهای آغازین تا آستانه‌ی خودکشی شرح می‌دهد. و این سیری است بیش-و-کم آشنا برای همه‌ی ما، چه به‌عنوان تجربه‌ی شخصی و چه به‌عنوان ِ خوانده‌ها و شنیده‌ها و دیده‌هایمان در آثار هنری مختلف. ا...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Tara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, mental-illness

Given the number of great reviews this book had, I was eager to read, especially regarding a topic I feel is extremely neglected in good literature. Having experienced this 'darkness' without remittance for most of my life, I had high hopes for this book- which he did deliver, and evident in his descriptions of feeling like a 'husk', and the fragile moments following a near-suicide attempt-

"this sound, which like all music- indeed like all pleasure- I had been numbly unresponsive to for months,...more

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Sep 12, 2010 Abbi Dion rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Then, after dinner, sitting in the living room, I experienced a curious inner convulsion that I can describe only as despair beyond despair. It cam out of the cold night; I did not think such anguish possible."

"William James, who battled depression for many years, gave up the search for an adequate portrayal, implying its near-impossibility when he wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience: 'It is a positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to normal life.'"...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Rene Saller rated it 1 of 5 stars

I reread this after many years, having apparently forgotten how much it sucks. It's not the content so much as Styron's style: pompous, dull, self-satisfied, flat, prosaic. I understand his point: that depression (or as he prefers to call it, being a ponderous hack, "Melancholia") is tedious, that depressed people are insufferable, that it's all very grim and dreary and Extremely Serious! and so forth. I just fail to understand why this reads like the first draft of an amateur journalist. I don'...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Greg Metcalf rated it 5 of 5 stars

In the opening portions of this essay on one man's descent into severe depression, Styron makes a few mentions of how indescribable the affliction is, which he nearly contradicts with this account. This began as a lecture and then an article and was expanded to its current form. He calls first speaking out on depression and its connection to suicide the one time in his life he found it worthwhile to invade his own privacy and make that privacy public. The book is personal for me because it was r...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

I finished this book downtown today while sitting on a concrete bench outside the Quality Inn, as a likely schizophrenic man screamed word salad into my ear. While all this excitement was going on, my girlfriend's car was being towed because of where I stupidly parked it. I liked the book at first, but I thought Styron wraps things up a little too easily. He waxes poetic about the horrors of depression, but he is alarmingly casual about his recovery. According to this slim volume of prose, after...more

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Dec 18, 2009 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

A haunting essay that I wished were longer (I was shocked at the length, but not at the content, having read Sophie's Choice this semester - surprise surprise that the author of the saddest book in the universe is himself clinically and certifiably sad). Incredibly, Styron's writing feels restrained as opposed to his fiction, but his lines still deliver:

From Section IV: "...I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, m...more

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Apr 25, 2009 Leslie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: one-sitting-reads

One of my literary pet peeves: writers writing about their mental illnesses. I avoid books like this one, largely because I believe the cult of romanticism surrounding artistic despair is misguided to the point of being offensive. It reminds me of being stuck in an undergraduate seminar with that girl who wore black eyeliner and too many bracelets, lugged around conspicuous copies of Plath and Sexton, and wrote bad poems about her sex life. As both a writer and someone who suffers from chronic d...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Allie Krabill rated it 5 of 5 stars

After struggling with depression for several years (and, perhaps more painfully, struggling with trying to help my loved ones understand what I was going through), I read Darkness Visible for my Abnormal Psychology class. It changed my life. Suddenly, I had found someone who understood everything I felt on a daily basis. He was able to put my battles into words. Most importantly, he gave me hope. I now believe that, if I can just hold on, eventually I will make it to a bright place again.
Readin...more

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About William Styron

William Styron (1925–2006), born in Newport News, Virginia, was one of the greatest American writers of his generation. Styron published his first book, Lie Down in Darkness, at age twenty-six and went on to write such influential works as the controversial and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner and the international bestseller Sophie’s Choice.

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Quotes from Darkness Visible

“A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.” — 70 people liked it

“In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying- or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity- but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devistation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.” — 46 people liked it

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