After the hospital, he says, “friends joked that I was crazy, and I laughed along. Some suggested that a psychiatric history might enhance my literary reputation.” I have to wonder, horribly: Is this simply what I’m doing here, in this book, trying to burnish my writerly credentials with this proof that I’ve been through something real? Am I a fool to think that I’m far away enough from it to write about it—am I still not past it, but in it?
