Related topics: •  Book Review: The Noonday Demon •  Depression Center

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
By William Styron
Vintage Books
Paperback 96pp $10

The novelist William Styron is renowned for creating unforgettable characters, most notably the rebel slave hero of The Confessions of Nat Turner and the tormented Holocaust survivor of Sophie's Choice. Yet in 1985, despite his success and acclaim, Styron suffered a sudden and debilitating bout of suicidal depression. Four years later, he published an account in Vanity Fair of his vertiginous plunge into despair. The following year, an essay based on that magazine piece was released in book form as Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

For someone of Styron's stature, this self-disclosure was a courageous step. Prozac, the first of a new class of antidepressants, had only recently been introduced, and depression had not yet become a popular topic of discussion. In recent years, the general public has come to recognize clinical depression as a medical condition frequently caused by biochemical imbalances in the brain, but at the time Styron published his work, many still regarded the disease as evidence of a character flaw or defect.

The power and strength of Styron's slim volume lies in its close and careful observation of the internal sensations and rhythms of his illness. Although he began experiencing symptoms in June 1985, he writes, he only accepted the seriousness of his condition months later while in France to accept a prestigious literary prize.

"In Paris on a chilly evening late in October of 1985, I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind -- a struggle which had engaged me for several months -- might have a fatal outcome," he writes.

Unworthy of acclaim

Those intimations of mortality struck Styron at a time when he should have been thoroughly enjoying the honor being bestowed upon him. But as he notes, feelings of self-hatred tend to accompany depression, and he felt utterly unworthy of the acclaim.

"I had suffered more and more from a general feeling of worthlessness as the malady had progressed," he writes. "My dank joylessness was therefore all the more ironic because I had flown on a rushed four-day trip to Paris in order to accept an award which should have sparklingly restored my ego."

After describing the torment of his Paris trip, Styron backtracks several months to chart the onset of his symptoms with clarity and directness. He dates the problem to his body's revolt against his daily habit of drinking. For 40 years, he explains, he relied on alcohol to free his imagination.

"There is no need," he writes, "to either rue or apologize for my use of this soothing, often sublime agent, which had contributed greatly to my writing; although I never set down a line while under its influence, I did use it -- often in conjunction with music -- as a means to let my mind conceive visions that the unaltered, sober brain has no access to."

When he suddenly found that drinking even the smallest amount caused him to feel violently ill, he felt betrayed. Bereft of alcohol, he began to notice a slow but steady graying of his mood. While it might seem odd to describe an account of the black misery of depression as lyrical, Darkness Visible is exactly that. Styron etches the boundaries of his growing despair in language that is both beautiful and spare.

"One bright day on a walk through the woods with my dog," he writes, "I heard a flock of Canada geese honking high above trees ablaze with foliage; ordinarily a sight and sound that would have exhilarated me, the flight of birds caused me to stop, riveted with fear, and I stood stranded there, helpless, shivering, aware for the first time that I had been stricken ... by a serious illness whose name and actuality I was able finally to acknowledge."

Over the next few months, the depressive tendencies that the alcohol had helped suppress descended upon him in full force. He experienced panic, restlessness, and a gathering, inchoate dread. He lost sleep, his appetite faded, and his libido disappeared. Thoughts of suicide were not far behind.

"My few hours of sleep were usually terminated at three or four in the morning, when I stared up into yawning darkness, wondering and writhing at the devastation taking place in my mind, and awaiting the dawn, which usually permitted me a feverish, dreamless nap," he writes. "I'm fairly certain that it was during one of these insomniac trances that there came over me the knowledge -- a weird and shocking revelation, like that of some long-beshrouded metaphysical truth -- that this condition would cost me my life if it continued on such a course. Death, as I have said, was now a daily presence, blowing over me in cold gusts. I had not conceived precisely how my end would come. In short, I was still keeping the idea of suicide at bay. But plainly the possibility was around the corner, and I would soon meet it face to face."

His dependence on the sleeping pill Halcion, he believes, contributed to his condition. Styron consulted a psychiatrist, who prescribed him antidepressants that did not seem to help. (Halcion remains a controversial drug that has been linked to anxiety, delusions, sleep driving, depression and life-threatening allergic reactions, and Prozac was not yet on the market.) When he realized he was actually concocting a plan to kill himself, he checked into a hospital. During his seven-week stay, Styron, like many who experience clinical depression, gradually recovered, although the reasons remained elusive even to him. "Mysterious in its coming, mysterious in its going, the affliction runs its course, and one finds peace," he writes.

In one unfortunate sense, Styron romanticizes depression by perpetuating the conventional notion that "artistic types (especially poets) are particularly vulnerable" to the condition. It is certainly easy to list, as Styron does, the names of illustrious writers, painters, and other creative souls who have over the years succumbed to suicidal despair. But to suggest that they suffer depression's capricious grip more acutely than ordinary folks may feel like an insult to those who do not happen to possess the genius of writer Virginia Woolf or artist Mark Rothko.

Moreover, because Styron's depression lifted spontaneously, without any apparent help from medication or other forms of treatment, the description of his eventual recovery does not offer much of a prescription for anyone else. Those with chronic forms of depression that do not disappear of their own accord might appreciate the author's descriptive artistry without finding much solace in his narrative.

Nonetheless, in the years since it was published, Styron's book has become a much-read classic of mental-health literature, and deservedly so. Rarely has the "inexplicable agony" of depression -- and the fragile hope that accompanies its passing -- been captured in such poignant and, yes, lovely words.

"By this time it was early February, and although I was still shaky I knew I had emerged into light," he writes near the end of this haunting book. "I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body's sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl."

-- David Tuller, a former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Salon.com. He is also the author of "Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia" (Faber &Faber 1996).

First published June 16, 2003
Last updated December 10, 2007
Copyright © 2003 Consumer Health Interactive