Darkness Visible by William Styron
"Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" is a poignant memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron, chronicling his profound struggle with depression, which became particularly acute in late 1985. In this concise narrative, Styron shares his personal journey through the depths of mental illness, emphasizing that depression can affect individuals regardless of their background. He details his own experience with suicidal thoughts, leading to his hospitalization, which he describes as akin to a stay in Purgatory. Styron’s account is notable for its artistic use of language, reflecting the complexity and multifaceted nature of depression, informed by the experiences of other prominent writers.
Rather than serving as a medical manual or a survival guide, "Darkness Visible" offers insight into the emotional turmoil of depression and the various treatment options available, including psychotherapy and medication. Styron advocates for the importance of time in the healing process and underscores that recovery from depression is a continual struggle. The memoir is ultimately a testament to resilience, highlighting that while depression is a formidable adversary, it is a conquerable condition. Styron's reflections aim to resonate with anyone impacted by mental illness, fostering empathy and understanding for those navigating similar challenges.
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Darkness Visible by William Styron
First published: 1990
The Work
Toward the end of 1985, Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron slowly fell into a deep state of depression. He first made his condition public in 1988, when he published an editorial in The New York Times on the suicide of Auschwitz survivor and noted author Primo Levi. In the editorial, Styron makes the case that Levi’s death does not have moral implications and that depression can lead inexorably to suicide.
Styron also further argues that many people do survive depression, even its most devastating forms. Time, he claims, is the key. After publishing several articles in Vanity Fair in 1989 on his bout with depression, Styron completed his writings on depression with a longer personal narrative, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. A concise, harrowing recounting of his ordeal, Darkness Visible employs an artist’s dexterity with language to attempt to describe, understand, and delineate the many facets of depression.
Depression affects people across boundaries of sex, race, age, and class. It has different manifestations and different origins—perhaps as many as it has sufferers. Understanding that, Styron avoids making grand claims and generalizations about the illness. Instead, he tells his story, and the stories of a few famous writers—Albert Camus, Randall Jarrell, Art Buchwald, and others—trying to illustrate by example the experience of the disease.
Darkness Visible discusses possible causes of depression, and it describes various forms of treatment, including psychotherapy, drug therapy, and hospitalization. Usually, a combination of these treatments are used to fight depression, but since time is a key element in overcoming and in succumbing to depression, fighting it is a perilous, anxious battle.
Feeling on the verge of suicide, Styron had himself institutionalized near the end of December, 1985. After more than six weeks in the hospital, which he likens to a stay in Purgatory, he emerged, no longer a threat to himself and ready to continue the lifelong struggle against depression, a condition that recurs with some regularity in its sufferers.
Darkness Visible is addressed to people who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by depression. It is not a medical book, and it is not a guide to surviving or beating depression. Rather, it is a story, told by one of America’s most gifted writers, of how a person can, almost unwittingly, sink into the depths of emotional darkness and how one person came through it, alive, stronger, and determined to continue to fight the disease for the rest of his life. Styron’s great message in Darkness Visible is that depression is conquerable. This message is reassuring not as a promise or an admonition but as a heartfelt testament of his own experience.
Bibliography
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Commentary. XC, November, 1990, p.54
Cronkite, Kathy. On the Edge of Darkness: Conversations About Conquering Depression. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Karp, David Allen. Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
Library Journal. CXV; August, 1990, p.127.
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