Regular marked price: $11.95Discount Price: $9.56
Cost Savings: $2.39 (20%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.85270092
EAN num: 9780679736394
ISBN number: 0679736395
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 96
Printing Date: January 08, 1992
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: January 08, 1992
Sale Popularity Level: 7157
Studio: Vintage
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 very first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
Amazon.com:
In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randall Jarrell, Primo Levi and Virginia Woolf. That Styron survived his descent into madness is something of a miracle. That he manages to convey its tortuous progression and his eventual recovery with such candor and precision makes Darkness Visible a rare feat of literature, a book that will arouse a shock of recognition even in those readers who have been spared the suffering it describes.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I have bought over 30 copies of this book, as gifts to friends, colleagues, and relatives. I hope you readers see that that is the highest recommendation one can give.
It explains, in a very concise manner, major depression to those who have not experienced it. And an "Amen" from individuals who have experienced it.
Depression is perhaps THE under-diagnosed illness of our time (along with diabetes). Yet the medical profession really knows little, and it is near impossible for the suffering individual to describe exactly what is going on (chicken & egg?). William Styron is an award-winning, gifted, writer - who is able to put the indescribable into words that mean something to everyone. That is why this small book is important.
Everyone knows someone suffering from this disease, even if they don't recognize it yet. So, Everyone needs to be familiar with major depression. Science needs a Lot more work -- the current biological and psychological treatments are inadequate, to say the least -- especially considering the high risk of suicide with this disease. Everyone needs to know how to get beyond the crises. Lives can be saved.
Therefore, understanding - by sufferers and those who care about them - is key. Such understanding will help non-sufferers provide the assistance and support that he/she wants to give to the depressed person. Without such understanding, so-called "supporters" inadvertently make things worse.
This book is a quick, engrossing, read that may Really help. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
(This is from the recorded version, read by the author.) I have listened to this book several times over many years. I do think he does a fine job of describing the actual feeling of being depressed, and does a great service by saying it is at bottom simply indescribable, and also incomprehensible by people who have never experienced it. Thus the well-meaning admonitions to 'buck up', 'get a hold of yourself' and 'most people are as happy as they set out to be' are torture to the person suffering from depression.
However, much has been learned about depression since he wrote the book. It's so obvious that he was an alcoholic who went cold turkey in June and was still suffering from the effects of alcohol withdrawal in October, which can take months to subside. Then, to complicate things, he doped himself up with sleeping pills, so his system was flooded with foreign chemicals, replacing one he was adapted to with a new one. The result, a profound inability to function, and depression, would now be a surprise to no one but him.
His endeavor to link suicide to sensitive artistic temperaments was more a roll call of alcoholics---Hemingway, Jack London, Poe, etc. There may be a link between all three (sensitive types, suicide, and alcohol), but it's a three-legged stool, and Styron is loath to acknowlege his alcohol use as the third leg. Maybe he feels depression is more romantic than alcoholism, or at least more socially acceptable.
The spectulation about repressed mourning, early death of mother, etc. is not nearly as important as his familial tendency to depression, his drinking, and his pill taking. Since he says the hospital did nothing for him but take away the pills, and he got better, that would seem good evidence for their role in his illness.
In his obituary in 2006 it was mentioned that he had to be hospitalized several more times after the very first time described in the book.
In short, read the book to experience, as much as possible for an outsider, what depression 'feels' like, but don't buy the diagnosis of what causes it.
Rated by buyers -
The writing is excellent as you'd expect from Styron. The story short and to the point. It delivers a powerful vision of what extreme depression and suicidal ideation actually feels like. That said, I was a little disappointed somehow. The fact that Styron was a well known writer, living a life that most of us can't relate to, in a period now gone, somehow robbed the book of the power it probably had when it very first came out.
Rated by buyers -
This book gives a deep insight into Depression. Knowing that someone can be that "far gone" and come back is so inspiring. A knowledgeable read!
Rated by buyers -
This is a very slim volume, just 84 pages long, which started life as a lecture given at a symposium sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It was later developed into a piece for Vanity Fair before being published as a book.
Styron was hit by serious depression at the age of 60, and describes most evocatively his own struggle with the life-threatening illness from very first symptoms, through his treatment, his brush with suicide, hospitalisation to eventual cure. Along the way he includes the stories of friends and others so afflicted - many of them also writers.
It's the honesty of the book that makes it so compelling. It was one of the very first "insider" accounts of depression, and captures extremely well just what it feels like. (You have to have been there to know.) I agree with him that the word "depression" is totally inadequate, sounding more like a mild case of the blues rather than something that fills your soul with dread and despair. (
Find other books like this one:
