Darkness Visible by William Styron
Darkness Visible is novelist William Styron’s account of the ‘poisonous fogbank’ of depression which corroded his ability to think rationally and washed him up at the door of suicide with fingers gripped around the cold handle.
It’s a short account - the Vintage edition running to just over eighty pages. In ten brief chapters Styron touches on: alcohol as a writing partner, the influence of Albert Camus, fellow novelist Romain Gary, the deaths of poet Randall Jarrell and actress Jean Seberg, the word depression, his deteriorating and zombie-like behaviour, drafting a suicide note, medication, hospitals, and recovery.
“...the flight of the 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 no mere pangs of withdrawal but by a serious illness whose name and actuality I was able finally to acknowledge.”
In rare outward glances, Styron notes the poor weather. Drizzle, icy gusts, cold gusts, chill winds, a rain-slick street, a chilly evening, blustery and raw nights. The weather in Paris mirrors the climate of his mind.
Styron writes that those of healthy mind are unable to ‘grasp the essence of the illness’ despite the efforts of scientists and artists. He describes it as: a howling tempest of the brain, fogbound horror, dank joylessness, aching solitude, catastrophic, elusive, a poisonous fogbank. Each image more dreadful than anything the insipid noun depression conjures.
“Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word [depression] has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”
With each sleepless night, Styron came closer to the final horror of having to judge for himself whether life was worth living.
Styron’s writing is clear and frank. He invites neither pity nor censure. Despite the subject, Darkness Visible is not a depressing read. It’s a rare, interesting, and elegantly-written look behind a curtain. It’s a primer on depression composed with a novelist’s skills.
Keep on reading:
The Kites by Romain Gary: a slowburning, beautiful novel of human nature under duress
Fires by Raymond Carver: essays on Carver’s writing and influences
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot: a memoir of alcoholism and the Orkney Islands
