In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randally Jarrell and Primo Levi, Vincent Van Gogh 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.
In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randally Jarrell and Primo Levi, Vincent Van Gogh 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.
In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randally Jarrell and Primo Levi, Vincent Van Gogh 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.
