Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression

Synopsis

There are galaxies within the human mind, and madness wants to risk everything for the daring flight, reckless and beautiful and crazed. Everyone knows Icarus fell. But I love him for the fact that he dared to fly. Mania unfurls the invitation to fly too high, too near the sun which will melt the wax of the mind, and the fall will be terrible. Tristimania is an old term for manic depression, precisely capturing that sense of grief and hilarity, of violent sadness and mad highs.From the award-winning writer Jay Griffiths comes a powerful and intimate depiction of a manic-depressive crisis. The episode included hallucinations, numerous visits to the doctor and medications that would take over her life for an entire year, culminating in a long solo pilgrimage across Spain.Bringing readers directly into the heart of a manic-depressive episode, Tristimania is unusual in recording the experience of mania: as Griffiths writes, "When your mind is in flight, you don't leave tracks on the ground so there are no prints, neither footprints nor printed letters on the page. But I felt fiercely that I had to take notes . . . to mark the tracks of its passage." The book shows both the savagely destructive powers of this condition and yet also its magnificent creativity, as Griffiths uses her own journey to illuminate something of the universal human spirit, illustrating how Shakespeare offers clues to this condition, and exploring the mercuriality of manic-depression through the figure of the Trickster in the human psyche.

Copyright:

2016

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

226 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781619028043

Related ISBNs:

9781619027268

Publisher:

Counterpoint

Date of Addition:

01/14/21

Copyrighted By:

Jay Griffiths

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.