What makes Scialabba’s How To Be Depressed such a brilliant and unusual contribution to the literature of depression is the elegant solution he found to this predicament. He doesn’t write about himself—other people do. Rather than produce another “memoir,” he reproduces the notes his therapists and doctors took over the years. “They’re a very distinct form of writing,” Scialabba observes. “They’re almost a form of anti-writing.” This allows readers to encounter his depression from the outside; he relinquishes control of his story, sapping it of all dramatic pacing. There is only depression’s pathetic waste, observed in pitiless detail over the decades.
I have seen the effect of depression and it is certainly terrible. I don't think basing your politics on it is a very good idea, though.In fact, I think political solutions to problems tend to among the worst solutions available. As this piece indicates, individual encounter is what is crucial.
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