Darkness Visible

William Styron

4 ideas

1. Paris prize, Brahms, and the hospital

   In October 1985 William Styron, then 60, went to Paris to accept the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca while in the grip of a worsening depression. The breakdown followed his abrupt loss of tolerance for alcohol and was possibly worsened by overuse of the sleeping pill Halcion. He lost the prize cheque, behaved erratically at the luncheon, and by December, at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, had destroyed his notebook and drafted a suicide note. Late one night a passage of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody in a film pierced him with memories of his house and family, and he woke his wife; he entered Yale–New Haven Hospital soon after and recovered over about seven weeks, largely through seclusion and time.

2. The word 'depression' hides the illness

   Styron argues that 'depression' is a bland, 'wimp' of a word, borrowed from the language of economics and geology, and too weak for a condition that can kill. Because the label suggests an ordinary low mood, healthy people map the illness onto their own passing sadness and underestimate it. That underestimation delays treatment and breeds impatience with sufferers. He proposes 'brainstorm' as a more accurate name.

3. Despair defined by the absence of hope

   Styron argues that depressive pain differs from physical agony not only in its intensity but in its conviction that no relief will come. Ordinary suffering is endured because the sufferer expects it to end. Depression removes that expectation, so each day feels like entering a permanent state, and suicide appears to be the only exit. He compares the experience to drowning or suffocating, and says it cannot be conveyed to those who have not felt it.

4. Suicide as symptom, not moral failure

   Using Primo Levi's death, and the public surprise and disappointment that followed it, Styron argues that suicide in severe depression is the outcome of an illness overwhelming a person's defences. It is no more a failure of character, courage or intellect than dying of cancer. Judging the dead as weak misreads the disease and deepens the shame that keeps the living from seeking help.

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