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mallorys_cameraReading The Midnight Disease, neurologist Alice Flaherty’s very fascinating exploration of the brain chemistry behind hypergraphia or the compulsion to write. (In the process she also delves into related but distinct phenomena such as graphomania – Milan Kundera coinage – the obsession to be published, which one presumes is the engine that drives the blogosphere.)
It’s a little bit uncomfortable to read because, of course, hypergraphia is a pathology with a distinct and definitive set of criteria (many of which I meet), linked to both bipolar disorder and temporal lobe epilepsy. I would bristle at Flaherty’s need to medicalize what would seem to be, even at its worst, a harmless enough time-waster except that she cheerfully outs herself as both a hypergraphic, a manic-depressive and a loony-bin alumna:
Psychiatric hospitals are not terrible places to write –, she tells us. They bear certain similarities to writers’ colonies like Yadoo, except that health insurance pays.
Hmmmmmmm…
Of course the whole book makes me wonder what would have happened with Dostoyevsky had he been fortunate enough to live in the era of Big Pharma. Dostoyevsky was a known epileptic – most likely suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. And he certainly wrote compulsively.
How many Dostoyevskys live among us now, jacked up on Prozac or whatever the hell it is they feed temporal lobe epileptics, cheerfully finding their lives’ fulfillment through obsessively watching American Idol? That isn’t a pathology. At least, not yet.
Interestingly Flaherty exempts pro’s – writers who write with the expectation of profit – from the diagnosis. Seems a rather arbitrary distinction. I mean, what do you make of someone like Stephen King or who certainly writes with the expectation of profit, vast profit, but who by his own admission would keep right on churning even if there wasn’t a cent to be made from it?
Most intriguing part of the book for me is Flaherty’s examination of the language of science.
First she looks at the links between synesthesia and figurative imagery: At first glance, it is tempting to dismiss descriptions of synesthesia as merely metaphors, figures of speech along the lines of Kipling’s phrase “the dawn came up like thunder,” rather than direct experiences or brain states. A second look suggests it might be more accurate to say that many metaphors are actually watered-down and culturally influenced forms of synesthesia.
Subclinical synesthesia may be more common than heretofore thought.
Then she extrapolates from Sir Peter Medawar’s observation: “Broken English is the universal language of science.”
Scientific writing’s rejection of style as a decorative scrim obscuring the truth not only breaks fundamental rules of human communication (such as “Don’t be boring”) but is itself a style that can speciously add the appearance of weight to arguments.
Two most distinctive features of the scientific style are its rejection of all figurative imagery and its over-use of the passive voice. Although personally I’d argue the passive voice is a form of metaphor.
Anyway, a book well worth reading by anyone who thinks the perfect evening is not hanging out with friends at a great restaurant and then running home to have sex with George Clooney, but writing about it.
It’s a little bit uncomfortable to read because, of course, hypergraphia is a pathology with a distinct and definitive set of criteria (many of which I meet), linked to both bipolar disorder and temporal lobe epilepsy. I would bristle at Flaherty’s need to medicalize what would seem to be, even at its worst, a harmless enough time-waster except that she cheerfully outs herself as both a hypergraphic, a manic-depressive and a loony-bin alumna:
Psychiatric hospitals are not terrible places to write –, she tells us. They bear certain similarities to writers’ colonies like Yadoo, except that health insurance pays.
Hmmmmmmm…
Of course the whole book makes me wonder what would have happened with Dostoyevsky had he been fortunate enough to live in the era of Big Pharma. Dostoyevsky was a known epileptic – most likely suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. And he certainly wrote compulsively.
How many Dostoyevskys live among us now, jacked up on Prozac or whatever the hell it is they feed temporal lobe epileptics, cheerfully finding their lives’ fulfillment through obsessively watching American Idol? That isn’t a pathology. At least, not yet.
Interestingly Flaherty exempts pro’s – writers who write with the expectation of profit – from the diagnosis. Seems a rather arbitrary distinction. I mean, what do you make of someone like Stephen King or who certainly writes with the expectation of profit, vast profit, but who by his own admission would keep right on churning even if there wasn’t a cent to be made from it?
Most intriguing part of the book for me is Flaherty’s examination of the language of science.
First she looks at the links between synesthesia and figurative imagery: At first glance, it is tempting to dismiss descriptions of synesthesia as merely metaphors, figures of speech along the lines of Kipling’s phrase “the dawn came up like thunder,” rather than direct experiences or brain states. A second look suggests it might be more accurate to say that many metaphors are actually watered-down and culturally influenced forms of synesthesia.
Subclinical synesthesia may be more common than heretofore thought.
Then she extrapolates from Sir Peter Medawar’s observation: “Broken English is the universal language of science.”
Scientific writing’s rejection of style as a decorative scrim obscuring the truth not only breaks fundamental rules of human communication (such as “Don’t be boring”) but is itself a style that can speciously add the appearance of weight to arguments.
Two most distinctive features of the scientific style are its rejection of all figurative imagery and its over-use of the passive voice. Although personally I’d argue the passive voice is a form of metaphor.
Anyway, a book well worth reading by anyone who thinks the perfect evening is not hanging out with friends at a great restaurant and then running home to have sex with George Clooney, but writing about it.
