Madness and Genius

Denerick

Some of my favourite writers were/are in some way mad:

Aldous Huxley (Was mad on mescalin for the last ten years of his life)

Patrick Kavanagh (Drunk, depressive, generally angry and obnoxious)

Sinclair Lewis (Alcoholic)

W.B. Yeats (Possibly OCD, victim of unrequited love, weirdly intense)

Tom Wolfe (Very eccentric)


Then of course there are the host of writers who I haven't read, and who are generally considered to be mad (Hemmingway, Woolfe, Swift, Plath, Salinger etc.)

They do say that madness and genius often overlap. There is also something of a 'schizophrenic gene' that is frequently found in the children of literary and scientific geniuses (The children of Einstein, Joyce and Vonnegut all developed the condition. Joyce said that he left behind him a spark which his daughter was unable to control)

I think that 'depressive realism' is possibly the hallmark of a truly great writer. This is why the best literature in my opinion, is satire. Through social satire the writer reveals society and mankind at their most absurd - but often, mankind is at their most absurd in their casual, everyday experiences. So a great writer is able to see the absurd in the every day which the 'sane' cannot, due to the ability of the average person to overlook these things (Otherwise they'd be in the doldrums along with them) Perhaps the greatest function of a talented writer is the ability to describe the absurdities we ordinary people cannot see...

raah!

Well I've often heard literary genius as a person who is able to capture the prevailing thought of the time and express it properly. This makes sense in explaining why the works "geniuses" would be so critically aclaimed. But obviously this does not apply across the board.

I've also always seen madness as a kind of discionnection from logic or society, and I wouldn't consider those conditions listed above to be madness. This conception of madness is well described by michael prisig as "a disconnection from the mythos of the age".

Also I rarely subscribe to saying "this person is automatically great", I think anyone whose ever done anything good anywhere spent most of their lives studying it. An example is eintstein doing physics whilst working in a patent office. So if they spend so much time in pensive isolation then this would naturally have bad affects on their mental well fair/social capabilities.

Eliot Rosewater

I suppose you could ask, is the proportion of alcoholics/drug addicts/eccentrics etc amongst writers disproportionate? From a statistical point of view it wouldn't be surprising to find a few writers who are off their game, because there's also a lot of regular people gone nuts. :pac:


I don't know if you can really find a connection between madness and genius. One's mind is biased because one tends to notice madness in someone, but not notice lack of madness in someone. So it may appear there's more madness floating around than there actually is.