Misery Loves Company

Books don’t help. But misery loves company. I could be a smart aleck and ask, “What writer isn’t depressed?” I imagine there is a growing genre called the literature of depression but you will soon see that it covers such a vast area that the genre can be stretched beyond definition. Regardless, here’s some food for thought. You are hungry, aren’t you?

An Unquiet Mind
The Noonday Demon
Darkness Visible
Lincoln's Melancholy
The House of Percy
The Catcher in the Rye
Dream-catcher
The Bell Jar
No Exit
The Sun Also Rises
Dark Night of the Soul
Peanuts

Don't forget the classic, Anatomy of Melancholy

Yep, that is a classic.

I have read very few books about depression per se, except for some dabbling in the work of Kay Jamison.

I recently finished The Stranger for a great books class. Our concensus was that Merseult sp? was likely clinically depressed.

#4 Yeah, probably.

Let's not forget Ishmael.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship."

Sure, he winds up with an obsessive captain instead. Some trade.

Even though he's a bit more obscure and works in the genre of horror, Thomas Ligotti is an author I'd add to the list. He's suffered from anxiety and depression for most of his life and it reflects on a lot of his fiction, from his earliest published short story "The Last Feast of Harlequin" to his later work such as "The Bungalow House." (The latter, especially, has a wonderful description of the author's mental states, posits the role of writing, and features the all too powerful phrase "killing sadness.")

Most of his work is collected in the omnibus collection The Nightmare Factory, though The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is a nice introduction (sort of a best of) and more readily available.