Posted by dj on October 27, 1999, at 1:50:31
In reply to Scary books, posted by Bob on October 26, 1999, at 23:02:40
I've read and reread portions of The Beast, Styron's -- Darkness Visible, O'Conner's Undoing Depression & Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, Letter to a Younger Son, Advice from a Failure, Williamson's Return to Love, Ackerman's A Slender Thread and other books at various times when feeling down and found them uplifting, partly because they are thoughful & well-written. Partly because they show how people have come through adverse periods. Partly because they are reminders that I am not alone.
Kinda like listenting to Tom Waits, though at times one can also look at these folks with a janudiced eye and say well at least they are well enough to write or sing about it but that's far removed from where I am. Those are my darker moments, however generally I find them uplifting in various ways.
I scanned Jamison's Night Falls Fast on the weekend attempting to glean some fresh insights & solutions, which is also part of the reason I keep coming back to babble...I found the parts I scanned interesting: reading for instance the horrific account of the way Merriweather Lewis (of Lewis & Clark the explorers fame) took his life was not entirely pleasant but it was enlightening to see that even this heroic explorer was plagued with demons.
To me these sort of books are of more benefit thatn the lightweight pap, sap and crap that passes for pseudo-psychology in so many bookstores. And of course I can't forget having read Prisig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Mark Vonnegut's The Eden Express. These examples of real people struggling with real adversity and problems and overcoming some of them (but not always and not always easily) is much more uplifting to me than the Movie of the Week, Friends, David Letterman or any of that other inane crap which dominates our society, though on occasion even those can provide some relief if not disbelief...
And of course for real uplift there's Monty Python. And if you want to read a real life horror story go read the financial pages of the newspapers or books like Liar's Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, etc..Those offer up more travesty and tragedy than you'll find in any of the books you scanned at the bookstore.
poster:dj
thread:13987
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991016/msgs/13995.html