Information at the turn of our pretty little heads

Yesterday was our Upper Moreland PA Book Discussion Group. Our assignment was Wm Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner. Everyone but me thought it was a difficult read and struggled to finish it. I thought it was a sumptuous read, every sentence cooked to perfection, savory, delicious, satisfying as plum pudding with vanilla sauce. I did confess to the group however that I purposely did not finish the book. It tells of a slave's rebellion on a Virginia plantation in 1830 where he and his men butchered and hacked to death 60 slave-owners and their families.

The book was so true to life I knew that had I read it I would become in situ a murderer myself and I would also die a violent death by the hands of Turner's men. Then, like Nat himself, I would face the hangman's noose. This is the kind of response Styron draws out of me. He reaches into my psyche and pulls me in.

Our discussion as always was spirited led by our wonderful leader Margie Peters. There is of course controversy about the book since Styron is white and is writing about blacks. His portrait of Nat Turner was one of the most astute psychological portraits I've ever read. I've recommended the book to Marcy and to Sarah. In the writer's group I said The book should be pared down by one-third. It's too long.

Margie brought out some other books by Styron. I just finished his Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, detailing Styron's own agonizing bout with depression. He speaks about the word "depression" itself, how lacklustre a term it is to describe the great horror of the illness. Here is a quote, one of the best I'd read of its horror:

Of the images recollected from that time the most bizarre and discomfiting remains the one of me, age four a half, tagging through a market after my long-suffering wife; not for an instant could I let out of my sight the endlessly patient soul who had become nanny, mommy, comforter, priestess, and, most important, confidante - a counselor of rocklike centrality to my existence whose wisdom far exceeded that of Dr. Gold.

I would hazard the opinion that many disastrous sequels to depression might be averted if the victims received support such as she gave me.

He writes a passionate treatise on accepting those unfortunates who felt forced to kill themselves due to their unmitigated agony and hopelessness. Truly, no one can understand this malady unless he has thus suffered.

What I noticed during the book discussion group was the way my mind works. With our eyes mostly, we take in information. We see everything within our purview but we don't necessarily process it. Yet, it's all in there. All inside our head, our mind. Later on, when necessary, we regurgitate it.

I was commenting on Nat Turner's ability to speak the King's English when it suited him, and at other times to speak "slave dialect." Then I mentioned how quickly our minds work to speak appropriately to whomever we're talking to, an important survival skill. For example, I said, I wouldn't address you ladies as "sweetie" the way I do my daughter when I talk to her. Then I said - and here's where I dug something out of my deep-seated memory traces where the memory was lollygagging listlessly until it could be summoned at an appropriate time -

I used to frequent a Dunkin Donuts owned by an Indian family. In an effort to cozy up to their patrons, they affected the common nicknames one uses to show endearment - a man called me "Sweetie" or "Honey" - but it was so patently ridiculous, so unfitting in their line of work that it only caused me to snicker snidely.

Styron himself did reckon with suicide. The time came when he and Suicide had a couple of showdowns. He tried to write a suicide note. The futility of doing so - whatcha gonna say? - made him chuck the idea. He liked what another writer wrote in his own note: a terse three-sentence note saying I will write no more. On his second showdown, he suddenly began to feel a wave of pseudo-love (you cannot feel love when you're supremely depressed and suicidal) but he felt a wave of love for his own personal objects.

This book is very moving. The Dr. Gold he speaks of, a fake name, gave him very poor counsel. He told Bill not to go into the hospital. Finally Bill realized that's where I need to be. Within days of hospitalization his overactive obsessive brain settled down and he began to improve. His hospitalization lasted 7 weeks. Afterwards, like all of us, he got his old self back.

It's an amazing illness triggered by early loss. Or, in my case, early deprivation of emotional nurturance and loss.

What then happened to Emily Dickinson to turn her into a recluse? We will have to go back to our notes to discover what happened to the Belle of Amhurst, says the Belle of Cowbell Road.

Ah! Just found the insinuating passage on Wiki: While Emily consistently described her father in a warm manner, her correspondence suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof. In a letter to a confidante, Emily wrote she "always ran Home to Awe [Austin] when a child, if anything befell me. He was an awful Mother, but I liked him better than none."^[14]

You see, there's always a causative effect for everything except for..... What's the purpose of the Universe? I spose it's the same answer as: Why is there ME? To exist, proliferate, sing, admire and nurture the existence of others whether babies or boyfriends.