Gotham Diary:
The Nobility of Melancholy
26 April 2013
Last year, Kathleen read a book called Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, by Joshua Wolf Shenk, and she liked it so much that I decided to read it, too, even though I find it very hard to focus on Abraham Lincoln. I prefer to admire Lincoln from a distance, and can only wish that the distance were greater — that, say, he were a great statesmen of a much earlier era and on a far-removed continent, rather than the man who presided over a regrettable war that, whatever the military outcome, could not conceivably have yielded political union, but only the mistrust of government and dearth of social vision that we Americans still have to live with. I read most of the book during the winter, but finally finished it in a long go yesterday, largely to clear it from the pile.
Shenk’s book is also admirable, and well worth reading, even if its parts do not fit smoothly. There is a want of harmony between the language of Lincoln himself, extensively quoted, and the language of contemporary therapy. Quite understandably, moreover, Shenk seems unsure of how well-informed his readers will be, about American history as well as about current thinking on mental health issues. Ideally, the book would knit into a seamless whole the image of the noble, tortured frontiersman and an unashamed acceptance of the realities of depression, but if Lincoln’s Melancholy fails of the ideal it nevertheless approaches it closely enough to present an occasionally mordant critique of the mindless optimism of our ghastly media culture.
Two paragraphs from the Epilogue stand out for snipping; they balance and resolve our conflicting views of afflictions such as depression, making good use of Lincoln as a case study.
For example, depressed people are often unable to get out of bed, feeling a kind of paralysis that seems physical and involuntary, even though on some level, it’s known to be mental and volitional. Truly, for those in thrall to mental agony, as Andrew Solomon has observed, merely going to brush one’s teeth can feel like a Herculean task. A common argument today has two people standing over the bed. One says, “He can’t help it. He has an illness and should be treated with deference.” The other disputes this, muttering, “He just needs a swift kick in the butt.”
Lincoln’s story allows us to see that both points may be true. First, when overcome by mental agony, he allowed himself to be overcome, and for no small time. He let himself sink to the bottom and feel the scrape. Those who say that we must always buck up should see how Lincoln’s time of illness proved also to be a time of gestation and growth. Those who say that we must always frame mental suffering in terms of illness must see how vital it was that Lincoln roused himself when the time came. How might Lincoln have endangered his future, and his potential, had he denied himself the reality of his suffering? How, too, might he have stagnated had he not realized that life waits for those who choose to live it?
This is very wise — as wise as Lincoln himself. At the back of it, I discern a suggestion of which Shenk himself may not be conscious: that, in certain cases of depression, it might be wiser to let the disorder run its course, without medication, for its natural term (about eighteen months). This would require organizing our affairs so that a person could suffer a bout of depression with the same guiltlessness as a cancer victim, and not be punished for absence from work or low spirits, and so on. Who knows how many lesser Lincolns’ potential “gestation and growth” we are sacrificing to our impatience with “volitional” disorders? Enduring depression would be appreciably less painful if it were generally accepted as an illness with a term. Shenk’s book demonstrates that it is impossible to hold Abraham Lincoln in high regard without ceasing to regard depression as shameful.
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The other day, I watched Holy Motors, the French film made by Leos Carax (not his real name). Holy Motors was one of last year’s prestige films; when Oscar season rolled around, a few months ago, it was commonly sniffed that Holy Motors ought to have been nominated for something. I wasn’t tempted to see it in the theatre; I wasn’t even tempted to read much about it. But the title lingered, and eventually I yielded to Amazon’s suggestion that I might like it.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy watching it at all. A blurb on the jewel box promised “frenetic fun,” but I found the movie to be unrelievedly gloomy. The moment it was over, though, my feelings shifted. Holy Motors may turn out to be the strongest case I’ve yet encountered for getting the first viewing out of the way in order to see a film clearly. Insofar as Holy Motors is a lament for bygone ways of moviemaking (as suggested by Kenji Fujishima at The House Next Door), it’s probably not going to speak to me very powerfully, because I don’t let bygones be bygones. But as an object lesson in the illusions and actualities of acting, Holy Motors is very powerful, and Denis Lavant certainly deserved a Best Actor nomination. (Was I the only one who was reminded by his Monsieur Merde of Pan’s Labyrinth?)