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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up al-Katibi's The Rules of Logic, an apparently influential Arabic logic primer. The book itself is actually quite short, with the commentary by the translator taking up the majority of the pages.
I finished The Best Minds this week. Author Jonathan Rosen published several novels before writing this, and there are times when you feel like you're reading a novel rather than a work of non-fiction. That's not solely due to the manner of its telling, but also because the story itself is so surprising and so saturated with dark irony. Indeed, if it was a work of fiction, a satire of well-meaning but misguided deinstitutionalization efforts, its basic premise (a brilliant but troubled young man is diagnosed with schizophrenia, becomes the public face of contemporary efforts to break the stigma around mental illness and stop the mentally ill from being discriminated against, sells the rights to tell his inspirational biography to Hollywood for more than a million dollars – then has a psychotic break and stabs his pregnant fiancée to death) would seem almost painfully on-the-nose.
While reading the book, it struck me that it's a clever subversion of a genre of books and films I call "TOA stories": "triumph over adversity". These are formulaic and sentimental stories about a brilliant individual who faces some unexpected major obstacle in his life (physical disability, disease, mental illness), struggles mightily against it, and summons strength he didn't know he had to overcome it. Something something mind over matter, inner human resolve, a moving testament to the power of the human spirit etc. The Best Minds starts off following that structure to the letter, but where a conventional TOA story would have ended with Michael selling the rights to his story, marrying his girlfriend and delivering an inspirational speech, Minds keeps going, showing that the real thing is nowhere near that simple. In the end, adversity triumphed over Michael, not the other way around. Part of the reason adversity triumphed over him was because so many around him chose to pretend that he'd already triumphed over adversity, and hence missed (or, less charitably, ignored) obvious red flags that his condition was very much not a thing of the past. Rosen notes that, prior to his murdering his fiancée, so many articles about Michael described him as having "a history of schizophrenia", as opposed to "schizophrenic". Amusingly, the phrase "triumph over adversity" does appear in the book, in the form of a press release Rosen quotes about the film A Beautiful Mind. That film originated as a loose biopic about Michael, but after he murdered his fiancée, the producers decided they needed a more palatable lunatic for their subject. Interestingly, after a certain point the real John Forbes Nash gave up taking antipsychotic medication, but near the end of A Beautiful Mind, Nash claims to be taking meds. Director Ron Howard felt this artistic license was the responsible choice, as he did not want to send the message that schizophrenics should attempt to overcome their condition via sheer willpower. This decision of his feels even more poignant when you understand the genesis of the project: Michael's story must have been weighing heavily on Howard's mind, as a cautionary tale of what can happen when schizophrenics don't take their medication.
Easily the best work of non-fiction I've read so far this year, and the saddest work of non-fiction I've read in years. Highly recommended.
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