A Schizophrenic on Artaud (Kindle Edition)

My new book, A Schizophrenic on Artaud, has now been released in the Kindle format. For me it was fascinating journey to write the book, exploring my own condition while delving into Artaud's work, and our shared interest in literature. Artaud lived at a time when to suffer from schizophrenia was much harder than it is today. His work shocks, and it also comforts. The amazing linguistic flexibility he had was a really credit to his genius. He stands as an example of what can be achieved despite very trying conditions.

You may buy my book through Amazon here, and download to your Kindle or iPad.

Hope you enjoy the book!

A Schizophrenic on Artaud

My new book has been released! It is a poetic exploration of the life and work of the French writer Antonin Artaud. Artaud suffered from schizophrenia, but was still able to produce a number of seminal books, including The Theatre and its Double. His work is now considered to have entered the cannon of French letters. His life was one of the highest degrees of suffering. His condition led him to situations that are almost unknown today. My book, A Schizophrenic on Artaud, is written by a fellow sufferer who wanted to bring a self reflexive insight to create a work that would be in the spirit of Artaud's writing. My publisher, Chipmunkapublishing, has released the book initially as an ebook, with the paperback to follow. My ebook is available here for purchase!

Reflections on Artaud

Artaud has always fascinated me. Writing in the first half of the twentieth century, Artaud was to captivate the literary milieu of his time. His schizophrenia was at its worst during the German occupation of France, when he was institutionalised. The appalling suffering of this time was alleviated to an extent when a doctor running a clinic in the free zone heard of Artaud's plight and had him transferred. Artaud's best known text, The Theatre and its Double, was a poetic and indeed great exploration of theatre practices, and has come to be seminal in the performance of theatre around the world. My book on Artaud, entitled A Schizophrenic on Artaud, interweaves aspects of his life and work in a poetic rendering that does justice to the spirit Artaud wrote in. My publisher, Chipmunkapublishing, has just released the ebook. Stayed tuned to this blog for further details.

August Strindberg (B)

August Strindberg came to my attention a few years ago at an academic philosophy conference. I was giving a paper on Vaslav Nijinsky, the dancer, who suffered from schizophrenia, and who kept a diary during his initial onset. My own diary, Diary of a Schizophrenic, kept during the onset of my condition 12 years ago, has been published by Chipmunkapublishing in the UK, and was launched last year at the Melbourne Writers Festival. But at the paper, there was an academic there who asked if I had heard of August Strindberg. Strindberg had written a book called Inferno, based on a diary he kept. Strindberg was at this time a famous playwright, but turned from his literary pursuits to pursue chemistry. The book Inferno details a descent into what seems to be a psychotic way of thinking and behaving, and provides a great wealth of material for those wishing to study literary expressions of schizophrenia. There are some who argue that Strindberg accentuated his condition for literary reasons, but I intend to explore this issue, arguing that Strindberg was indeed a sufferer, though not as refractory as many who have been unfortunate enough to endure the strictures of this horrible condition.

2011 Launch Party for the Melbourne Writers Festival

On Saturday evening, my wife and I attended the launch party for the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival. This was special for me. It marks a year since the launch of my book, Diary of a Schizophrenic, at the festival last year. A lot has happened in this year. I have written another book, and have become very excited about where my writing is taking me. We both feel like writers now, my wife and I, and this life direction is giving us both a sense of new found enjoyment.

The launch party was quite full, with lots of new and budding authors all eager to make their mark. Their was some very good hair, as all writers festivals should have. But there was a real and palpable sense of what is possible through the written word. Let's hope we never lose that.

Diary of a Schizophrenic (B)

I had a chance recently to look over my book, Diary of a Schizophrenic, and reflect a little on its content. Now that the dust has settled since the launch of the book at the Melbourne Writers Festival, I am really proud of what the book has achieved. It was my hope that the book would raise awareness of schizophrenia, and to help people to see that the condition does not have to be one of overwhelming despair. Things can be accomplished despite the condition, and a life can be led that is full. The book touches on some fairly personal material, but in a way that, I feel, gives a positive spin on what would otherwise be a very difficult time. Its concern with art, literature and philosophy helps to ground the work, and give it (I believe) some real literary merit. It was a leap of faith to send the manuscript to the publisher, as I was at the time still doing my PhD (which I have now completed). I feel this leap has been worth the while.

The book is now being sold (amongst many other places) through the Angus and Robertson website, which is a real thrill for me, for I would go this chain of bookstores when I was young, and dream of being a writer. I wish for the work that it will give some hope, but also be just an interesting and indeed enjoyable read.

Jorge Luis Borges

The poetry of Jorge Luis Borges has always held a deep fascination for me. A favourite concept of mine, the oneiric (or the dream like) aptly sums up Borges poetic output. Borges wrote many works of varied style and form, from prose to essays to reviews, but his poetry best depicts this mode of expression. Borges, who went blind later in his life, used this period of visionary darkness to focus on his poetry to great effect.

A very important turning point of Borges' early life came when he was given access to his grandfathers very large library. He mentions this as a crucial stage in his fledging literary development. My own father, when I was quite young, said to me I could buy any book I liked, and he would pay for it. These events can be crucial.

Borges executed a number of literary hoaxes and forgeries in his time. He wrote original works and claimed they were works he had chanced upon, and passed them off in this fashion. He also wrote reviews for non-existent works.

Borges was never awarded to the Nobel Prize for Literature, which always grated upon him. There is some speculation that it was his conservative political views which held him back. But the power of his literary output should not be denied. He is considered one of the great writers of the modern epoch.

Lord Byron

Byron has been someone who I have always looked towards with a certain and prolonged admiration. His life, indeed his adventurous and non compromising embrace of Life (with a capital L), has been the touchstone for great writers ever since. He was perhaps the first poet to come to real celebrity as we now know it. His various controversies, his adulterous affairs, his love for cousins, his keeping of wild animals (bears, monkeys etc) have entered his name into the annuls of history as an eccentric who knew how to court the public's attention. His death in Greece while fighting for that countries independence sums up the Romantic heart which Byron sought from his time. His epic poem Don Juan (which he had difficulty publishing because of its bawdiness) is considered one of the great epic poems after Milton's Paradise Lost. Without Byron, the Romantic movement would not have had a focal point, and may indeed have been something else altogether. Byron is the typical Romantic hero. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. The phrase started with Byron, and perhaps really ended with him.

William Blake

I first came across Blake as an undergraduate at university. And there started a passion that has rarely subsided since. Blake, loosely associated (I believe) with the Romantic movement of English letters, is at heart a visionary who defied convention to produce something great. Both a poet and a visual artist, Blake follow his own thinking in almost all of his output. His large epic poems are sprawling works of symbolist energy. His most beautiful works, his shorter poems of Innocence and of Experience, are generally regarded as the pinnacle of English poetry. I had the good fortune, while in Cambridge on a study trip, to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum and be allowed to view an original manuscript of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Words do not describe the beauty, and even modern facsimile editions can not capture the dazzling quality of the gold leafing that is speckled throughout. Blake is a wonder and a marvel. I have been fortunate enough to know his work.

Flaubert - Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary is the sort of text we still need today. Not so much the text itself, but the way the text found the world. Written in the 1850's, the work sensationalised the Parisian public, and finally was put on trial for obscenity. The story tells of the wife of a public servant, who yearns for something more. She meets a cultured soul, who kindles in her a desire that had been safely hidden. The story is one we are very familiar with today, but have difficulty making great, in much the same way it was made great in the 19th century. We do not put books on trial anymore. We put authors on trial, in a sense, through their words. But books themselves are immune from makes them truly important.

Schizophrenia and Creativity (B)

I have decided to research an academic piece, and finally produce a paper, on the intersection between schizophrenia and creativity. My own creative inclinations, my relative success, and my continuing battle with schizophrenia, have led me to want to try and come to some sort academic conclusions about this strange partnership. I think I want, fundamentally, to know why there have been times in the history of literature, where people have suffered from schizophrenia, and been able to succeed, to a marked degree, in their endeavours. It might simply be that, given a certain proportion of sufferers, some are likely to achieve despite the overwhelming negativity of their condition. But there seems something more to it than that. As I touched on earlier in an entry below, there is a loosening of association that can occur in schizophrenia, a loosening that lends itself naturally to conceptual and linguistic unusualness. And it is this unusualness which can lead to success in things creative. But my own creativity has something more to it than that. It is a certainty, that I can't explain, but which spills from my mind like some form of automatic machine. I guess I follow my intuition, and trust it, but it is something like a store of creative material that simply is released as I write. The writing is effortless, and seems to come out pre-formed as it were. But I will leave you here to tempt you, and leave you hanging for my research paper.