SOURCE: A review of Darkness Visible, in World Literature Today, Summer, 1991, p. 108.

[In the following review, the critic discusses William Styron's Darkness Visible, noting that in the memoir the author offers many self-diagnoses.]

William Styron's essay meanders through his experience of depression in a somewhat crotchety style, one which pulls the facts along like loose seaweed emerging through the surf. It is a wandering and poignant memoir that catalogues his thinking on depression.

So much has been written about this disorder. The 1980s (and now the 1990s) are the "ages" of depression, as the 1950s were the age of anxiety and the 1960s and 1970s were those of narcissism and borderline personality (Kohut, Kernberg, and Masterson). So I read Darkness Visible expecting a major footnote in the history of this disorder from the pen of an artist, not a clinician. To my surprise, the essay tends to relate...