Nathaniel Lachenmeyer
The Outsider
A Journey Into My Father's Struggle With Madness
Broadway
2002
In the finely tuned novel, we seek answers to the questions life, with all its messiness and lack of completeness, fails to provide. Those questions that are left unanswered because of a person's death or disappearance, or only because of the wanderings of our own attentions, might be found neatly explained in a passage describing a police interrogation or in the musings of a character in a classic tale. A novelist pulls us in by his or her omniscience and the ability to tie up loose ends because he or she can see into many places--and minds--at once.
In this book, the author serves up a plate of reality with the timing and sense of a novel. The end result is an informative and very enjoyable read which can't fail to touch even the remotest heart.
The author's father, Charles, a happily married sociology professor with a reputation for brilliance, developed schizophrenia, which almost completely removed him from the son's life at around the age of 10. Initially, the problem seemed to be excessive drinking which served to mask the symptoms of the mental illness. Nathaniel dealt with this as best he could, primarily through correspondence with his father, until he received word that Charles had been found dead of a heart attack in a small rented room in Burlington, Vermont. He found out that his father had lived homeless, and spent periods of time hospitalized for his problems. Nathaniel sought to fill in the gaps of knowledge about his father for his later years when he had spurned his attentions out of fear.
"I needed to understand how my father--fellow adventurer, collaborator on all my big plans, the man whom I most wanted to be like when I grew up-had been transformed into the person I was most afraid of in the world."
Using the memories of his relatives, his father's colleagues, teachers, doctors and other contacts, obtained through interviews, and Charles's own publications and other written records, the author paints a picture of the last years of his father's life and examines the family history that took him there. He includes some of his own memories and shares his thoughts about and correspondence with his father.
When I first agreed to accept this book for review, I was concerned that it would be a self-indulgent whine. Instead, it is an even-handed and very objective account. The book contains great information on schizophrenia and its treatment, as well as public and private perceptions of people suffering from it. It is also the story of a brilliant man virtually stopped in his tracks by this perplexing illness.
For those with any family history of schizophrenia, or regular contact with homeless and/or mentally ill either as the result of their presence in your community or in your work, such as mine on an ambulance, you really ought to read this book. It will change forever your point of view.
This book is also available at
Amazon.co.uk
Other books by this author, or related books if none are available:
