Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
Autor Daniel Smithen Limba Engleză Paperback – 4 iul 2013
Pasionații de memorii confesive și cei care caută o perspectivă umană asupra sănătății mintale vor descoperi în Monkey Mind o voce surprinzător de lucidă. Considerăm că forța acestui volum rezidă în capacitatea lui Daniel Smith de a transforma suferința paralizantă într-o narațiune plină de duh, fără a-i diminua însă severitatea. Remarcăm cum autorul refuză să prezinte o soluție magică, alegând în schimb să descrie onest efortul continuu de a naviga prin episoadele de greață, insomnie și teamă abstractă care i-au marcat existența de la adolescență până la maturitate.
Textul ne poartă prin momente de o vulnerabilitate extremă, de la primul atac de panică sever până la provocările de a menține o viață de familie stabilă. Spre deosebire de lucrările sale anterioare, precum Think You Know It All? sau How to Think Like Stephen Hawking, care se concentrau pe fapte externe sau pe mințile altora, Monkey Mind este un exercițiu de introspecție profundă. Stilul este alert, pendulând între tragismul unei minți captive și autoironia salvatoare. Pe aceeași linie cu Lost and Broken de Adam Smith, care explorează lupta cu depresia și durerea cronică, volumul de față se diferențiază printr-o abordare mai literară și un accent pus pe modul în care anxietatea poate fi, dacă nu învinsă, cel puțin îmblânzită prin acceptare și umor. Este, în esență, povestea tranziției de la o existență dominată de panică la una în care autorul reușește să devină soțul și tatăl care și-a dorit mereu să fie.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 1439177317
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: illustrations
Dimensiuni: 140 x 213 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Editura: Simon&Schuster
Colecția Simon & Schuster
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De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm această carte oricui se simte copleșit de ritmul vieții moderne sau se confruntă cu anxietatea clinică. Cititorul câștigă nu doar solidaritatea unui partener de suferință care scrie remarcabil, ci și o doză necesară de optimism. Este o lectură esențială pentru a înțelege că mintea poate deveni un loc mai primitor atunci când învățăm să râdem de propriile noastre temeri absurde.
Despre autor
Daniel Smith este un autor versatil, cunoscut pentru capacitatea sa de a sintetiza subiecte complexe în volume accesibile. Portofoliul său variat include lucrări precum Scandal at Dolphin Square, o cronică istorică a unei adrese celebre din Londra, și ghiduri intelectuale precum How to Think Like Stephen Hawking. În Monkey Mind, Smith părăsește zona cercetării externe pentru a explora propriul univers interior, demonstrând un talent narativ remarcabil. Această incursiune autobiografică i-a adus recunoașterea criticilor, fiind considerată una dintre cele mai oneste și spirituale relatări despre viața trăită sub spectrul anxietății.
Notă biografică
Daniel Smith is the author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and a contributor to The Atlantic, New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate.
Extras
1.
genesis
The story begins with two women, naked, in a living room in upstate New York.
In the living room, the blinds have been drawn. The coffee table, which is stained and littered with ashtrays, empty bottles, and a tall blue bong, has been pushed against the far wall. The couch has been unfurled. It is a cheap couch, with no springs or gears or wooden endoskeleton; its cushions unfold flat onto the floor with a flat slapping sound: thwack. Also on the floor are several clear plastic bags containing dental dams, spermicidal lubricant, and latex gloves. There is everything, it seems to me, but an oxygen tank and a gurney.
I am hunched in an awkward squat behind a woman on all fours, a woman who is blond and overweight. Her buttocks are exposed and her knees are spread wide—“presenting,” they call it in most mammalian species. I am sixteen years old. I have never before seen a vagina up close, an in-person vagina. My prior experience has been limited to two-dimensional vaginas, usually with creases and binding staples marring the view. To mark the occasion, I would like to shake the vagina’s hand, talk to it for a while. How do you do, vagina? Would you like some herbal tea? But the vagina is businesslike and gruff. An impatient vagina, a waiting vagina. A real bureaucrat of a vagina.
I inch closer on the tips of my toes, knees bent, hands out, fingers splayed—portrait of the writer as a young lecher. The air in the room smells like a combination of a women’s locker room and an off-track betting parlor, all smoke and sweat and scented lotions. My condom, the first I’ve had occasion to wear in anything other than experimental conditions, pinches and dims sensation, so that my penis feels like what I imagine a phantom limb must feel like. The second woman has brown hair done up in curls, round hips, and dark, biscuit-wide nipples. She lies on the couch, waiting. As I proceed, foot by foot, struggling to keep my erection and my balance at the same time, her eyes coax me forward. She is touching herself.
Now the target vagina is only a foot away. Now I feel like a military plane, preparing for in-air refueling. I feel, also, like a symbol. This is why I am here, ultimately. This is why, when the invitation was extended (“Do you want to stay? I want you to stay”), I accepted, and waited who knows how long in the dark room for them to return. How could I have said no? What I had been offered was every boy’s dream. Two women. The dream.
Through a haze of cannabis and cheap beer, I bolster my courage with this: the dream. What I am about to do is not for myself. It is for my people, my tribe. Dear friends, this is not my achievement. This is your achievement. Your victory. A fulfillment of your desires. Oh poor, suffering, groin-sore boys of the eleventh grade, I hereby dedicate this vagina to—
It is then that the woman coughs. It is a rattling, hacking cough. A cough of nicotine and phlegm. And the vagina, which is connected to the cough’s apparatus by some internal musculature I could not possibly have imagined before this moment, winks at me. With its wild, bushy, thorny lashes, it winks. My heart flutters. My breathing quickens. I have been winked at by a vagina that looks like Andy Rooney. I feel a tightness in my chest and I think to myself, Oh dear lord, what have I gotten myself into?
Recenzii
“Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.”
“You don't need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith's pain in Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our time—chronic anxiety—and it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.”
“Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psycho-pathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated ménage a trois—and the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brooks’ sweaty performance in Broadcast News. Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.”
“I don’t know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: Whether or not he’s a great writer.”
“Daniel Smith has a written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit. I only got anxious in the last part, when I worried the book would end.”
“In this unforgettable, surprisingly hilarious memoir, journalist and professor Smith chronicles his head-clanging, flop-sweating battles with acute anxiety. . . . He’s clear-eyed and funny about his condition’s painful absurdities.”
“This book will change the way you think about anxiety…. Daniel Smith's writing dazzled me….. Painful experiences are described with humor, and complex ideas are made accessible…. Monkey Mind is a rare gem.”
“Monkey Mind is fleet, funny, and productively exhausting.”
“Superb writing [and] marvelous humor . . . If you're chronically anxious and want to better explain to a loved one what you're going through, hand them Monkey Mind.”
“You’ll laugh out loud many times during Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind. . . . In the time-honored tradition of leavening pathos with humor, Smith has managed to create a memoir that doesn’t entirely let him off the hook for bad behavior . . . but promotes understanding of the similarly afflicted.”
“The book is one man’s story, but at its core it’s about all of us.”
“[Smith] adroitly dissects his relentless mental and physical symptoms with intelligence and humor. . . . An intelligent, intimate and touching journey through one man’s angst-ridden life.”
“A true treasure-trove of insight laced with humor and polished prose.”
“Monkey Mind is a perfect 10…. Hilarious, well-informed and intelligent, Smith conveys the seriousness of his situation without becoming pathetic or unrelatable, and what’s more, he offers useful information for both sufferers and non-sufferers…. He gives us a reason to stay with him on every page.”
“Here's one less thing for Daniel Smith to worry about: He sure can write. In Monkey Mind, a memoir of his lifelong struggles with anxiety, he defangs the experience with a winning combination of humor and understanding.”
“For fellow anxiety-sufferers, it’s like finding an Anne of Green Gables–style kindred spirit.”
Here's one less thing for Daniel Smith to worry about: He sure can write. In "Monkey Mind", a memoir of his lifelong struggles with anxiety, he defangs the experience with a winning combination of humor and understanding. --Heller McAlpin "NPR.org "
Descriere
The story of how Daniel Smith finally learned to live with, and laugh at, his anxiety issues.
For years, Daniel Smith suffered from bouts of acute anxiety, extended episodes without any apparent cause that seized control of his body and mind, leaving him an emotional wreck. Sleep was impossible and headaches and nausea haunted his days. Anxiety threatened his sanity and jeopardized his relationships. He had a prestigious job, a comfortable apartment, and caring friends-but, according to his therapists, nothing seemed to be wrong. Now in paperback, Monkey Mindis the story of how one man finally learned to live with-and laugh at-his own anxiety issues. Smith shares his own hilarious and heart-wrenching story from his first severe episode at age sixteen to his discovery of the author Philip Roth, who made anxiety seem noble, to his first job, which nearly drove him to distraction, to his struggle to give up the endless cycle of hand-wringing angst in order to keep the love of his life. Through medication, endless psychoanalysis, self-imposed isolation, and meditation, Smith finally makes peace with his restless mind and becomes the husband and father he longs to be. Whether you suffer from clinical anxiety or an overdose of modern life in our "Age of Anxiety," Monkey Mind's combination of wit, candour, and serious advice will help you live in the moment instead of inside your own head.