This is an autobiography of an actress that was mostly likely bipolar. The movie, "Frances" was based upon this book but it left out most of the more horrific aspects of Frances' battles with the mental health system.
Ned Rorem describes the book:
No Hollywood story more persuasively lifts the golden log to reveal a maggot swarm; no Willowbrook expose more harrowingly opens the door of a snake pit.
The Library Journal describes her:
Frances Farmer was a movie star in the 1930's, an extraordinarly beautiful actress often compared to Garbo and Hepburn. She became legendary as an alcoholic and mental patient, but in 1970 her death of cancer received little publicity. Her book is the most astonishing movie star autobiography I have ever read--a hard, bitter summing up of a terrible life, written through that life's last few years and ending, about a week before she died, with her consciousness of her slow, painful death...
There is a string of bipolarity surrounding her book. The title of the book is from the poem of the same name by Emily Dickinson who was also bipolar.
Furthermore Kurt Cobain, who undoubtedly was bipolar and also from Seattle, wrote about her on his last album in the song, "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle". His wife married him in a moth eaten dress once owned by Frances Farmer (Time magazine Apri1, 18, 1994). He named his daughter Frances. Unlike Cobain, Frances Farmer had enough strength to survive her ordeals.
The book details the scientific scandal surrounding Dr. Paul Kammerer who was researching the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The scandal revolves around the alteration of a research specimen. The author documents that the intensity of the attack upon Dr. Kammerer's research was in large part due to the nature of Dr. Kammerer's research which sought to support theories in opposition to the orthodox evolutionary theories of the time. Ironically, the orthodox theories were greatly strengthened by Mendel's research (he was a monk) which was found to have doctored results.
Dr. Kammerer suffered from cyclic depression and was probably bipolar. He shot himself to death in 1926 at the age of 46. He had tried to kill himself three years earlier with veronal. After interviewing people on both sides of the scandal who knew Dr. Kammerer both professionally and personally it was not clear why he killed himself. Strangely enough, Dr. Kammerer left four different suicide notes to four different people giving four different reasons why he was going to kill himself.
The book gives an inside look at the down and dirty politics of scientists. My father is also a biology professor at an internationally known university. After hearing many of his stories about his colleagues and their battles, I can assure you nothing has changed. Ultimately, the book tells about Paul Kammerer human being and Krötenküsser (toad kisser).
The author drew upon his experiences as a medical student and resident of occupied Poland to write a complex novel about the mentally ill, the medical community, and society.The novel takes place during World War II in an insane asylum in Poland just after the Nazis have occupied the country. Like the jews, people who were mentally ill were not to be part of the Third Reich and were taken to extermination camps to be killed. Although the novel takes place in 1939, the issues it portrays still resonate with me today.
The following is an excerpt from the book jacket describing the novel:
Stefan Trzyniecki, a young doctor alienated from his family and disturbed by the fate of his country, accepts an invitation to join the staff of a provincial insane asylum. What he finds within its walls is a world of pain and absurdity that squarely matches the world outside. His colleagues seem hardly less deranged than their patients. A surgeon's vanity is played out on the ghastly stage of an operating table, while psychopaths celebrate the director's birthday with a song.
This is a science fiction novel by a polish author. The story takes place after a virus destroys all of the paper in the world and the Pentagon is sealed off from the rest of the world. The protagonist happens to be in the Pentagon when it is sealed off and bumbles his way from room to room and hallway to hallway. In his journeys he encounters other people who have their own perspective on what their mission is and what his might be. As his journey progresses the codes and counter codes become more convoluted. He begins to doubt his own perception of what is happening and more importantly what it all means. The novel is an excellent metaphor of what it's like to become manic. Furthermore it gives the reader a taste of what it feels like to slide into mania. Like mania the novel is both wacky and sad.
This is a semi-autobiographical novel of bipolar poet Sylvia Plath. The story takes place during her college years when her bipolar disorder started to manifest itself. Lois Ames discusses the publications of the novel:
The Bell Jar was first published in London in January 1963 by William Heinemann Limited, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Sylvia Plath had adopted the pen name for publication of her first novel because she questioned its literary value and did not believe it was a "serious" work"; she was also worried about the pain publication might cause to the many people close to her whose personalities she had distorted and lightly disguised in the book.
This book contains some excerpts from the journals of bipolar poet and author Sylvia Plath. There has been some controversy regarding which portions of her journals were included and which were left out of the books since her husband Ted Hughes edited the book. Some speculate that some journals weren't published because Ted Hughes wanted to protect himself, his family, and her. Despite these short comings and even if you don't like poetry or her poetry, her descriptions of her struggles and triumphs are part and parcel of coping with bipolar disorder.
This is the only novel by the author, but he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. There is a sad story behind the novel. John never saw his novel published because it was published twelve years after his suicide at the age of 32. After reading the novel and considering the fate of its author, it's my strong feeling that John had bipolar disorder. I can empathize with the main character's sad and comic experiences.
The novel never would have been published without the efforts of his mother and the quality of his writing. His mother contacted profesor Walker Percy at Loyola University and convinced him to review the manuscript. Here are Dr. Percy's recollections about his first reading of the novel:
Over the years I have become very good at getting out of things I don't want to do. And if ever there was something I didn't want to do, this was surely it: to deal with the mother of a dead novelist and, worst of all, to have to read a manuscript that she said was great, and that, as it turned out, was a badly smeared, scarcely readable carbon.
But the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained-that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading.
In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good. I shall resist the temptation to say what first made me gape, grin, laugh out loud, shake my head in wonderment. Better let the reader make the discovery on his own.