Joyous and Depressed Writers

[Anstasia]

Do you know of ones which fit either one of these categories?

I think in general Russian writers are perceived as depressed, and I think I've seen a book specifically addressing Tolstoy (or someone else's) depression. Also I think that Gerard Manley Hopkins was depressed.

Of course, another question that interests me is how they addressed their moods in their writings.

Thanks!

[MystyrMystyry]

Now this is a question - creativity and depression tend to walk hand in hand - not exclusively, but the more determined the creator is to do something different the more likely they may perceive themself as not having succeeded

Everyone has tried and failed at something, but to try again is the human spirit and the more one tries the better one gets - for an author every page is a new experiment and it either works in the first draft or it doesn't, if not then try again (I'll avoid the modern concept of word processor/internet access because it makes the process of writing much easier - just watching the letters appear of the screen like magic - stuck for the next sentence? Go and copy one at random, change the words and context and you're back on track - all the research you could need is at your fingertips etc)

But there are depressives in every field of human endeavor - writers are just more obvious because they tend to talk a lot, but these days if you don't know your own mind and know what makes you (and what it takes to make you) happy then try something else, anything, unrelated to writing

Get down to the beach and kick a ball around with some mates, scoot around on a jetski, sailboard down the coast to one of the islands - if nothing else it'll give you something new to talk about, and people love having something new to talk about

Depression or whatever name they choose to call it is just a state of mind, and yes some people let themselves get stuck in ruts, but really it's up the individual to break through the barrier to be on top of things - stop feeling sorry for yourself and go and scale a small mountain, then a larger one

If your writing were consigned to the middle of the night under candle light then you may well be understandably depressed, but there are new technologies to counteract it like bright light - and hand exercises is a good one (five million nerve endings in each palm going up your arms straight to your brain stimulates it very effectively), or just drink lots of coffee

But to your question about how many writers under modern diagnosis would suffer from depression - all the ones who aren't making enough money!

[Alexander III]

"Depression or whatever name they choose to call it is just a state of mind, and yes some people let themselves get stuck in ruts, but really it's up the individual to break through the barrier to be on top of things - stop feeling sorry for yourself and go and scale a small mountain, then a larger one"

Actually Depression is classified as a mental disease, what you are talking about is just plain old human sorrow which everybody has.

The only writer that I know of who had real depression is Hemingway.

Though I can think of several writers who might have suffered from Bi-polarism.

[mal4mac]

Some writers who addressed depression directly in their writings:

Robert Burton
Schopenhauer
William Styron
Andrew Solomon - Noonday Demon


"When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind." - Montaigne

[Theunderground]

Joyous=Freddy Nietzsche,Sterne,rabelais.Moliere.

Depressed=all russian novelists.

[ChicagoReader]

I agree that many Russian novelists seemed to be depressed though I have no idea if any of them were actually diagnosed. Hemingway and Kafka come to mind also.

[Emil Miller]

Depression is difficult to quantify; there are varying degrees of unhappiness and it has little to do with how much money an author is making. Somerset Maugham was the world's best selling author between the wars and he was notoriously miserable. On the other hand, P. G. Wodehouse was similarly successful monetarily, if not as a serious writer, but he lived, like Maugham, to a great age and, despite setbacks in his personal life, was a very contented individual. I saw him in a TV interview in which he said he couldn't understand those angst ridden writers who merely transmitted their worry onto their readers.

[MystyrMystyry]

I suppose I meant how broad the ambition was - if you ONLY want to be a successful novelist instead of leading a successfully varied life, then be miserable - but don't wallow in it

If you've got the readies you can buy a 60 foot yacht to sail right up alongside happiness and perhaps get invited to the party

But Maugham was a miser in his life, writing, and personality (Of Human Bondage - what a rip off!)

Wodehouse was such a generous writer it's astonishing - the amount of work that went into each novel is extraordinary, and it shows - way beyond the what the substance may have demanded

[IceM]

David Foster Wallace hung himself.

[mal4mac]

P. G. Wodehouse ... couldn't understand those angst ridden writers who merely transmitted their worry onto their readers.

Did he name any? The great angst ridden writers give lessons in dealing with angst, they don't (just) pass it on. This was probably Wodehouse suffering from anxiety of non-influence. ("Jeeves, why can't I learn how to a great writer by reading Schopenhauer and Dostoevsky, or even Dickens? I can only write shallow funny stuff about toffs...")

[Emil Miller]

No, he didn't. He was talking to Malcolm Muggeridge at the time, another debunker of the self-important, and they were both smiling when it was mentioned. Far from being a writer of shallow stuff, many of his books are carefully crafted and I think that Schopenhauer or Dostoievsky would have found it equally as difficult to write Young Men in Spats as Wodehouse would have in writing Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung or Crime and Punishment, although I must admit that I found The Gambler quite funny.
The below information about Wodehouse, gleaned from the website Ebooks, underlines why he was called 'The performing flea of English literature, and I would suggest that a better way of dealing with angst would be to read Wodehouse rather than Schopenhauer or Dostoievsky.

Wodehouse's accomplishments have earned nearly universal admiration from critics, including such writers as George Orwell, Dorothy Parker, Hilaire Belloc, and Sinclair Lewis.
While in England in 1939, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Oxford University.
The devices used by Wodehouse in his fiction have been explored and catalogued by several critics, notably linguist Robert A. Hall, Jr. in his The Comic Style of P. G. Wodehouse. Hall has identified and documented such workings as inventive word formations, transferred epithets, and comic misunderstandings among characters arising from lexicographic or syntactic confusion, among many others.