Darkness Invisible, is an amazing piece about the systematic breakdown of Styron's mental state. In his memoir, Styron offers explicit accounts of his own depression and the madness which relentlessly ensued him. What makes his memoir so unique is the way he offers up the details and the tone he employs to express his anguish. It often comes across as though he is explaining a lucid dream, as if the experience was not truly his own first-hand account, but that he is expressing an outline of that which he witnessed as a bystander outside of himself. Throughout this story its as if Styron is wrestling his symptoms in an attempt to rescue his sanity from the dread of "[ceaseless] oblivion."
I found Styron's description of alcoholism truly telling. In it he describes it as "a daily mood bath", which I find almost validates an addicts disease in some sense, because it plainly states alcohol's purpose to an addicts life. If alcohol can make one feel as though they have continuous access to "an invaluable senior partner of [his] intellect" or possesses the power to allow one's "mind [to] conceive visions that the unaltered, sober brain has no access to" then Styron's alcoholism seems a bit more enchanting than it does repulsive. Of course, his description of alcoholic withdrawal is just as compelling as its euphoria is explained as well. I, myself, have experienced being "emotionally naked" but have never thought to coin my own unnerving vulnerability in such a way, and yet, that is precisely how it feels. It's experience is indeed a jolting "mood disorder" and can certainly be an "enervation" at times as well.
Someone once said to me and I found to resonate was "that the experience of anything is proof that it is true." And for me, Darkness Invisible is just that. I believe that this story is so successful because even if one never experienced "melancholy", "depression" or "diabolical discomfort" due to insanity, anxiety or a mental breakdown, humanity as a whole has indeed experienced something like it at one point in their lives. It does not matter if it was because of an exam, a death in the family or a late train to a board meeting. As human beings we share an affinity to feelings of both joy and despair alike, it is just that "most human beings still stagger down the road, unscathed by real depression."
