Autobiographical first novel about manic-depression. Given that he
takes as his subject here the murky corners of the mind, Zwiren is
remarkably clear. The story begins with the record of an ongoing
episode, in the summer of 1991, as Zwiren walks through Manhattan,
deftly exposing the reader to the narrator's mercurial obsessions -
with numbers, with colors, with sex, but most of all with God. He
thinks he's Jesus. The opening episode ends in an emergency room.
Then Zwiren flashes back to the winter of 1982, when as a
scholarship student he tries to negotiate college for the first
time. A simple episode in a bookstore is illustrative: Zwiren
stands in line, changes his mind and gets out of line, gets in
line, fears the line, fantasizes about the line, runs from the
bookstore. Delusions of grandeur coalesce with rank paranoia as
Zwiren takes the reader through the 1980s; sometimes he functions
reasonably well, holding down jobs and even entering into brief
relationships, but sooner or later reality slips away from him and
he's back on the ward. Zwiren ends bis account in the summer of
1990; enrolled in a support group, and taking various medications,
he can mostly manage, but he has had to accept the fact that his
condition is incurable. His novel, meanwhile, is repetitive,
boring, heartbreaking, and quite beautifully written. That is,
while the narrative tends to circle around the same points over and
over again, Zwiren spins image after striking image, all the more
remarkable for being his authentic view of the world rather than
some literary experiment: "The insides of my eyelids are unsafe,"
he notes in passing; in another passage, attempting to explain the
allure sleep holds for him, he writes that "the aim is to get to
the threshold of sleep, a gluey sleep, a cheese melt." A must for
anyone interested in the nature of mental illness as seen from the
inside. (Kirkus Reviews)
In? "God Head," Scott Zwiren boldly and courageously records the
terrifying, destructive experience of manic depression. From a
promising young college student to mental hospitals to a confined,
out-of-control, roller-coaster life on New York City's Upper West
Side, Zwiren's narrator traces from the inside the horrors of an
existence that swings between numbing depression and exalting
highs.
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