dark and dreary

Still postponing the A Long Way Down entry mostly because I don't feel like finishing writing it. I have to say that this easy, breezy book about suicide has got me thinking (ok, when am I never not thinking about this?) about depression.

Here are two recent, great posts about it by smart and funny people:

dooce
mike

I have a hard time writing about the subject, mostly because it doesn't really help me feel less depressed. Sometimes my inability to endlessly expound on the subject that colors most of my life actually makes the depression worse. I could care less about books with depressed main characters, because depression is boring. Depression is intensely personal, incredibly painful, maginficently consuming and boring beyond the descriptive powers of silly adjectives. It takes an amazing writer (or a personal connection) to move me.

In later February, Bookslut will have a review of mine of a graphic memoir about a depressed teenager. I'm sure I will get some flak for criticizing the author's decision to record his illness in the (BORING) way he did. As I say in the review, there is a difference between a record of your depression and creating art about depression. I don't care if you are writing a long-running, autobiographical comic or a zillion-page bestseller. Art requires some sort of analysis or interpretation of a situation. Too hard, not your style? Write a diary.

I have to go right now and watch a German comedy about Holocaust survivors or somesuch for work. Fitting? You decide, because I don't care.