Will I love Darkness Visible?

This book changed my life.

William Styron takes us to Paris, where he is receiving an award for his book Sophie’s Choice. Before and during his trip, he slid into the deep darkness of depression, which he calls the Black Dog.

Styron is masterful at describing the Black Dog. He doesn’t sugarcoat it. He uses his literary skills to describe it as it is happening. I was in my own dark depression, as I was reading, and I saw myself.

A calm came over me as I read Darkness Visible and realized OMG that’s me.

I read Darkness Visible in the midst of my worst depressive episode around 2008. I remember relating completely to his vivid descriptions of highly abstract psychological sensations, impending doom, for example, in which one feels askew to her or his surroundings, like death is imminent but you don’t know from where or how. Styron describes depression as being not unlike physical pain, and that moment in which you simply and utterly succumb to a kind of unprecedented existential suffering, if you will. It is a moment of agony, tender, fierce and absolute. Without a hint of self-indulgence, his rendering of… show more.

A true personal account of depression by a Nobel prize winning author of remarkable books such as Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner. In this autobiography, Styron digs deep into the darkness of this illness and how it temporarily derailed his writing ability. So as a description of the negative thought content and the destructive impact of depression is second to none. But worse it reveals the stigma that pervades public opinions on depression from those who haven’t suffered from it or who believe that their occasional dips in mood are the real thing. This culminated in… show more.

Darkness Visible is a work of great personal courage. This bestseller is Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression.

I read this book in 1996 in the depths of my deepest depression. We had lost our home, were homeless, in debt, just out of the hospital, and in the beginnings of my lost years. Styron’s descriptions of his fight with depression described the darkness of my life. I drew strength from this book. I realized I was not alone, and that made all the difference.