Daniel B. Smith

This is neither an outstanding book nor an awful or pernicious one. I think it’s fair to say it’s about the effects and causes of anxiety, and not about a solution, by someone who’s in-between the half-mythic fully healed person, and the person who pours the dressing of madness over a big bowl of word salad, and digs in, right. He’s not a math god or a monk. I don’t know how the math gods feel about Dan—I don’t pretend to understand their ways—but I do think that “everything is spiritual” means that hearing people out is a virtue, you know. I don’t know. A lot of people probably find it quite a meandering book, (if, in truth, it’s not as meandering as small talk), but panic attack talk is not something easily reduced to plot and theme and reason, you know. It’s just…. Like a soup fork or something, plot and anxiety, you know.

I guess you could say that the causes of anxiety (the effects are that you feel like shit—sick, you know), for Dan are primarily three: sex, mother, and work, essentially. The sex part I kinda kinda relate to, if primarily through my fantasy life. When I was most sick, I thought I was Harry Styles, basically. I was not…. Not that, “Harry Styles”, (Draco Malfoy Voice: Harry, Styles!), means what I thought it did then. Just too much energy, you know, as though you were trying to read by a light-bulb and put a whole nuclear generator’s power into it. You get anxious; it’s too much. And then, he came from a line of anxious people, through his mother. I can almost relate, as my mother is a dry, if anxious, alcoholic, and his mother got driven to therapist school by her anxiety. Still, his mother sounds more capable than mine, although we’re all biased when it comes to our own mothers, often negatively, right. I mean, my mom has always been anxious that I exercise; she wants me to eat more, and stop walking for exercise. But she also has many of the trappings of spirituality even if she doesn’t do hard, practice-y things herself, and has transmitted some of her dispositions and resources to me.

And Dan also felt that his Jewish identity played into his condition, that there was a social factor. This has also been the case with me. I am essentially Anglo, the culture that likes to disappear and not acknowledge itself, but which is at the same time as particular as anything else, you know, and I’ve been part of it, not least when I was most sick. (My family also has a sort of vestigial Irishness through the inter-generational disease of alcoholism, even if neither me nor my parents are part of the RCC or possess any other “Irish” characteristics. Which would be what, anyway? Time-traveling IRA activist? Adorably Anglo?) I was really, really Anglo, in a very Disneyified, isolationist way. Anything macho or self-sufficient, anything nonwhite, in almost any way, bothered me, and drove me to dig my rabbit warren deeper and deeper, as though I was expecting an artillery bombardment, and then the next time I met something not white-femme-mystique, it was worse. Daniel’s situation is intricate in that while he wasn’t especially secure in his Yiddishkeit or happy to be a Jew, or involved with the Jewish community in almost any way, or willing to be friends with other Jews, he still felt that many of his foibles and problems were quintessentially Jewish, you know. Many Jews aren’t terribly Jewish especially in any classical way, but, still have this Yiddish-shaped hole where their secure cultural identity should be…. Well, not that I would understand.

Anyway, it’s not a book that’ll hurt you to read, or not to read, I suppose…. And yet, haven’t the aliens deputized me to read, All, earth-books? 😸👽

After-note: I think the source of confusion for some people here was that it’s really a mental health memoir, but some people probably looked at it like a comedy memoir, because it is a little funny, and then wonder why it didn’t do that better….

It is basically a negative book/a book of faults (I use the term in a technical sense), like how Holocaust museums make him feel bad as a Jew (it’s a gut reaction thing), and also grand things, like his philosophy readings (Danish Soren, mostly is what I remember). In a way it’s kinda funny I think—although I have a twisted sense of humor—but it’s not comedy, and it’s not positive. “Because I Come From a Crazy Family”, that psychiatrist’s memoir, is a mental health memoir that’s funny. (shrugs)… (mer)

Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind is the stunning articulation of what it is like to live with anxiety. As he travels through anxiety’s demonic layers, Smith defangs the disorder with great humor and evocatively expresses its self-destructive absurdities and painful internal coherence. Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that “Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.” Neurologist and bestselling writer Oliver Sacks says, “I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity. . . . I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.” Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to all those who want someone to put what they feel, or what their loved ones feel, into words.… (mer)

The author did a wonderful job of talking about the roots of anxiety -- the discussions of Philip Roth were particularly insightful. Certainly its no revelation that Jews corner the market on anxiety. Neurotic Jewish men have not been the kings of navel gazing literature and stand up comedy for no reason. Smith though goes farther with the analysis, and as someone who has read a lot of Roth, and loves his work, I learned a couple things. So I learned a bit about Roth and a bit about anxiety, and I was entertained. Definitely worthwhile.… (mer)