Going Crazy

by Otto Friedrich

One might wish for a little method to this particular madness--a large, confusing book on a large, inchoate subject: not just ""the madness in our time"" (which should be material enough for anyone) but ""the madness [that] is part of all of us, all the time. . . ."" Friedrich omits hardly anyone or anything. He shifts abruptly from present to past, from real people to characters out of literature, detailing at length their bizarre tales. In a series of disconnected mini-biographies, he touches on all the facets, all the possible interpretations, of the bona fide or apparent crazies. To name a few: Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, George III, Zelda Fitzgerald, Robert Schumann, Bobby Fischer, Eldridge Cleaver, Norman Mailer, Mark Vonnegut, Harvard graduates, a woman lawyer, opera heroines, a ""man called Harry,"" himself, his friends, friends of friends. . . . He writes well, but the mass of detail simply blurs the real issue at hand; one loses the focus and then begins to wonder if there is one.