Posted on November 13th, 2008 in Books
I tried to explain my attraction to “crack-up,” with its suggestion of a psyche in fragments, of something whole that had come apart. I preferred it to “breakdown,” which in some cases denoted nothing stronger than being reduced to tears. “Mental illness,” the term accepted as correct by almost everyone, was out of the question: it covered every disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, including premature ejaculation and cannabis-induced disorder.
