During one stay at the psychiatric unit of a hospital, “the doctors likely considered the possibility that he suffered from bipolar disorder, manic depression.” But they ended up putting him on Nardil, which treats atypical depression. He would stay on this drug until a year before he died.
.. Partly through his own experience of addiction, Wallace had come to see America as “a nation of addicts, unable to see that what looked like love freely given was really need neurotically and chronically unsatisfied.” However, rather than simply describe that addiction, Wallace said in an interview that the writer’s job was to give “CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.” Wallace noted that “American writers were still content to describe an ironic culture when they should be showing the way out.”
.. At the same time, he was happy with Green and decided to go off Nardil in 2007. Doctors tried different combinations of antidepressants and even electroconvulsive therapy, but on Sept. 12, 2008, Wallace hung himself at home
David Foster Wallace’s biographer: tackles author’s battle with depression
So much has been written about the link between mental illness and creative genius. Do you think he would have been uncomfortable with being seen as another example of that linkage?
He might have been. He was very frightened of the diagnosis of bipolar condition, which is the classic productive literary personality. He was very uncomfortable with it. He much preferred having a diagnosis of atypical depression. I think that may suggest that he didn’t want to identify with those people. If you think about the people he identified with – Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo – I don’t think there’s even a whiff of such a condition in those people. He identified with these straight arrows who produced every day.
.. The book is primarily a transcript of the interview, with some of Lipsky’s thoughts at the time added in, and a few notes about which bookstores were now defunct. It might have been a better book with more (some?) shaping. As it is, I felt sad, almost queasy, at those times when Wallace expressed his self-consciousness, his wish that he could edit the article before it ran. But Lipsky kept everything in. So we are voyeurs to this raw conversation between two young writers, accessories after the fact.
Robin Williams: Perfectionism and Brilliance
The same qualities that drive a person to brilliance may drive that person to suicide. Highly successful people tend to be perfectionistic, constantly striving to meet impossible standards. And celebrities tend to be hungry for love, for the adoration of audiences. No perfectionist has ever met his own benchmarks, and no one so famished for admiration has ever received enough of it.
Robin Williams: manic & depressed, but not Manic-Depressive
NYTimes: You’re so manic onstage. People have said that you suffer from manic depression.
Williams: That was in an article — I think in Newsweek — and they asked me if I ever get sad or depressed, and I said, ”Yes.” There’s a lot that happens in the world to make you depressed. My mother died. Did that make me depressed? Yes. I am also manic when I am onstage. Does that make me manic-depressive? No. But people might not believe me.