The Space Between Contradictions: An Examination of Meaning and Knowledge in Life Writing

Abstract

This essay is written in the form of a letter to a young student, a brilliant writer who suffered from mental illness. The work she generated during her psychotic break was dense, intense, and beautiful, yet often lacked coherence. As she began to heal, and wanted to share her writing, I hoped to help her maintain the integrity of her startlingly original pieces while at the same time making them more accessible. I turned to three models, all of which artfully explore mental illness or other disrupted mental states: the essay ‘The White Album’ by Joan Didion, the essay ‘Total Eclipse’ by Annie Dillard, and the memoir Nola by Robin Hemley. All use traditional storytelling strategies to engage the reader, yet also subvert language and structure in innovative ways to nudge the reader toward uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory. This essay thoroughly dissects their diverse, instructive methods. In the end, all three writers reflect on the inadequacy of language to capture the fullness of human experience, particularly of altered or transcendent states. And while they do guide us to new understanding and more refined questions, they ultimately arrive not at a conclusion, but at mystery.