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Monday, May 18, 2020

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903) by Daniel Paul Schreber

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
Cover of the 2000 New York Review of Books Classics edition of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber


Book Review
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903)
by Daniel Paul Schreber

Replaces: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells


  I bought a copy of the New York Review of Books Classics edition- from twenty years ago, because the library is closed and there is no Ebook version available.  It was a waste...of money, and obvious historical significance aside I'm unclear on how this made it into the second edition of the 1001 Books list, replacing The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells itself!

    Schreber was a succesful German judge when he went stark and irretrievably mad.  He spent the rest of his life in an asylum, and his Memoirs was written as an address to the authorities to obtain his release from confinement.   It did not work, and if you read Memoirs you will instantly understand why, since Schreber is floridly insane.

    I'm speaking a position of some understanding, as a criminal defense lawyer who has represented indigent defendants, I've handled my share of the insane, and even more of the arguably insane.   Schreber was obviously exceptionally well educated, and his conditions of confinement were not punitive.  His historical significance lies in the value of his Memoirs as a written account of a "classic" case of insanity at a time when physicians and philosophers were thinking a great deal about madness and what it means.

  Over the course of over 400 pages, Screber tries, in vain, to make the reader understand the "logic" of his delusions, and of course, there is no logic, only the strict absence of any argument that makes any sense whatsoever.    This brings me to the question of why this, of all non-fiction books, is a selection.  Is it because Schreber's insanity has such an intense literary quality?  There are just so many other works of non-fiction that could be considered.   The fact that is a German language book from the early 20th century makes it a decent diversity pick, but early 20th century German literature isn't exactly underrepresented in the first edition.  Buddenbrooks, the massive (750 page) German multi-generational family narrative was published two years before Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.  There's also Professor Unrat by Thomas Mann's older brother, Heinrich. 

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