The Danger to be Sane

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"An ebullient examination of madness, mortality, suicide... Montero finds that ‘deviance’ is often just a more truthful account of normal human behavior." —Chris Kraus

A dazzling journey into the eccentric, troubled, and luminous minds that shaped literature.

In this bold, personal, and deeply researched blend of memoir, essay, literary analysis, psychological reflection, and intellectual sleuth story, Montero draws on psychology, neuroscience, creative literature, and the testimonies and biographies of authors and artists to weave a fascinating narrative on the connection between creativity and mental instability.

With intelligence, generosity, and narrative élan, Montero brings to life figures such as Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Marcel Proust, Joseph Conrad, and Doris Lessing, painting a fresco of the ways in which the brain works, its quirks and dark corners. She breaks down the forces that influence creativity and miraculously reassembles them before the reader’s eyes over three hundred gripping pages.

Like a masterfully plotted detective story, each clue leads readers one step closer to new definitions of both the creative act and of what is and is not “normal.” Blending intimate memoir with wide-ranging cultural history, The Danger to Be Sane is a moving and inspirational homage to minds and lives that are outside of the mean.

’Twas a Divine Insanity—
The Danger to be Sane
From Emily Dickinson, Poem 593