Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety - Couverture souple

Smith, Daniel

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1439177317 ISBN 13 : 9781439177310

Editeur : Simon & Schuster, 2013

Synopsis

For years, Daniel Smith suffered from bouts of acute anxiety, extended episodes without any apparent cause that seized control of his body and mind, leaving him an emotional wreck. Sleep was impossible and headaches and nausea haunted his days. Anxiety threatened his sanity and jeopardized his relationships. He had a prestigious job, a comfortable apartment, and caring friends-but, according to his therapists, nothing seemed to be wrong. Now in paperback, Monkey Mind is the story of how one man finally learned to live with-and laugh at-his own anxiety issues. Smith shares his own hilarious and heart-wrenching story from his first severe episode at age sixteen to his discovery of the author Philip Roth, who made anxiety seem noble, to his first job, which nearly drove him to distraction, to his struggle to give up the endless cycle of hand-wringing angst in order to keep the love of his life. Through medication, endless psychoanalysis, self-imposed isolation, and meditation, Smith finally makes peace with his restless mind and becomes the husband and father he longs to be.Whether you suffer from clinical anxiety or an overdose of modern life in our "Age of Anxiety," Monkey Mind's combination of wit, candour, and serious advice will help you live in the moment instead of inside your own head.

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Monkey Mind 1.

genesis

The story begins with two women, naked, in a living room in upstate New York.

In the living room, the blinds have been drawn. The coffee table, which is stained and littered with ashtrays, empty bottles, and a tall blue bong, has been pushed against the far wall. The couch has been unfurled. It is a cheap couch, with no springs or gears or wooden endoskeleton; its cushions unfold flat onto the floor with a flat slapping sound: thwack. Also on the floor are several clear plastic bags containing dental dams, spermicidal lubricant, and latex gloves. There is everything, it seems to me, but an oxygen tank and a gurney.

I am hunched in an awkward squat behind a woman on all fours, a woman who is blond and overweight. Her buttocks are exposed and her knees are spread wide—“presenting,” they call it in most mammalian species. I am sixteen years old. I have never before seen a vagina up close, an in-person vagina. My prior experience has been limited to two-dimensional vaginas, usually with creases and binding staples marring the view. To mark the occasion, I would like to shake the vagina’s hand, talk to it for a while. How do you do, vagina? Would you like some herbal tea? But the vagina is businesslike and gruff. An impatient vagina, a waiting vagina. A real bureaucrat of a vagina.

I inch closer on the tips of my toes, knees bent, hands out, fingers splayed—portrait of the writer as a young lecher. The air in the room smells like a combination of a women’s locker room and an off-track betting parlor, all smoke and sweat and scented lotions. My condom, the first I’ve had occasion to wear in anything other than experimental conditions, pinches and dims sensation, so that my penis feels like what I imagine a phantom limb must feel like. The second woman has brown hair done up in curls, round hips, and dark, biscuit-wide nipples. She lies on the couch, waiting. As I proceed, foot by foot, struggling to keep my erection and my balance at the same time, her eyes coax me forward. She is touching herself.

Now the target vagina is only a foot away. Now I feel like a military plane, preparing for in-air refueling. I feel, also, like a symbol. This is why I am here, ultimately. This is why, when the invitation was extended (“Do you want to stay? I want you to stay”), I accepted, and waited who knows how long in the dark room for them to return. How could I have said no? What I had been offered was every boy’s dream. Two women. The dream.

Through a haze of cannabis and cheap beer, I bolster my courage with this: the dream. What I am about to do is not for myself. It is for my people, my tribe. Dear friends, this is not my achievement. This is your achievement. Your victory. A fulfillment of your desires. Oh poor, suffering, groin-sore boys of the eleventh grade, I hereby dedicate this vagina to—

It is then that the woman coughs. It is a rattling, hacking cough. A cough of nicotine and phlegm. And the vagina, which is connected to the cough’s apparatus by some internal musculature I could not possibly have imagined before this moment, winks at me. With its wild, bushy, thorny lashes, it winks. My heart flutters. My breathing quickens. I have been winked at by a vagina that looks like Andy Rooney. I feel a tightness in my chest and I think to myself, Oh dear lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Revue de presse :

“I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity. Daniel Smith’s anxiety is matched by a wonderful sense of the comic, and it is this which makes Monkey Mind not only a dark, pain-filled book but a hilariously funny one, too. I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.” (Oliver Sacks bestselling author of The Mind’s Eye and Musicophilia)

“Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.” (Aaron T. Beck, father of cognitive therapy)

“You don't need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith's pain in Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our time—chronic anxiety—and it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.” (Chad Harbach author of The Art of Fielding)

“Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psycho-pathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated ménage a trois—and the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brooks’ sweaty performance in Broadcast News. Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.” (Eric Weiner author of The Geography of Bliss)

“I don’t know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: Whether or not he’s a great writer.” (A.J. Jacobs author of Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically)

“Daniel Smith has a written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit. I only got anxious in the last part, when I worried the book would end.” (Sam Lipsyte author of Home Land and The Ask)

“In this unforgettable, surprisingly hilarious memoir, journalist and professor Smith chronicles his head-clanging, flop-sweating battles with acute anxiety. . . . He’s clear-eyed and funny about his condition’s painful absurdities.” (People (four stars))

“This book will change the way you think about anxiety.... Daniel Smith's writing dazzled me..... Painful experiences are described with humor, and complex ideas are made accessible.... Monkey Mind is a rare gem.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

“Monkey Mind is fleet, funny, and productively exhausting.” (Ben Greenman The New York Times Book Review)

“Superb writing [and] marvelous humor . . . If you're chronically anxious and want to better explain to a loved one what you're going through, hand them Monkey Mind.” (Psychology Today)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster
• Date d'édition: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1439177317
• ISBN 13: 9781439177310
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240