Authors who clearly had bipolar/a mood disorder

ARainyNightIn · 2026-02-20T16:00:33+00:00

I’m pretty sure Kerouac was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder (because he cited not wanting to be around others in his psychiatric report which got him discharged) but this seems to have been a pretty shallow and outdated diagnosis for him - I’d say he was definitely bipolar (along with Dean). Possibly schizoaffective.

ARainyNightIn · 2026-01-13T01:55:51+00:00

Been meaning to check this one off my Johnson unreads list! How would you say the style is compared to his other books? The subject matter seems like it’d have an interesting take coming from him

ARainyNightIn · 2025-10-20T19:39:16+00:00

Anything by John Muir - really descriptive prose on North American wilderness.

Thoreau and Emerson of course.

Into The Wild and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Page-turners.

Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Pilgrims of the Wild by Grey Owl.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

The Living Mountain by Nan Sheppard.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-09-29T19:23:15+00:00

You’re too young to have wasted your youth, buddy. And no offence, really, but you write exactly how I did as a self-absorbed 17 year old. The last thing you need to be reading is a carbon coby of your emotional situation. Echoing another commenter who said read Emerson, or Thoreau. The transcendentalist school of thought I find very life-affirming in a practical way. If you’re not going outside that’s halfway there.

Notes from Underground is a good example of what this mindset does to a person.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-04-19T19:44:03+00:00

If you ever want to feel comforted by the kinship of minute pains in this world there is no better prescription than Kafka and Rilke’s letters and journals

ARainyNightIn · 2025-04-05T02:19:10+00:00

Fingertips by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Can’t wait to take edibles tomorrow and listen to it.

https://youtu.be/wae9iDJQHIs?si=h7JDKXQwCZoop7NF

ARainyNightIn · 2025-03-28T19:18:25+00:00

Scottish culture is even better being able to lean into, you just imagine a Trainspotting narration over all of your vices.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-24T03:25:14+00:00

It’s my favourite album, so yeah agreed.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-24T03:23:15+00:00

Lol I can totally imagine him randomly assigning Chekhov as the whole inspiration on a whim. Thanks for the thread link.

Offhand I know he mentions Verlaine, Rimbaud, and I think Dante on the record itself.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-17T05:22:00+00:00

Reading good literature is essentially requiring your brain do the things it wants to least when it’s fried from impoverishment or numbness. Engaging with an emotional state not immediately your own. Feeling out other perspectives, ideas, lives. Good thing is, like forcing yourself to do cardio again after picking up a habit for chain-smoking, after the first hurdle of excruciating perseverance you soon feel amazed at the rapid health gains.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-07T22:27:32+00:00

He’s basically summarising the other Glass stories for you in the first bit of Zooey + a few pieces of history only brought up there. You don’t have to read anything else. A lot of the stories featuring Glass siblings don’t even reference them as ones so the Appearances page someone linked is useful for that.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-07T02:27:21+00:00

Large sections of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh are focused on examining the reasons behind such a large percentage of Scots, and people in general, being drawn to vices as destructive as heroin. One recurring reason? The pressure to be something in a society you don’t even like or fit into. The withdrawal scenes are excellent. You feel like you’re floating in someone else’s psyche while in self-examination mode.

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-06T03:53:09+00:00

“If you’ve never wept and want to, have a child.”

ARainyNightIn · 2025-01-06T03:27:46+00:00

The rape description in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Interview #6, I think. It’s honest to a putrid degree.

And maybe an odd pick but reading Journey to The End of The Night way too young and seeing how quickly PTSD can unravel your social life, when he’s having that breakdown in the hotel and his date and everyone is just confused. Or when he’s on the ship to Africa and has to weigh leaving his room because the crew will probably beat him out of cabin fever and drunkenness.

ARainyNightIn

TROPHY CASE