Rating: 
Summary: did I read the same book?
Review: Admit it, you've wondered how great artists like Vincent Van Gogh came up with all his brightly colored paintings, with brush strokes as thick as tiles. "Cafe Terrace at Night" is one such work of superb inspiration. Or maybe you are driving in your car, feeling anxious about a confrontation at home or at work that will occur minutes ahead, and a Led Zepplin song comes on the radio - you crank it up and suddenly --- you are no longer feeling fragile -- the music of the Zep affects your brain state in a way that makes you feel a lion!
Your mood has been transformed by the hard driving rock music and off you go...no longer the sheep, but the lion king!
I have often contemplated what drives artists to create the beautiful works that they do....
Are there really such things as Muses that wander around the Earth, selectively choosing one person to create a great Rock Ballad while picking someone else to compose a classic painting?
Do the Muses care who is the ballerina as opposed to who works in a coal mine all day long? God must have a hand in distributing the 'gift' does He not?
What drives a person to become artistic?
What are the forces behind the artists of our times?
This wonderful book attempts to explain where the drive to write arises, and it is within our own 3 pound brains.
Dr. Alice Flaherty pinpoints the location of inspiration to be somewhere in the Limbic System -- between the hypothalmus and temporal lobes. Somewhere that we deeply experience pleasure and displeasure.
Why study creative forces?
Some artists feel we should leave it alone; that looking to closely could possibly render it extinct.
But the author and I have this agreement - "Creativity is too important a phenomenon that we cannot afford not to study it."The author readily discloses her mental health history, with tragedies revealed that lend her theories much credence.
She has her internal scars that may initially be invisible to you and I, but after reading this brilliant book, we conclude that she still does require further intensive care and attention.
No, she is not psychotic, but is in a suspended state of grieving, and this book may have helped her heal a great deal.
She admits that her altered (depresssed) psychic state plunged her into the state of 'hypergraphia' or the need to write down thoughts in order to communicate an important idea and perhaps these ideas may change our world in positive ways. She cites many poets, behaviorists and scientists along the way, and sometimes the intellectualism gets rather deep. It's dry in some pasages, but be patient and stick it out. Because when the author comes up for air, and regains her stride, we are rewarded for sticking through the reading with passages from poems that are jewels.
Take Donald Justice's poem, "The Telephone Number of the Muse."
It's just breathtaking.... "I call her up sometimes, long distance now.
And she still knows my voice, but I can hear,
Behind the music of her phonograph,
The laughter of the young men with their keys.
I have the number written down somewhere...." This is a captivating book - read it and discover why you read and why you ought to read this interesting book.
I think I know who the Muse is....it's metaphoric for our inner child. The person within ourselves that longs for recognition, and an audience who showers us with appreciation.
My Muse loves to play hide and seek, and
wouldn't you know....it is the favorite game of all Muses?
Rating:
Summary: did I read the same book?
Review: As a writer with a mood disorder, I deeply appreciate the efforts of writers/psychiatrists, such as Lauren Slater and Kay Redfield Jamison, to delve into the creator's psyche without overly pathologizing it. While some find Slater's poetic style too distracting, I enjoy it, which may be why I had such difficulty with this book. First off, it reads like a psych textbook, and as I assume it's being marketed to a more general audience, this is not a plus. In fact, I found it even harder to follow and duller than my old psych books from college. I was hoping to learn more about various disorders that seem to predominantly affect writers, but not at the expense of skimming over their quirks and lifestyles. What do I mean by that? Well, I'd have my interest piqued by a description of a writer, only to be unceremoniously plunged back into four-syllable word paragraphs. Here's a random sentence: "Also unlike Broca's aphasics, patients with Wernicke's aphasia have much more trouble with semantics than syntax, suggesting that syntax is primarily a frontal lobe function and semantics a temporal lobe function." (pg. 157) While it's understandable, it's hardly the sort of thing you want to curl up by the fire by. It's also hardly the sort of thing someone with depression would want to plow through in order to gain insight into their condition. My suggestion: Read Jamison's works on manic depression if you are a writer who would like to know why you have some of the unusual habits you do. My other complaint is how lightly Flaherty seemed to present her hospitalization. Nine out of ten patients are probably too ill to care where the room with the Capn Crunch is, so I assume her visit was atypical. You don't get a strong sense that she identifies with the mentally ill people she sees regardless of in what capacity. (Although I believe she is sincere those times she does express sympathy, it just doesn't pervade the whole book.)
Rating: 
Summary: A lively, literary and surprisingly original voice.
Review: Dr. Alice Flaherty has given us a powerful and original work in THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE. Her scientific knowledge about the discreet functions of the different brain areas highly qualifies her to offer a thesis on the origins of human creativity. In addition, Dr. Flaherty's vast general knowledge, compelling narrative style, and personal experience with both postpartum depression and hypergraphia make THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE a fascinating read. This book provides brilliant insight into the questions that surround our impulse to create and communicate. And her chapter on the sensation that artists have of "being visited by the muse" is absolute genius. Keep your yellow highlighter pen at your side for this read-it's chockfull of amazing passages.
Rating:
Summary: Why do we write?
Review: Every one of the writers I know well enough to have had an honest conversation about mental health with has at some point in hir life been diagnosed with a fairly major mental illness. Scizophrenia, epilepsy, depression and of course bipolar illness. This book, like Kay Jamison's Touched with Fire, explores why. The author is both a neurologist and a sufferer of a rare illness called hypographia, but her subject ranges far beyond the confines of either her illness or her profession. Clear accessible writing on a topic that fascinates me. Reccomended for anyone who writes because they feel they must, or who is curious about how people tick.
Rating:
Summary: Your mind has a mind of its own
Review: Everyone knows why we avoid the stuff we *don't* really want to do. But why do we avoid stuff we really *do* want to do? There are no easy answers to questions like this, but what an eye-opening experience it is to start to understand some of the tricks the brain plays on itself. This is an incredibly unique, honest book and God bless Dr. Flaherty - both for her ability to explain neurobiology to the uninitiated and, still more, for her willingness to bear her soul a bit. Buyer beware: This is not a self-help book. It's an intimate conversation with a remarkable person. It won't change your life; but it might alter some of the ways you look at life.
Rating:
Summary: When writers are driven......
Review: Hypergraphia, about which I knew nothing prior to reading this book, is the medical term for an over-powering desire to write. Writing, Dr. Flaherty tell us, is the domain of the cerebral cortex, but the desire to write is the domain of the limbic system -- the hypothalamus and the structures of the temporal lobe. It is altered temporal lobe activity that is associated with creativity. On the other hand, frontal lobe processes are involved in writer's block. This area, as science, struck me as new and very much evolving. The most interesting section of the book, even more speculative than the location of writing proclivities, is her commentary on the inner voice and its role in writing. This is an area where strands fuse -- religion, creativity, psychosis. For Dr. Flaherty it was one morning "that bristled with significance. The way a crow flapped its wings as it rose heavily off the ground was a semaphore, signalling something just past my understanding." And not long after she heard, "the opposite of writer's block," her signal to write about hypergraphia. This internal/external presence of a voice became manifest to her following a depression brought on by the death of twin infants. Remarkably, if not miraculously, she later gave birth to another set of twins, thriving at the time of her writing. This is an unusual book. She interweaves her personal history and her clinical training. Coupled with a wide and diverse reading, Dr. Flaherty demonstrates in this book an intense mind; reading her is like riding with a mind in over-drive. I look forward to her next book, and she has all but assured us that one is in the making.
Rating:
Summary: When writers are driven......
Review: Hypergraphia, about which I knew nothing prior to reading this book, is the medical term for an over-powering desire to write. Writing, Dr. Flaherty tell us, is the domain of the cerebral cortex, but the desire to write is the domain of the limbic system -- the hypothalamus and the structures of the temporal lobe. It is altered temporal lobe activity that is associated with creativity. On the other hand, frontal lobe processes are involved in writer's block. This area, as science, struck me as new and very much evolving. The most interesting section of the book, even more speculative than the location of writing proclivities, is her commentary on the inner voice and its role in writing. This is an area where strands fuse -- religion, creativity, psychosis. For Dr. Flaherty it was one morning "that bristled with significance. The way a crow flapped its wings as it rose heavily off the ground was a semaphore, signalling something just past my understanding." And not long after she heard, "the opposite of writer's block," her signal to write about hypergraphia. This internal/external presence of a voice became manifest to her following a depression brought on by the death of twin infants. Remarkably, if not miraculously, she later gave birth to another set of twins, thriving at the time of her writing. This is an unusual book. She interweaves her personal history and her clinical training. Coupled with a wide and diverse reading, Dr. Flaherty demonstrates in this book an intense mind; reading her is like riding with a mind in over-drive. I look forward to her next book, and she has all but assured us that one is in the making.
Rating:
Summary: beautifully frames some important questions
Review: I found this book wonderful.
It's a very ambitious undertaking. The writer is triply qualified to speak on her topic -- the creative brain -- being a neurologist, a past sufferer of a mood disorder, and a writer. She brings all of this first-hand knowledge to bear on the topic, and the result is an unusual book.
I found a few parts of it difficult to understand, but skimming in a few places didn't detract from the experience for me. Published only last year, it provides an up-to-the-minute glimpse of neurology; we learn about significant strides being made in understanding brain states.
Alongside this ringside-seat science reporting, she relates her own experience with some of these brain states -- both in the form of her mood disorder and in the form of her creative writing. And she relates interesting stories about a wide variety of creative thinkers and thinkers on creavity.
I found the combination delightful. I think the author succeeds beautifully in weaving together these personal and scientific threads. But it is different from most books in its lack of a summary conclusion. I think that's one of its strengths: rather than trying to spin her own personal theory, Flaherty contents herself with furthering our understanding of how to frame the question. Quite an accomplishment. I say Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: A passionate neurological ramble
Review: This book is a hybrid of memoir, neurology, essay, confessional, and anxious monologue. It veers between rationalism and passionate loquacity, itself intensely hypergraphic. I read it all the way through and decided, after I had finished, that I hadn't learned much more about the neurological basis of writing but I had learned a great deal about the innards of Flaherty's interestingly informed but manic consciousness. Fortunately, it's not badly written, and the anecdotes, quotations, and summaries of current research are informative and interesting. The Justice poem, which I looked up because it seemed so apt, is only quoted in part and isn't nearly as striking in the original.
Rating:
Summary: A passionate neurological ramble
Review: This book is a hybrid of memoir, neurology, essay, confessional, and anxious monologue. It veers between rationalism and passionate loquacity, itself intensely hypergraphic. I read it all the way through and decided, after I had finished, that I hadn't learned much more about the neurological basis of writing but I had learned a great deal about the innards of Flaherty's interestingly informed but manic consciousness. Fortunately, it's not badly written, and the anecdotes, quotations, and summaries of current research are informative and interesting. The Justice poem, which I looked up because it seemed so apt, is only quoted in part and isn't nearly as striking in the original.
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