The Brutal Truth
With electric prose, Harnisch makes a strong case for the rights and dignity of the mentally ill.
No one grasps the human mind quite like indie writer and artist Jonathan Harnisch. In his new collection of essays, The Brutal Truth, he explores the lurid twists and turns of his own schizophrenia. With his trademark dazzling style, he makes a strong case for the rights and dignity of the mentally ill.
Harnisch’s body of work is a vast, evolving oeuvre of self-referentiality. These essays often refer to Harnisch’s semiautobiographical novels and the alter-ego characters from them. They also incorporate his written contributions to an online support community for the mentally ill.
At the heart of the collection lies the question of worth. Harnisch addresses the stigma of mental disorders and how, in particular, the vibrant and mystical experiences of schizophrenics are discounted by society, leading to social alienation and greater fragmentation of the self.
Harnisch is a sum-total writer working in a postmodern vein. Nothing is left out; every thought gets printed. Sometimes this leads to banality. Humdrum platitudes like “Never give up or quit” and “Keep on keeping on” crop up in the essay “If You Are Going through Hell, Keep Going.”
More typically, Harnisch creates lively and propulsive prose through the use of sentence fragments: “I need my life. I crave life. No false hopes. The real deal. Quit. Win. Stay in the now. Stay alive.” His most electric writing mirrors the “flow of realities” in his mind.
While great for fiction, this stream-of-consciousness method can be problematic in standalone essays. In “It’s Coming to Get Me: The Voices of Paranoia,” the author, admitting he hasn’t slept in two days, defends the logic and reality of his paranoid thoughts about others persecuting him: “But we have—in fact—been chosen, you know? People are jealous of us.” The piece ends with almost no contextualization, leaving a difficult moral question: to what extent should the subjective reality of schizophrenics be respected?
Harnisch does a better job assessing this question and of contextualizing his experiences in “When Delusions Are Real: The Schizophrenic Experience.” In this essay, he incorporates psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of object permanence.
The schizophrenic mind, Harnisch asserts, interacts with the world in heightened, multidimensional, mystical ways. What others may consider trivial facts or details are endowed with great meaning in the minds of schizophrenics. These manifold realities create a self-mythology full of aesthetic and moral significance. They shouldn’t be disregarded any more than a beautiful painting, a complicated novel, or someone’s religious devotions, he argues.
It is this fluxing intersection of art and life that makes The Brutal Truth a fascinating read. Harnisch aims for a greater understanding of mental illness, but he also touches upon the universal—how we all battle for the dignity of our thoughts and beliefs.
Reviewed by
Scott Neuffer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
