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cuteswamp's review
5.0
A book that makes you feel as if you are floating, exempt from sanity, in a state equally constructed from peace and paranoia.
blundershelf's review against another edition
A deeply odd, small work. It feels very much like a burr in my brain.
crzavitz's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
drjerry's review against another edition
5.0
Thankfully the live wire of mental breakdown has never brushed against me. The closest I've been is watching one of my best friends from college unravel over the course of a few months -- slowly at first, then like an avalanche toward the end. That was twenty-five years ago. Reading Carrington's memoir of her own mental breakdown and hospitalization brought goosebumps to me a couple times, thinking, 'wow, that passage reminds me of one of J's fixations at the time.'
This was the first thing I've read from Carrington. My appetite for reading more of her (fiction) writing is now piqued.
As other reviewers have noted, the text is very short. It is written in the the form of diary entries over the course of a few days in 1943 -- about three years after the episode took place. The text itself has an interesting history quite befitting of a personal memoir of the descent into madness and recovery. A first version of the text was written in 1942 while the author was living in New York but that was lost. An acquaintance persuaded her to reconstruct it, which she did in 1943 in "the abandoned Russian embassy in Mexico City, where she ... and other refugees were squatting. Lenora then talked it through in French to Jeanne Mengen, ... who established the first published version in French." The French version was translated into English by Victor Llona and published in the surrealist journal VVV in 1944. Both the French dictation and the English translation were used as the basis of the current text, which was edited by Carrington herself in 1987.
The NYRB edition contains a great introduction by Marina Warner, who was a friend of Carrington, and provides a lot of biographical context from the author's life and the artistic and historical context in which it was created. The most succinct and probably the best summary of the text is from Warner herself, which deserves to be quoted verbatim: Down Below gives an unsparing account of the experience of being insane. As an act of truth-telling memory, it derives its power from this antinomy at its heart, that it is a narrative, apparently rationally composed and accurately recalled, about hair-raisingly unhinged behavior and cruel, scientific therapies that induced states of personal annihilation.
This was the first thing I've read from Carrington. My appetite for reading more of her (fiction) writing is now piqued.
As other reviewers have noted, the text is very short. It is written in the the form of diary entries over the course of a few days in 1943 -- about three years after the episode took place. The text itself has an interesting history quite befitting of a personal memoir of the descent into madness and recovery. A first version of the text was written in 1942 while the author was living in New York but that was lost. An acquaintance persuaded her to reconstruct it, which she did in 1943 in "the abandoned Russian embassy in Mexico City, where she ... and other refugees were squatting. Lenora then talked it through in French to Jeanne Mengen, ... who established the first published version in French." The French version was translated into English by Victor Llona and published in the surrealist journal VVV in 1944. Both the French dictation and the English translation were used as the basis of the current text, which was edited by Carrington herself in 1987.
The NYRB edition contains a great introduction by Marina Warner, who was a friend of Carrington, and provides a lot of biographical context from the author's life and the artistic and historical context in which it was created. The most succinct and probably the best summary of the text is from Warner herself, which deserves to be quoted verbatim: Down Below gives an unsparing account of the experience of being insane. As an act of truth-telling memory, it derives its power from this antinomy at its heart, that it is a narrative, apparently rationally composed and accurately recalled, about hair-raisingly unhinged behavior and cruel, scientific therapies that induced states of personal annihilation.
reader_drinker's review against another edition
3.0
As a piece of literature in and of itself, I don't think this small book with relatively simple prose is particularly interesting; but given sufficient context of the author's life and how the events in this memoir impacted her, it does become an amusing little read. Thankfully for those like myself who were not already familiar with Leonara Carrington or her work as a maestra of surrealist art, this NYRB edition provides a 30+ page introduction, which is particularly lengthy given that the memoir itself is less than 70 pages.
In this memoir Carrington precisely and without self-pity describes her trip through insanity: which occurs after her partner, and fellow famous surrealist artist, Max Ernst is interned by the Germans during WW2. During this trip, where she finds herself in a Spanish sanatorium, Carrington experiences numerous delusions of grandeur and apophenia as she struggles amidst being the victim of sexual assault, unsanitary conditions, and the forced intake of epileptic drugs. The memoir contains themes that are common to surrealism: the disapproval of conforming to norms, and sanctification of the exploration of dreams and consciousness; with Carrington putting a resolute feminist touch on those themes. I'm not generally a fan of memoirs, and although I enjoyed this short work well enough, I think I'd probably enjoy her work of outright fiction more so.
In this memoir Carrington precisely and without self-pity describes her trip through insanity: which occurs after her partner, and fellow famous surrealist artist, Max Ernst is interned by the Germans during WW2. During this trip, where she finds herself in a Spanish sanatorium, Carrington experiences numerous delusions of grandeur and apophenia as she struggles amidst being the victim of sexual assault, unsanitary conditions, and the forced intake of epileptic drugs. The memoir contains themes that are common to surrealism: the disapproval of conforming to norms, and sanctification of the exploration of dreams and consciousness; with Carrington putting a resolute feminist touch on those themes. I'm not generally a fan of memoirs, and although I enjoyed this short work well enough, I think I'd probably enjoy her work of outright fiction more so.
solivagant's review against another edition
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0