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A review by rbruehlman
The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen
5.0
The Best Minds details Jonathan Rosen's friendship with his friend Michael, their idyllic childhood BFF friendship, their uneasy competition in high school, and their drifting apart in college. Rosen, stricken with anxiety and low self-esteem, constantly compares himself to the outgoing genius Michael, the boy who had it all. Then Michael, the golden child, descends into madness. Against all odds, Michael perseveres and graduates from Yale Law School and the subject of the New York Times and a movie; he has become a golden child, again, of a different sort. Then he has a psychotic break and murders his girlfriend. His phoenixed life once again descends to ashes.
I picked this book up after reading the first 20 pages on Amazon, enraptured by Rosen's detailed writing style. 100 pages later, I started losing patience a bit; 250 pages in, I was cursing buying the book and bored, committing myself to finishing it just to get it done. The book, I decided, couldn't be rated higher than a 3. The final two hundred pages marched on faster, tying up loose ends, finally moving away from Rosen's meandering literary ponderings to the tragic character of Michael.
Despite initially liking Rosen's writing style, it ended up being the worst part of the book in some ways. The book is ploddingly paced, spending an inordinate amount of time on Jonathan and Michael's childhood. Michael is painted as almost a mythical character, with so many anecdotes about how great and precocious Michael was, that pre-college Michael ended up feeling like a caricature than a real person. I started getting frustrated and bored. I think Rosen may have loaded up on anecdotes because, perhaps, Michael truly was an unusual character, but also because he wants to set the stage for Michael's dramatic downfall. Whichever the case was, I thought he could have done with fewer stories and communicated the same thing. One does not need to relive all of Rosen's life to understand.
It did not help that I found Rosen a somewhat annoying, neurotic character. Talking about himself was inevitable because the relationship is about his relationship with Michael, but sometimes I felt the book meandered into being too autobiographical and therefore somewhat irrelevant, as Rosen is not really the intended subject of the book.
As Michael and Rosen drifted apart in college, Rosen exhausts his anecdotes of Michael. Perhaps appropriate in relation to the literature PhD Rosen undertakes during this period, Rosen interweaves stories of post-college Michael and Rosen with a philosophical exploration of literature, particularly in regards to postmodernism and "reality" ... clearly foreshadowing Michael's disconnect from it later. (While the book sleeve gives a synopsis of Michael's rise and fall, schizophrenia, let alone later related events, are never explicitly mentioned in the book until the events occur, only foreshadowed.) I must admit my eyes glazed over whenever Rosen talked about literature. Literature theory and analysis was often and frequent, and I simply could not muster any interest. I am not saying this part of the book was bad--I am sure English majors will enjoy greatly--but I, personally, have never enjoyed literary theory and as such found the large swathes of the book dedicated to this endeavor very boring.
Rosen is, however, very good at painting characters and the complexities of relationships. To say Michael and Rosen's friendship was complex would be an understatement. Michael was Rosen's closest friend in elementary school, and for this, Rosen always cares for Michael ... but for much of their adult life, they were not close, but rather, rivals, at least in Rosen's insecure mind. Michael was always better at everything. Until he wasn't. Even when Michael struggles, it is clear Rosen is, still, somehow, competing against Michael, measuring himself up--and Rosen admits to this, and the illogicality of it. In a sense, no matter how sick Michael gets, Rosen never really forgets the old Michael--the Michael Rosen always compared himself against. I note this not to say Rosen did not appreciate the severity of Michael's illness, but that "old" Michael always lived on. Schizophrenia did not erase who Michael was to Rosen, even if others could no longer see it.
Rosen paints a sympathetic version of Michael and humanizes him. Michael is never schizophrenia. Michael is always Michael. Rosen never loses sight of that. He explores what schizophrenia meant to Michael instead, how Michael was influenced by his schizophrenia, and schizophrenia was influenced by him. He keenly understands the real, tangible impact schizophrenia had on Michael--not from a "oh, now he's experiencing delusions" perspective, but--what does it feel like to be a wunderkind who crashes and burns? What does it feel like to spend eight months in a psychiatric hospital after working as a high-powered consultant at Bain, or to have your every movement monitored at a halfway house? How crushing does it feel to have your identity built around intelligence, yet feel like you are now in a fog, unable to concentrate? How does it feel to be bound for Yale Law School, and yet your psychiatrist suggests the best job option for you is to be a grocery store clerk? It wasn't just the appearance of delusions or hallucinations that changed Michael's life--it was how everything perfect in his life went up in flames. Michael's entire self-identity, entire life trajectory, everything, was destroyed. It is little wonder he flirts with suicide.
Michael eventually kills someone. Rosen never blames Michael. He simply compassionately explores how Michael, who had rebirthed himself as a nationally-renowned Yale-educated schizophrenic wunderkind, complete with a fancy movie deal depicting his life, who seemed to have conquered the shitty hand of cards dealt with him ... nonetheless relapsed, and the impressive but unstable house of cards poofed, taking his girlfriend's life with it.
Rosen never explicitly says what he thought should have been done to help Michael. He explores how important it was that Michael's autonomy was never taken from him, as it is for so many schizophrenics. But he also explores how Michael was a ticking time bomb, someone by law no one could help even as they saw him decompose. In the case of schizophrenia, there is no easy answer.
I picked this book up after reading the first 20 pages on Amazon, enraptured by Rosen's detailed writing style. 100 pages later, I started losing patience a bit; 250 pages in, I was cursing buying the book and bored, committing myself to finishing it just to get it done. The book, I decided, couldn't be rated higher than a 3. The final two hundred pages marched on faster, tying up loose ends, finally moving away from Rosen's meandering literary ponderings to the tragic character of Michael.
Despite initially liking Rosen's writing style, it ended up being the worst part of the book in some ways. The book is ploddingly paced, spending an inordinate amount of time on Jonathan and Michael's childhood. Michael is painted as almost a mythical character, with so many anecdotes about how great and precocious Michael was, that pre-college Michael ended up feeling like a caricature than a real person. I started getting frustrated and bored. I think Rosen may have loaded up on anecdotes because, perhaps, Michael truly was an unusual character, but also because he wants to set the stage for Michael's dramatic downfall. Whichever the case was, I thought he could have done with fewer stories and communicated the same thing. One does not need to relive all of Rosen's life to understand.
It did not help that I found Rosen a somewhat annoying, neurotic character. Talking about himself was inevitable because the relationship is about his relationship with Michael, but sometimes I felt the book meandered into being too autobiographical and therefore somewhat irrelevant, as Rosen is not really the intended subject of the book.
As Michael and Rosen drifted apart in college, Rosen exhausts his anecdotes of Michael. Perhaps appropriate in relation to the literature PhD Rosen undertakes during this period, Rosen interweaves stories of post-college Michael and Rosen with a philosophical exploration of literature, particularly in regards to postmodernism and "reality" ... clearly foreshadowing Michael's disconnect from it later. (While the book sleeve gives a synopsis of Michael's rise and fall, schizophrenia, let alone later related events, are never explicitly mentioned in the book until the events occur, only foreshadowed.) I must admit my eyes glazed over whenever Rosen talked about literature. Literature theory and analysis was often and frequent, and I simply could not muster any interest. I am not saying this part of the book was bad--I am sure English majors will enjoy greatly--but I, personally, have never enjoyed literary theory and as such found the large swathes of the book dedicated to this endeavor very boring.
Rosen is, however, very good at painting characters and the complexities of relationships. To say Michael and Rosen's friendship was complex would be an understatement. Michael was Rosen's closest friend in elementary school, and for this, Rosen always cares for Michael ... but for much of their adult life, they were not close, but rather, rivals, at least in Rosen's insecure mind. Michael was always better at everything. Until he wasn't. Even when Michael struggles, it is clear Rosen is, still, somehow, competing against Michael, measuring himself up--and Rosen admits to this, and the illogicality of it. In a sense, no matter how sick Michael gets, Rosen never really forgets the old Michael--the Michael Rosen always compared himself against. I note this not to say Rosen did not appreciate the severity of Michael's illness, but that "old" Michael always lived on. Schizophrenia did not erase who Michael was to Rosen, even if others could no longer see it.
Rosen paints a sympathetic version of Michael and humanizes him. Michael is never schizophrenia. Michael is always Michael. Rosen never loses sight of that. He explores what schizophrenia meant to Michael instead, how Michael was influenced by his schizophrenia, and schizophrenia was influenced by him. He keenly understands the real, tangible impact schizophrenia had on Michael--not from a "oh, now he's experiencing delusions" perspective, but--what does it feel like to be a wunderkind who crashes and burns? What does it feel like to spend eight months in a psychiatric hospital after working as a high-powered consultant at Bain, or to have your every movement monitored at a halfway house? How crushing does it feel to have your identity built around intelligence, yet feel like you are now in a fog, unable to concentrate? How does it feel to be bound for Yale Law School, and yet your psychiatrist suggests the best job option for you is to be a grocery store clerk? It wasn't just the appearance of delusions or hallucinations that changed Michael's life--it was how everything perfect in his life went up in flames. Michael's entire self-identity, entire life trajectory, everything, was destroyed. It is little wonder he flirts with suicide.
Michael eventually kills someone. Rosen never blames Michael. He simply compassionately explores how Michael, who had rebirthed himself as a nationally-renowned Yale-educated schizophrenic wunderkind, complete with a fancy movie deal depicting his life, who seemed to have conquered the shitty hand of cards dealt with him ... nonetheless relapsed, and the impressive but unstable house of cards poofed, taking his girlfriend's life with it.
Rosen never explicitly says what he thought should have been done to help Michael. He explores how important it was that Michael's autonomy was never taken from him, as it is for so many schizophrenics. But he also explores how Michael was a ticking time bomb, someone by law no one could help even as they saw him decompose. In the case of schizophrenia, there is no easy answer.