The black veil : a memoir with digressions / by Rick Moody.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moody, Rick.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Moody, Rick--Psychology.

Moody, Rick.

Authors, American--20th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Families.

Psychiatric hospital patients.

Psychology.

United States.

Depressed persons--United States--Biography.

Depressed persons.

Psychiatric hospital patients--United States--Biography.

Moody, Joseph, 1700-1753.

Moody, Joseph.

Moody, Rick--Family.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 323 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Little, Brown, 2002.

Summary:

While Still in his Twenties, Rick Moody found that a decade of alcohol, drugs, and other indulgences had left him stranded in a depression so severe that he feared for his life. The road of excess led, for him, not to the palace of wisdom but rather to a psychiatric hospital in one of New York's least exalted boroughs. The Black Veil is Rick Moody's account of that debilitating passage in his life. It is the powerfully written story of a mind unraveling, and of how it feels when the underpinnings of life fall away. The anxieties of early adulthood, of first finding a place in the world -- the weight placed upon that first relationship, first job, first apartment -- are presented here with enormous sympathy. Anyone who has ever felt his or her own psychological footing slip, even briefly, will find Moody's account of his breakdown and return both harrowing and heartbreaking.

At the same time, The Black Veil is an astonishing exploration of guilt, blame, the public face, and the very idea of self. Looking for clues to his lifelong sense of melancholy and shame, and recognizing signs of this same condition in his family's paternal line, Moody embarked on a search for its origins. This quest begins with fathers ("Fathers refold maps, fathers like to appear as though they have infallible knowledge of direct routes between any two points") and grandfathers ("The idea here is that you have to do the heavy lifting first"). It ventures through stone quarries in Connecticut, among mossy tombstones in Maine, into the coded diary of a tormented Puritan minister, and into the life and writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In these and dozens of other places, Moody finds gleaming pieces of the past, and he weaves of them an inspired portrait of what it means to be young and confused, older and confused, guilty, lost, and finally healed. Funny, sad, and blazingly inventive, The Black Veil is another work of audacious originality by one of the most thoughtful writers of our time.

Contents:

Children, with bright faces, tript merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait 11

The old people of the village came stooping along the street 26

The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious enough 42

Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather slowly 54

Stooping somewhat and looking on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men 68

The deep pause of flagging spirits, that always follows mirth and wine 76

In his case, however, the symbol had a different import 89

It takes off its face like a mask, and shows the grinning bare skeleton underneath 104

Mr. Hooper, face to face with his congregation, except for the black veil 120

If I had ever once been happy, methinks I could contentedly be shot to-day 137

If it be a sign of mourning, I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough 151

What is this world good for now that we can never be jolly anymore 176

I have suffered woefully from low spirits for some time past 192

Every work, by an artist of celebrity, is hidden behind a veil 211

Had her eyes provoked, or assented to this deed? She had not known it. But, alas! 220

A veil may sometimes be needful, but never a masque 236

There being a heavy rain yesterday, a nest of swallows was washed down the chimney 250

Hither coasters &c. and fishing smacks run in, when a storm is anticipated 271

So far as I am a man of really individual traits, I veil my face 293

"The Minister's Black Veil" / Nathaniel Hawthorne 305.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [319]-323).

ISBN:

0316578991

OCLC:

49677008