Writing mania

>> Neurologist Alice W. Flaherty investigates
why we write, why we don’t and why
we sometimes can’t

by JULIET WATERS

There may not have been much consensus between Rawi Hage, Heather O’Neill and Neil Smith on the Blue Metropolis panel, “The Spirit of Montreal,” but there seemed to be a feeling of consensus in the audience. We hadn’t enjoyed ourselves this much since the last time we ate bagels.

It’s not that the three writers didn’t have anything interesting to say, but they clearly struggled to rise above the most mundane truths. “I feel like I didn’t prepare for the exam,” O’Neill confessed afterwards. But let’s look at the questions, which I’m quoting from the program: “What’s new in writing from Montreal? What has happened to put Montreal back on the literary map of Canada?” These seem to be questions for critics, not writers—ideally critics with backgrounds in sociology, astrology, or perhaps Elizabethan theories of the muse. Or at least someone well enough informed to know that these writers hadn’t even met before this panel, let alone cooperated in a Montreal Renaissance. (Which may have something to do with their success, but more on that later.)

The problem is that there are questions about writing that writers simply don’t know. Fortunately, we do know that Blue Metropolis (or CBC, or whoever is responsible for designing these panels) will insist on asking them anyways. So I’ve come up with a few suggestions for next year that writers can prepare for ahead of time. How about, “Brainiacs: First-time novelists discuss their brains and how the various lobes interacted to create their unusually successful writing.” And/or “Madness: Recently successful writers discuss how they knew they were writing well and not just having a manic episode.” To prepare, writers can read The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain by Harvard neurologist Alice W. Flaherty.

I’m kidding, but I’m not. This is actually one of the most fascinating books about writing that I’ve read in a long time. Writers and readers who read it will find themselves better informed on many difficult questions about writing. (For a more extended summary than I’m able to offer, a quick Google will turn up several interviews and reviews. The book’s been out since 2004, but I don’t think the book could be publicized enough.)

Flaherty approaches the topic from an unusual angle, not just as a neurologist, but also as a mental patient. Years ago she survived an extended bout of hypergraphia, a compulsive need to write so strong it had her wallpapering her house with post-it notes. This led her to research temporal lobe disorders, a subject that may sound dry, but The Midnight Disease is a fascinating, funny, elegant investigation of why we write and why we can’t or don’t write when we want to. Drawing from literature as much as neurology, Flaherty offers not just interesting theories, but convincing arguments against current, trendy right/left brain theories.

There might even be an answer in here for the impossible “Spirit of Montreal” question. Though it comes from a passage written by Milan Kundera, used to illustrate the difference between hypergraphia and graphomania, the compulsive need to publish. Graphomania is a state of mind, which reaches epidemic levels, Kundera argues (satirically), when a society meets three basic conditions: “1) A high enough degree of general well-being to enable people to devote their energies to useless activities; 2) An advanced state of social atomization and the resultant general feeling of the isolation of the individual; 3) A radical absence of significant social change in the internal development of the nation.”

Can there be a more lucid explanation for Montreal’s recent creative groove than this? Just look at our English artists engaged in useless activities (like discussing “The Spirit of Montreal”), pursuing that all important “feeling of isolation” (so successfully that they hardly  know each other) and all the while bathed in the green nurturing glow of stagnant Quebec nationalism and a Blue Metropolis that never learns.

Woo-hoo! Spirit of Montreal, Rock On!

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write,
Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain
by Alice W. Flaherty, Mariner Books, 307 pp, $13