Michael Greenberg Interview

Copperfield's Books: Hurry Down Sunshine recounts the summer your daughter Sally was "struck mad" and the effect on everyone in your family. What was it like sitting down to recount the details of that summer?

Michael Greenberg: It was enlightening, disturbing, transformative and painful–a much, much greater ordeal than I imagined it would be when I first decided to write about that summer. On a certain level, it’s a simple story about illness and recovery. My job, as I saw it, was to tell it in the most truthful and straightforward manner possible. The details of life, when laid bare, can be extraordinarily revealing. There were times when I wondered if I was up to the task. I felt an enormous responsibility to Sally, to the experience, to the other people in the book, and to those who would read it. At a couple of points I considered giving up. I’m glad I didn’t.

CB: Several times in the book, various family members, including yourself, express reticence to tell others about Sally's "crack up," and here we have this incredible memoir describing this time. What changed?

MG: At the time of Sally’s first manic attack we were stunned, and ignorant of what was happening. It seemed as strange and far-fetched as science fiction. From one moment to the next, it seemed, Sally had become incomprehensible, impenetrable. I was worried that she would be stigmatized, that she would no longer be taken seriously as an individual, that she would be seen as "crazy" and nothing more. So little is understood about psychosis, and some people can be dismissive and, in a few unfortunate cases, cruel. I wanted to protect Sally from this cruelty. That was my feeling twelve years ago. But as time passed, both Sally and I came to understand that her manic-depression was unconcealable because it’s an essential part of who she is. How can it be healthy to try to hide who you are? It only leads to increased stress and pressure. Finally, I did a complete about-face and decided, with Sally’s blessing, to "go public." My aim was to write a book that would provoke a feeling of compassion in the reader, and a feeling of companionship in those who have been through a similar ordeal.

CB: The phrase "crack up" was used a number of times to describe Sally's experience. Why this phrase?

MG: It’s interesting you bring this up. I don’t use the term "crack up" flippantly, and I’m aware that to some it may seem jarring or harsh. But I don’t mean it harshly. Far from it. I use it because it seems the most accurate and powerful term for what happened, with its suggestion of a psyche in fragments, of something whole that has come apart. I prefer it to "breakdown" which in some cases denotes nothing stronger than being reduced to tears. "Mental illness," the term accepted as correct by almost everyone, covers every disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. It seems too bland and encompassing a term to describe the dramatic force that took hold of Sally.

CB: Images of light recur throughout your book: the Sunshine Cafe, the darkness of your brother Steve's room, Dr. Lensing's sun-drenched office, the title of the book itself, Hurry Down Sunshine, and the striking phrase "her ruinous sun." Would you say something about this and why this title?

MG: Usually we welcome the sun, we bask in the sun, we "sunbathe." But the scorching brightness of mania is different. It is a merciless brightness from which we run and seek shelter. It erases shadow, subtlety. It burns rather than warms. Just as there can be too much darkness, there can be too much light. Hurry Down Sunshine refers to our wish to see the ruinous sun of mania pass, to have Sally back again in the softer, tolerable light of sanity, of receptiveness, of warmth.

CB: In your introduction, you describe how you rather quickly discovered that the "doctors knew little more about her condition than [you] did" and that the "...underlying mechanisms of psychosis... are as shrouded in mystery as they have ever been..." You go on to describe how there were times when you were with your daughter that left you with a "...distressed sense of being in the presence of a rare force of nature: destructive, but in its way astounding too..." Would you say something about the medicalization and the mystery of psychosis?

MG: "The most elusive disease known to man and unknown to medicine," James Joyce called it when seeking a cure for his daughter’s psychosis. Unfortunately, that statement is every bit as true today as it was when Joyce uttered it in the 1930s. It doesn’t take an expert to spot psychosis: we recognize it when we see it, and have recognized it since recorded time. The story of Saul in the Book of Kings is probably the first case history of paranoia with psychotic features, and it remains an accurate one. Samoa and Papua New Guinea have the same percentage of schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis in their populations as New York or California. So the stress of modern life, to take just one popular suspect, is not to blame. Dr. Watson first launched the Human Genome project with the aim of finding a cure to manic-depressive illness, but it proved far too complex to be explained genetically. It’s a bit like trying to explain consciousness itself. Despite the advances of brain science, it remains far beyond medical grasp. Clinical psychiatrists do the best they can, but the drugs at their disposal provide only a primitive and inadequate treatment of certain symptoms. Drug therapy hasn’t advanced appreciably since the introduction of Thorazine in 1952. A cure would be wonderful–I ardently hope for one, and perhaps we will find one in the future. But at its root psychosis appears to remain beyond the precincts of pharmaceutical intervention. It represents an extreme point in the human spectrum, and if we listen closely to it I believe it can tell us something fundamental about who we are.

CB: There's a point in the book when you're out to dinner with your mother and you recognize "your unshakable sobriety," which is possibly compensating for Sally's "psychic drunkenness"—a description of the stark contrast of your experiences and their undeniable interrelatedness. What assistance is there for families or friends struggling with the sudden onset of mental illness in a loved one?

MG: The most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s not personal, it’s not your fault. Your loved one has not turned on you. What is happening is beyond his or her control, and it is also beyond yours. Except for the most potent cases of Post-Traumatic Stress, it’s nearly impossible to point to a single, reasonable cause. One excellent resource is the Mood Disorder Support Group (MSDG) which has branches nationwide. They offer separate meetings for family members and loved ones to share their experiences. Then, of course, there is NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), with its extensive network of information.

CB: In the postscript, you recount how upon learning you are writing Hurry Down Sunshine, Sally adds "I want you to use my real name." How has this process been for her and how is she doing? Is she writing?

MG: From the outset Sally has been bravely supportive of Hurry Down Sunshine. I wouldn’t have written it if she hadn’t trusted me so completely. She used to joke that I was cutting our phone conversations short so I could write about her! But she never asked to read a word until the book was finished. She loved it, thank goodness! She said, "I felt I was reading about someone else, a fifteen-year-old girl named Sally who had been to hell and was the only one who didn’t know it. How many people get to look at themselves in such a way?" So far, 2008 has been her healthiest year in a long time. Since January she has been living at Spring Lake Ranch, a therapeutic work community in the Green Mountains of Vermont. A Finnish immigrant founded the place in 1932, with the idea of creating a utopian retreat for "the wounded and vulnerable." During the First World War he had worked with British soldiers suffering from shell shock in Mesopotamia. The place has remained true to his ideal: they grow their own food, raise animals and are as self-sufficient as possible. A tremendous espirit de corps exists between the residents and the staff. When I visited in March Sally was working on the maple syrup crew, running sap through a series of tubes that looped from one maple tap to the next like a fence line. "People joke that they can’t tell the residents from the staff," the crew director told me. "As far as we’re concerned, there’s no higher compliment." Sally is a responsible caring member of her community. And she is writing short stories, some of which are quite compelling. She’s a natural writer. But it can be challenging for her to sustain the concentration that writing requires.

CB: What's next for your writing?

MG: I’m always at work on the bi-weekly column I write for the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) of London. A collection of the columns will be published next year. For a couple of years now I have been gathering notes for a novel. Soon I’ll have a chance to sit down and see if I can breathe life into the material. That mysterious ingredient.