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Summary
Summary
Cartoonist Ellen Forney explores the relationship between "crazy" and "creative" in this graphic memoir of her bipolar disorder, woven with stories of famous bipolar artists and writers.
Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity.
Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. She also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to "cure" an otherwise brilliant mind.
Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney's memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work, as she shares her own story through bold black-and-white images and evocative prose.
Author Notes
Ellen Forney has been a professional cartoonist/ illustrator since 1992. She teaches comics at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts.
Ellen grew up in Philadelphia and currently lives in Seattle.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Eisner nominee Forney confesses her struggles with being diagnosed as bipolar in this witty and insightful memoir. Beginning with the manic episode that led to her diagnosis, Forney chronicles her journey toward reconciling the dual natures of bipolar disorder: a dangerous disease, but also a source of inspiration for many artists. The long journey of medication and therapy is kept from gloom by Forney's lively, likable cartooning. Alternating among her cartoonish panels, realistic illustrations, and photographs of the sketch pad she kept as part of her therapy, Forney allows her art to chronicle her outer life while revealing her inner state of mind. Her personal journey provides a core story that examines her mood disorders and their connection to creativity for the many "crazy artists" she imagines as part of "Club van Gogh." Readers struggling with their own mania or depression will find Forney good company, and others searching for insight into the minds of troubled artists will find Forney an engaging storyteller. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Marbles is a memoir about depression. Ellen Forney is an American cartoonist, so her memoir is told through pictures, though there are often a lot of words in the thought clouds, which itself tells you something about the nature of the illness. Specifically, Forney has bipolar disorder, so her state of mind swings wildly from curled-up-on-sofa-under-blanket, to let's-all-get-naked-and-have-sex. It is a very engaging book, and Forney has the essential ingredient for a memoir of this type: honesty. To write a memoir, we are told, involves the ability to betray people. Here the main person Forney betrays is herself, and she does so with wit, irony and pathos. What will be particularly familiar for those who have been through similar experiences is the sense of denial. One speech bubble declares "I don't want balance, I want brilliance! Meds would hold me down!" Meanwhile, on the same page, the sword of Damocles hangs above her head. Most of the book documents a familiar path, the one signposted the Road to Recovery (or at least stability), though fortunately it never feels too familiar thanks to Forney's representations of her different mental states. For instance, there is a double page where she is planning her book launch, full of busy lines and arrows to indicate a full force brainstorm. A few pages later we see her slipping down again, sliding literally over the edge of a cliff. Parts are genuinely gripping, as she explores remedies from lithium to yoga. The most powerful images are the drawings she did in her deepest depressions. Some are of hallucinations - faces she sees in her own fingers, for instance - and another is an image of her 1999 self rising from the ashes of the slumped-on-the-floor 1998 Ellen. These moments are nicely juxtaposed with comic scenes, such as a yoga class where she gets freaked out by the name "corpse pose". A short while later, she starts to get better. After a swimming session she stares at droplets on the wall in the shower and sees in them a night-time festival in the woods, with strings of lights in the trees. "I'd forgotten how I used to see things in other things - and I realised my depression was finally lifting." At one point she hugs a tree, crying with her face pressed into the bark until she has run out of tears. A question that runs through her mind - and the book - is that old one about whether being bipolar will help her art. So as well as detailed descriptions of meds - too addictive Klonopin, memory-stifling Lithium, weight-gain inducing Zyprexa, orgasm-stopping Tegretal - there are also digressions into the lives of famously depressive artists and writers she admires. On Van Gogh's art, she wonders: "Was he trying to pin down the confusing swirls inside his head to bring them outside?" She studies that other great paint swirler, Munch, and discovers that he wanted to keep suffering, as he felt rudderless without his depressions. Poignantly, Forney feels guilty that she doesn't want to hang on to her sufferings, and wonders if this makes her a lesser artist. Is art a consequence of pain? Are the greatest artists simply those with the highest pain threshold, the ones who can stare into the abyss and not flinch as the abyss stares back? Forney considers artists such as Michelangelo, Gauguin and Georgia O'Keefe, as well as writers such as William Styron and Sylvia Plath, whose experiences of depression, she realises with some concern, are similar to her own. At one point, she becomes disillusioned with the whole "crazy artist" idea. "Sometimes it seems like pain is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep . . . Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring." The irony here, of course, is that Forney is facing her pain, and due to her honesty and sense of humour Marbles never even gets close to being boring. If you are interested in a disarmingly frank and funny account of the emotional extremes a human mind can reach, you should read this brilliant and strangely life-affirming book. Matt Haig's The Humans is published by Canongate. He is appearing at the Edinburgh international book festival on 18 August; edbookfest.co.uk. To order Marbles for pounds 10.39 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk. - Matt Haig These moments are nicely juxtaposed with comic scenes, such as a yoga class where she gets freaked out by the name "corpse pose". A short while later, she starts to get better. After a swimming session she stares at droplets on the wall in the shower and sees in them a night-time festival in the woods, with strings of lights in the trees. "I'd forgotten how I used to see things in other things - and I realised my depression was finally lifting." At one point she hugs a tree, crying with her face pressed into the bark until she has run out of tears. On Van Gogh's art, she wonders: "Was he trying to pin down the confusing swirls inside his head to bring them outside?" She studies that other great paint swirler, Munch, and discovers that he wanted to keep suffering, as he felt rudderless without his depressions. Poignantly, [Ellen Forney] feels guilty that she doesn't want to hang on to her sufferings, and wonders if this makes her a lesser artist. At one point, she becomes disillusioned with the whole "crazy artist" idea. "Sometimes it seems like pain is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep . . . Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring." - Matt Haig.
Kirkus Review
For anyone who loves graphic memoir or has concerns about bipolar swings, creativity and medication, this narrative will prove as engaging and informative as it is inspirational. Since the connection between artistry and mental instability has been well-documented, plenty of those diagnosed with bipolar disorder share the fears articulated in this unflinchingly honest memoir by Forney (I Love Led Zeppelin, 2006, etc.). "I don't want balance, I want brilliance!" she exclaims during one of her manic phases. "Meds would bring me down!" Taking pride in her membership in "Club van Gogh (The true artist is a crazy artist)," she subsequently suffered from periods of depression that brought her down far lower than medication even could. "During a manic episode, depression seems entirely impossible," she writes, but depression often made it impossible for her to imagine feeling so good, or feeling much of anything beyond a benumbed dread. Forney chronicles her years of therapy, her research into the literature of depression and her trial-and-error experiences with medication--and cocktails of medication--searching for the combination where the benefits outweighed the side effects. She directly confronts the challenge facing anyone trying to monitor and assess her own mental state: "How could I keep track of my mind, with my own mind?" Not only does her conversational intimacy draw readers in, but her drawings perfectly capture the exhilarating frenzy of mania and the dark void of depression. "It was a relief to discover that aiming for a balanced life doesn't mean succumbing to a boring one," she writes with conviction. Forney's story should resonate with those grappling with similar issues, while her artistry should appeal to a wide readership.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Forney, who has garnered both Harvey and Eisner Award nominations for her comic strips and collections that address living happily and mostly safely in alternative cultures (including the call-girl profession), now provides readers with a still-lighthearted but genuinely serious view of her battles with bipolar disorder. Between 1998 and 2002, she worked with a psychiatrist to diagnose and then treat her manic-depressive swings. In her signature black-and-white cartoons, detailed just enough to pop from the page, Forney takes readers on an insightful and provocative tour of such issues as whether or not artistic creativity is numbed by treatment; the huge expense of psychotropic drugs and difficulty finding health insurance that covers mental health; how treatment has led her to be a better friend, collaborator, and independent earner; and other tributaries stemming from the big question of What is really going to work to make this better? A solid choice for mental-health collections as well as those of artists' memoirs and graphic novels.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2010 Booklist
