All the way back in 1987, David Foster Wallace, who you may know as the author of the bajillion-page book Infinite Jest wrote in a letter to friend that he was drinking heavily, and spending much of his time wandering around, “remembering disasters.”
This description, as many of you may personally know, is just about the most sense one can make out of the crippling effects of depression. And while the concept of depression has become more normalized in recent years, it’s still so hard to know the best way to talk about it, much less what to do about it.
Foster Wallace himself said, “Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”
If you’re feeling sad and you don’t know why, or your friend is, and you don’t know how to make her feel better, or you do know why you’re sad (it is winter, after all), take a break from Tweeting about it. Pick up some fiction. Or buy a book on tape. You can Tweet about that later.
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
The first in a series of four novels, Ferrante’s novel, published in 2011, is a coming-of-age story set in Italy that reflects the importance of your girl gang. The author herself is super mysterious—nobody’s even sure if Elena Ferrante is her real name—but through letters to journalists, we know that she’s said, “I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.” Would she feel the same way if she knew James Franco was a fan?
The Sculptor, Scotty McCloud
I’m not a big graphic novel girl, but I do like things that are easy to read, and this one is good, I promise! The Sculptor is about David, a young male artist type that we all know—whiny, obsessed with himself, and poor. In a strange turn of events, his uncle, who’s also a ghost, grants him the power of superhuman hands, in return for his life. David has 200 days to live and make something of himself. Things get complicated when he meets a girl he likes. As they usually tend to do.
Nancy Jo Sale’s website
This isn’t a book at all, but the personal website of Nancy Jo Sales, legendary reporter for New York Mag in the 80s, now a staff writer at Vanity Fair. This website is great to browse if you’re not in the mood for a long reading commitment, as Nancy Jo sales written awesome articles about your favorite celebrities and scandals, such as “Leo, Prince of the City”, as you see above, “All in the Gotti Family”, and “Money Boss Player”, an article about Donald Trump’s relationship to Hip-Hop. Relevant, no?
This post, Book Suggestions For All You Sad Girls Out In The Cyber (And Real) World, by Abeline Cohen, appeared first on Galore.