It is madness, I tell you

Recently discovered an excellent 1936 essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald where he analyzed, in over 6,000 words, his nervous breakdown at age 39.  I have a soft spot for reading about nervous breakdowns, especially when written well: Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Tolstoy.  At first I thought, writers are prone to "the edge," and if they write well they can write about anything well, and it is true that I like the other work by these authors also.

But then I realized that it's more than that.  By analyzing madness, one describes the negative space of sanity, thus describing its outline with greater precision than can be done while one is safely ensconced within.