{"product_id":"129270","title":"Meanings ","description":"\u003ccenter\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/tmgdisk01.cafe24.com\/images\/vs\/4172\/sv\/WQtgpSs2UwwZhZT5k9fAvP.png?v=1764869209\" style=\"max-width:100%;max-height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\u003ccenter\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center;font-size:30px;font-weight:bolder;line-height:1.6em\"\u003e Meanings \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"border-bottom:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted;border-color:;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable align=\"center\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\u003ctbody style=\"border:0px\"\u003e\n\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"center\" style=\"line-height:1.2em;text-align:center;font-size:18px;color:black;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px;\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/image.yes24.com\/goods\/159170775\/XL\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%;{split_style6}padding-top:20px;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e Description \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;word-break:break-all;font-size:14px;line-height:1.6em;\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eBook Introduction\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cb\u003e“Exploring the conventional metaphors that permeate the institutional space of a mental hospital\u003cbr\u003e “A lyrical account of the journey of recovery, grounded in critical reflection.” - Natasha Tressway, Pulitzer Prize-winning author\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ★ Highly recommended by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Natasha Tresway\u003cbr\u003e ★ Selected as a \"must-read\" by numerous media outlets, including Lithub and The New Yorker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e How Reading Reawakened Me\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIntersecting my recollections of my time in a mental hospital with my reading of literature\u003cbr\u003e An excellent essay that reclaims the stigma of a 'crazy woman'\u003cbr\u003e A significant achievement in women's literature of our time\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Suzanne Scanlan, a writer who has been gaining attention in the United States for her profound reflections on women, psychiatry, reading and writing, and self-care, as well as her excellent literary portrayal of them, has published a new book, \"Meanings: Days of Heartache and Reading.\"\u003cbr\u003e This book is a dazzling essay that encompasses memoir and literary criticism, rewritten by the author by overlapping his own memories of long-term hospitalization in a psychiatric ward and the stigma he felt with his experiences reading literature.\u003cbr\u003e By presenting a collage-like format of quotations, records, reflections, and critiques, it expanded the boundaries between memoir and literary criticism.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe author interweaves her own experiences with the writings of female writers who have delved into the pain of the heart, such as Sylvia Plath, Marguerite Duras, Virginia Woolf, Shulamith Firestone, and Janet Frame, thereby transforming the “language of pain” into the “language of meaning,” and reappropriates the existence of the stigma of being a “mad woman” as a subject of reflection.\u003cbr\u003e Furthermore, based on his own experience, he testifies to “how reading becomes care,” and persuasively shows the process of recovering meaning in life from a place of loss.\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e You can preview some of the book's contents.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cspan\u003ePreview\u003c\/span\u003e\n\n\u003c\/li\u003e\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eindex\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cb\u003ePart 1: Existence, a Moving Target\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Go back again\u003cbr\u003e My Insanity and Other Things\u003cbr\u003e Vortex effect\u003cbr\u003e A way of forming\u003cbr\u003e With bags\u003cbr\u003e Duras Space, or Book as Room (I)\u003cbr\u003e At point zero\u003cbr\u003e Escape from the trap\u003cbr\u003e psychoanalyst\u003cbr\u003e Reflections on Women \u003cbr\u003eSit still\u003cbr\u003e Books as Rooms (II)\u003cbr\u003e Attempts to Theorize About My Illness (I)\u003cbr\u003e Without worries\u003cbr\u003e Trapped in a story\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart 2 I saw the golden number 5\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Psychiatric Hospital Architecture (I)\u003cbr\u003e 5th floor\u003cbr\u003e Too much\u003cbr\u003e Time passes\u003cbr\u003e Nerve problems, or what can I do?\u003cbr\u003e Psychiatric Hospital Architecture (II)\u003cbr\u003e Tell me who I am\u003cbr\u003e Septimus\u003cbr\u003e Hank, Reflections (I)\u003cbr\u003e Melting\u003cbr\u003e Interlude, 2022\u003cbr\u003e Elina\u003cbr\u003e Hank, Reflections (II)\u003cbr\u003e family therapy\u003cbr\u003e Blossom\u003cbr\u003e cobweb\u003cbr\u003e Grace\u003cbr\u003e Duras today\u003cbr\u003e Then you will never be happy\u003cbr\u003e Leave the couch\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart 3: Mirror City\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Attempts to Develop a Theory About My Illness (II)\u003cbr\u003e notebooks\u003cbr\u003e The last days of the long-term hospital ward\u003cbr\u003e We're all gone\u003cbr\u003e Attempts to Develop a Theory About My Illness (III)\u003cbr\u003e Our trustworthy Nadil\u003cbr\u003e Shadow Story\u003cbr\u003e angry women\u003cbr\u003e About Recovery (I)\u003cbr\u003e Homeless Self\u003cbr\u003e incarceration\u003cbr\u003e Q\u0026amp;A\u003cbr\u003e Meetings and positivity\u003cbr\u003e On Recovery (II)\u003cbr\u003e You look very normal\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements\u003cbr\u003e References\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eDetailed image\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/image.yes24.com\/momo\/TopCate5850\/MidCate1\/584906802.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Detailed Image 1\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003eInto the book\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e The time I was in the hospital was when my belief in 'recovered memories' was at its peak.\u003cbr\u003e In the early 1990s, a growing number of patients began to report memories of sexual abuse during their childhood.\u003cbr\u003e Doctors encouraged patients to uncover these memories.\u003cbr\u003e I know that many of the women who lived with me in the hospital were sexually abused, horribly bullied, or raped.\u003cbr\u003e I also know that many people have not experienced such a thing.\u003cbr\u003e I don't know who was telling the truth, who was lying, or who was creating memories out of imagination and expectation.\u003cbr\u003e I'm sure we've all made these memories to some degree.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.47\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The analyst's indifference felt violent, another blow to his fragile ego. \u003cbr\u003e\/ Whatever hysteria meant to that doctor in that room, to that doctor with whom I spoke for twenty minutes, there was no hysteria to me.\u003cbr\u003e I had loneliness.\u003cbr\u003e There was sadness.\u003cbr\u003e But if I had known that, or if I could have said it, if it were that simple, if that were enough, I wouldn't have spent years looking for someone to tell me.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.109\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I didn't know that books were about communication.\u003cbr\u003e Even if I had known, it hadn't mattered to me until then.\u003cbr\u003e A book is a way of speaking to someone across time and space.\u003cbr\u003e This book was telling me something about how to live.\u003cbr\u003e Different ways of living.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.184\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As a teacher, I am often reminded of how difficult it is to discern even the most obvious connections between literature and life. \u003cbr\u003eNo, rather, even though a good reader, a good student, can recognize that connection, feeling that connection is a completely different thing.\u003cbr\u003e Finding that meaning and being able to apply that meaning to your life are two entirely different things.\u003cbr\u003e It's closer to method acting than what we call literary analysis.\u003cbr\u003e For me, it started with emotions.\u003cbr\u003e As Hilton Alls put it, if I can't feel it, I can't write it.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.206\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In those days, art was a light.\u003cbr\u003e It showed me that there is space for weeping and longing, and that there is something I can do about living on the edge or just beyond it.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kristeva wrote about the inexpressible grief of bereavement - the abyss of grief.\u003cbr\u003e That's not a mental illness.\u003cbr\u003e It's not any disease. \u003cbr\u003eIf it was a disease, it was more than just a disease.\u003cbr\u003e It was a disease that arose from going through the sorrow of bereavement.\u003cbr\u003e (Omitted) For Kristeva, the grief of bereavement was not something to be overcome.\u003cbr\u003e It was in itself the subject of great art and great literature.\u003cbr\u003e Grief from bereavement is a fundamental and universal human experience.\u003cbr\u003e The grief of bereavement is a word that does not stigmatize the person who is broken by that emotion.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.310\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Books showed me a different life, a bigger and more supportive framework, a life-affirming framework.\u003cbr\u003e I wouldn't have expressed it this way at the time, but I know now.\u003cbr\u003e I can know now.\u003cbr\u003e (Omitted) That book was a bulwark that protected me from collapse, from meaninglessness, from the unspeakable sorrow of separation.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.314\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The perfect escape becomes a trap.\u003cbr\u003e You will find out very soon.\u003cbr\u003e After escaping, you start acting as if you were escaping. \u003cbr\u003eAnd once you're playing that role, people will react to you in a way that fits the role you're playing.\u003cbr\u003e That's how you get trapped.\u003cbr\u003e That trap could be your life.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.415\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And the grief of bereavement, like madness, does not resolve or reach its peak and then subside.\u003cbr\u003e It's just a matter of learning to live with it and getting used to it or not getting used to it.\u003cbr\u003e What Didion meant by the whirlpool is that the sadness can come back at any time without warning and never be resolved.\u003cbr\u003e It is a part of the existence of a country.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.421\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Reading saved me.\u003cbr\u003e It may sound silly, and I feel embarrassed to say it.\u003cbr\u003e You might be accused of being delusional, romantic, or worse.\u003cbr\u003e But we all know that it could be true, and it was true for me. \u003cbr\u003eWhat if I hadn't gone to that bookstore that night, if I hadn't heard Adrienne Rich read, if I hadn't read Angry Women, if I hadn't read Audre Lorde?\u003cbr\u003e --- p.431\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Outsiders.\u003cbr\u003e People who are always or inevitably outside.\u003cbr\u003e People who are shy, socially awkward, easily depressed, occasionally or chronically suicidal, or paralyzed by past events, trauma, loss, or just plain confused.\u003cbr\u003e People who write and rewrite about the past because they want to be understood, and who try to correct it and understand it properly each time.\u003cbr\u003e Writing itself becomes a way of trying to understand the meaning of failure in living, failure to become a normal person.\u003cbr\u003e And you stop wanting to be a normal person.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.448\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eOn campus, I learned that madness has been a pervasive theme throughout literature.\u003cbr\u003e Because there is truth in extinction.\u003cbr\u003e In polite society, even among friends, we need a voice of madness to remind us of all that remains unspoken.\u003cbr\u003e As Susan Sontag wrote about Simone Weil, we need her voice of unreason.\u003cbr\u003e There is truth in madness.\u003cbr\u003e No parent would want their child to be a Beyu, but Beyu was a truth-teller.\u003cbr\u003e For Sontag, sanity could be a compromise, a lie.\u003cbr\u003e --- p.474\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In many cases, we find that for many people, a diagnosis can help capture and treat the experience of real suffering.\u003cbr\u003e But there are many ways for us to find solace even within the given state of our existence as human beings. \u003cbr\u003eThis is always a bit incomprehensible at some level.\u003cbr\u003e This is why we read books.\u003cbr\u003e This is why I needed other women's stories.\u003cbr\u003e That's also why I want this doctor to know them.\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e --- pp.501-502\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003ch5\u003e \u003cb\u003ePublisher's Review\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cb\u003e“Exploring the conventional metaphors that permeate the institutional space of a mental hospital\u003cbr\u003e “A book that lyrically depicts the journey of recovery based on critical reflection.”\u003cbr\u003e - Natasha Tressway (Pulitzer Prize-winning author)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ★ Highly recommended by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Natasha Tresway\u003cbr\u003e ★ Selected as a \"must-read\" by numerous media outlets, including Lithub and The New Yorker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e How Reading Reawakened Me\u003cbr\u003e Intersecting my recollections of my time in a mental hospital with my reading of literature\u003cbr\u003e An excellent essay that reclaims the stigma of a 'crazy woman'\u003cbr\u003e A significant achievement in women's literature of our time\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSuzanne Scanlan, a writer who has been gaining attention in the United States for her profound reflections on women, psychiatry, reading and writing, and self-care, as well as her excellent literary portrayal of them, has published a new book, \"Meanings: Days of Heartache and Reading.\"\u003cbr\u003e This book is a dazzling essay that encompasses memoir and literary criticism, rewritten by the author by overlapping his own memories of long-term hospitalization in a psychiatric ward and the stigma he felt with his experiences reading literature.\u003cbr\u003e By presenting a collage-like format of quotations, records, reflections, and critiques, it expanded the boundaries between memoir and literary criticism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The author interweaves her own experiences with the writings of female writers who have delved into the pain of the heart, such as Sylvia Plath, Marguerite Duras, Virginia Woolf, Shulamith Firestone, and Janet Frame, thereby transforming the “language of pain” into the “language of meaning,” and reappropriates the existence of the stigma of being a “mad woman” as a subject of reflection. \u003cbr\u003eFurthermore, based on his own experience, he testifies to “how reading becomes care,” and persuasively shows the process of recovering meaning in life from a place of loss.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLife entangled with literature, literature entangled with life\u003cbr\u003e Literature was there on the journey to recover from emotional pain.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Literature and madness have intersected and connected in various ways.\u003cbr\u003e Especially in feminist literary criticism, ‘madness’ as a metaphor has already become established as a genre.\u003cbr\u003e There have been countless critiques that have attempted to interpret the sociocultural context that drove mad women to madness in literary works featuring them, or to connect the writings of female writers suffering from nervous breakdowns (or 'hysteria') to their own lives, or to illuminate the existence of 'mad women' as a literary tradition.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Meanings: Days of Pain and Reading\" attempts to reach the place of literature that sustains life by adding a meaningful axis to this chain: \"a reader who delves into madness in literature.\"\u003cbr\u003e The author keenly explores the emotions that made him vulnerable—anxiety, depression, loss, alienation—and shows how these emotions, through the prism of literature, return to our lives, and how the light that returns then functions as a force that empowers us to once again dedicate ourselves to life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book is a text with many layers and textures.\u003cbr\u003e It is a literary critique that aims to re-appropriate the \"crazy women\" in literary history, a reportage exposing the problems of the mental health system from the perspective of a long-term hospitalized patient, and an intimate memoir in which the author records her \"crazy days.\" \u003cbr\u003eHowever, the layered intentions do not scatter into fragments, but ultimately form one large forest, firmly establishing the relationship between life and literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While reading this book, we experience the entire mental health system while empathizing with the patient's situation. This process becomes a journey of self-discovery in the most literary way, and the process of recovery from deep depression becomes the most powerful motivation for reading.\u003cbr\u003e As we approach the sadness that clings to life more clearly through literature, we also have the mystical experience of literature once again becoming a mirror reflecting art and our lives.\u003cbr\u003e At the end of this journey, the author's story is revealed in a warm light: it is a lament and consolation for the loss we all inevitably face at some point, and that this is the essence of literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThree Years in a Mental Hospital: Reflections on Those Sick Years\u003cbr\u003e Recording the narrative of a life that cannot be reduced to a diagnosis\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Born to Irish immigrant parents, a devout Catholic, and raised in a white suburb 80 kilometers from Chicago, the author moved to New York City at the age of twenty to attend college.\u003cbr\u003e I couldn't eat anything other than microwaved potatoes, and going days and weeks without speaking to anyone became routine.\u003cbr\u003e The author, who was struggling at the bottom of his heart, eventually climbed the stone stairs of an old building called the New York State Psychiatric Institute and was admitted to the ward on the fifth floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The period when the author was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward was when the concept of 'recovered memory' was gaining attention as a methodology in psychiatry.\u003cbr\u003e The author repeatedly received requests from doctors asking, \"What else happened? Think about it slowly.\" \u003cbr\u003eThe author and the patients diligently participated in 'memory making' to meet the expectations of such doctors.\u003cbr\u003e And at the end of that consultation, I was prescribed medications that were said to be aimed at correcting the 'chemical imbalance'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e However, the secrets that patients confide in their doctors cannot be the key to unlocking all the suffering they experience.\u003cbr\u003e Just as mental health cannot be solved by treating it as an isolated phenomenon, a problem of 'chemical imbalance',\u003cbr\u003e The author was diagnosed with dysthymia, chronic depression, and bipolar disorder in a psychiatric ward and was prescribed medication related to these conditions, but did not see any effect. \u003cbr\u003eOver the course of three years, the author became more accustomed to his morbid state and “became increasingly adept at living as a psychiatric patient.” He left the hospital because the reduction in welfare services for the mentally ill made it difficult to run a long-term inpatient ward.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the literary space created by 'crazy women'\u003cbr\u003e Finding my story that will become a stepping stone to recovery\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The days spent in the somewhat oppressive or ineffective psychiatric ward were, however, also a time for the author to look into and study his own madness. \u003cbr\u003eThe stories patients tell, the stories doctors want patients to tell, the doctor's consultations held in silence so quiet it feels like white noise, women who don't smile, women who smile too much, self-destructive behaviors that involve all sorts of creative methods, patients who commonly respond to the word \"emptiness.\"\u003cbr\u003e The author stubbornly resists attempts to reduce his suffering to 'memories of an abusive childhood', and the fact that his existence could be reduced to the diagnosis of 'depressed patient'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The author spent three years in a psychiatric ward, and lived with the scars of it for several more years.\u003cbr\u003e In those days, it was literature that filled the author's emptiness.\u003cbr\u003e Above all, these were literary works written by 'crazy women' who had lived messy lives. \u003cbr\u003eLiterature as a space for lamentation and longing created on the edge of collapse.\u003cbr\u003e In that space, madness was not something to be resolved, but a passage to “the truth about everything that baffles and pains me.”\u003cbr\u003e And as she builds a spiritual solidarity with the \"mad women\" of literary history, the author finally gains a clue to understanding her own suffering in a larger context.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The loss that the author describes as “formless sadness” or, to borrow John Didion’s phrase, “a whirlpool of grief” is reduced in medical narratives to the official diagnosis of “depression” or something similar.\u003cbr\u003e However, these feelings, which cannot be named and therefore seem to have no way of being resolved, create an explosive resonance when they meet literature.\u003cbr\u003e The author describes it as a process of “reading with hunger, searching for something, for the bottom.” \u003cbr\u003eIt was a process that did not allow even the slightest distance, so much so that it could be described as “a swallowing.”\u003cbr\u003e In this way, the author “devoured” Marguerite Duras, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Julia Kristeva, and Janet Frame.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If you don’t tell your story, they’ll win.”\u003cbr\u003e The miracle that occurs when a fragile ego begins to create its own narrative through literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe characters of Marguerite Duras, who yearn for desire without fear, sometimes even at the risk of death; the self-destructive ego of Sylvia Plath; the madwoman of Charlotte Perkins Gilman who resists learned helplessness with madness; Audre Lorde, who said, “Your silence will not protect you,” and other works by female writers who lived with madness and achieved achievements that cannot be reduced to its symptoms, become the materials that weave her language across the author’s life.\u003cbr\u003e It is “a narrative framework to contain my grief over losing my mother,” a way to transform madness into something else, “something you can change its form,” and ultimately a process of finding my own way through the trappings of seemingly certain diagnoses.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Meanings\" is the desperate record of an explorer determined to discover the \"meanings\" he will live with among the countless stories we encounter.\u003cbr\u003e As the author nears discharge, a nurse advises him, “You should tell your own story.”\u003cbr\u003e Between the desperate sentences that sound like, “If you don’t, they’ll tell your story,” and “If I don’t tell this story, they’ll win,” readers are drawn into the subversive narrative of a vulnerable self.\u003cbr\u003e Getting used to, or not getting used to, the sadness or madness that “comes back at any time, without warning, and never goes away,” rather than victory or salvation.\u003cbr\u003e Embracing it as a part of our existence.\u003cbr\u003e There are such struggles throughout 『Meanings』. \u003cbr\u003eAny reader will long for the intense reading experience that the author of this book has created, the “blurred boundary between self and text.”\u003cbr\u003e And 『Meanings』, as part of the work of making literature read in this way into reality again, presents literature to us as something “much more real than any diagnosis.” \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:95%;padding-top:20px;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:20px\"\u003e GOODS SPECIFICS \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left;font-size:14px;line-height:1.6em;\"\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eDate of issue:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 27, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003ePage count, weight, size:\u003c\/strong\u003e 512 pages | 634g | 140*210*24mm\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"width:100%;margin-bottom:5px;line-height:1.6em;font-size:14px\"\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9791191247589 \u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003ccenter\u003e\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"height:10px\"\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\n\u003c\/center\u003e\n\n\n\u003c\/center\u003e","brand":"LIBRAIRIE COREENNE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43890304516138,"sku":"129270","price":32.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0683\/2750\/5962\/files\/353c3e892a6fd9d9fabc927b5bb582e3.jpg?v=1765294937","url":"https:\/\/librairie.coreenne.fr\/en\/products\/129270","provider":"LIBRAIRIE COREENNE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}