When the Music's Over: My Journey into Schizophrenia - Softcover

Burke, Ross David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452275849 ISBN 13: 9780452275843

Publisher: Plume, 1996

Synopsis

An autobiographical novel provides an intimate look inside the schizophrenic mind and describes the narrator's experiences in jail, mental hospitals, and attempting to function in "normal society"

About this title

From the Publisher

This powerful and poetic book offers a rare glimpse inside the mind of a schizophrenic.

From Booklist

Burke, a young Australian who committed suicide in 1985, describes himself as "a drug-induced alcoholic psychopathic paranoid schizophrenic with manic depression." He left a note asking his former teacher, neuropsychologist Richard Gates, to publish his manuscript. That impossible-to-follow (much less fathom) book appears here. It reads like a twisted but ever-so-hip William Burroughs hoping to impress Aldous Huxley and R. D. Laing with the severity of his psychosis. In fact, Burke's "autobiographical novel" is approachable only with the help of the abundant footnotes and explanatory preface and afterword. The editors lead the reader through Burke's childhood and teen years, his use of psychedelic drugs, and his incarcerations and hospitalizations. They also annotate many of the bewildering passages in the book: the birth of Burke's child, which he thought was responsible for a cyclone that devastated a nearby city, or his robbery of a bank, after which he tossed the money out the getaway car's window as evidence that he was God and "the inventor of rock and roll." This painful but illuminating text will prove fascinating to anyone seeking to understand the strange malady that is schizophrenia. Ron Antonucci

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452275849
• ISBN 13: 9780452275843
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Gates Richard, Hammond Robin