STOCK

by Carlton Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 25, 1944

A fictionized version of a modern ""mind that found itself"" (Clifford Boers), a blueprint to civilian shell shock that detoured through insanity, this is a projection of the psychotic conditions that alienated this 27-year old from the world, of the actual events that were part of his journey through mania, of the heightened perceptions that made logic of illogic. In the same sense that Lost Weekend identified the reader with the alcoholic, so this takes the reader into the processes of one Mike Kelly Jones in his mental excursions from the everyday world. There is close scrutiny of the conditioning factors (an element wholly lacking in Lost Weekend), -- divorced parents and divided loyalties and changing backgrounds; experiments in adjustments at home, schools, in travel and work; a drunken marriage; the intelligent raising of a daughter, the many separations from his wife. And then the days when messianic delusions precipitated his being placed in a city hospital for observation. There he experienced considerate and understanding treatment -- in sharp contrast to the invasion of his privacy and the brutality of the state hospital to which he was transferred. He was snapped into approach to normality and worked for, and obtained, release. Finally the tracing of the post-asylum days, of deepest depression, and eventually -- the restoration of his ability to take up his work and to understand himself. It is a thought-provoking book, for these interested in the subject of mental sickness -- and a book with more constructive purpose, more hope, than Lost Weekend held for the alcoholic.

Pub Date: Dec. 25, 1944

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar & Rinehart

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1944

Categories: FICTION