Harnisch (The Oxygen Tank, 2016, etc.) offers a novel about the complicated world of a mentally ill mind.

Benjamin J. Schreiber, who suffers from a range of psychiatric disorders, finds himself in court-mandated therapy with Dr. C. “It was either therapy or prison,” Dr. C tells readers, following an incident in which Ben acted oddly at a so-called “non-cash bank.” Ben then embarks on a journey to investigate his troubled world. Using writing as a release and Dr. C as a guide, Ben explores the realm of his alter ego, one “Georgie Gust,” detailing their intertwined lives. The murkiness of their relationship is summed up by Ben’s insistence that he will often “send [Georgie] gifts and then keep them for myself.” As a result, the novel puts into  play the ambiguity of reality. The concept of fractured identities is at the heart of this adventure that encompasses a visit to a foot-fetish club and family recollections: “Life with mother was always borderline this, crisis-after-crisis that.” In other words, it’s an adventure that’s as scattered as the disorders it portrays. It throws in a generous collection of literary devices, including diary entries, parenthetical pet peeves (“Backs always itch where and when I can’t reach to scratch”), and the controlling character of Claudia Nesbitt, who engages in various, unusual sexual activities. If it all sounds disorienting, that would seem to be the author’s intention. Readers intrigued by such a swerving tale can expect to encounter all manner of kookiness and, ultimately, honesty; as one journal entry insists, “I let my freak flag shine with my mentally ill mind and unsurpassed resiliency.” That said, the novel is occasionally repetitive (the terms “schizophrenia” and “schizophrenic” appear with enough frequency to lose their meaning) and unapologetically crude (“Her vagina looked so lonely”), so it’s certainly not a story for the squeamish or those seeking more conventional constructions.

A scattered account of a scatterbrained life with all manner of depravity and, underneath it all, earnestness.

A brief novel about an ambitious man that’s different from the usual fare.

Harnisch (Freaks, 2016, etc.) introduces readers to John Marshall (born Juan Marcinal), a young man who’s seduced in the prologue by a prostitute, Chantal. She gives him a picture of Che Guevara, who is, in her view, the archetypal seducer, and encourages John to follow in Che’s footsteps. John, who survived a miserable childhood, means to escape his station in life by seducing well-connected women and winding up at the top of the heap. He’s introduced to Clyde and Maribelle Roman as a tutor to their children and to a woman named Lauren; later, John seduces Maribelle. Also in John’s life are two priest, Father Padric and Father Peter, who help him in his rise. The author seems to be asking readers to see John as a religious figure, but this status is never really made clear. From the Romans, John moves on to the Sinclair family. Mr. Sinclair is a hotel magnate, and John becomes his secretary, aiming to turn himself into a gentleman. John seduces (and impregnates) the Sinclair daughter, Claudia, and then shoots Maribelle before other, unexpected story developments occur. There’s enough plot to fill twice the number of pages in this slim book, but there are also many questions: what’s the significance of the Che Guevara business? What is John’s (or Juan’s) background? Readers aren’t told, and they’re left adrift in so many parts of the narrative that it’s very hard to characterize the story as a whole. It seems to be set in the present day (for example, there are laptop computers), but, on the other hand, there are archaic notes (carriages, a highly structured society) which evoke, perhaps, the 18th century. The end of the book is so Dickensian, in fact, that readers may suspect that it’s a sendup of that style and will wonder if Harnisch has just been teasing them. If readers enjoy that sort of thing, then they will like this.

Readers may find it hard to make head or tail of this novella—which, believe it or not, may be the secret of its perverse charm.

Harnisch’s (Porcelain Utopia, 2016, etc) unconventional work of fiction documents its protagonist’s chronic mental illness.

Benjamin J. Schreiber, recently out of rehab, lives a life of arrant dissipation, lost in a world of alcohol and drugs. He documents his life and obsessions in his journal, The Secret Sex Diaries of Benjamin J Schreiber. Sometimes, Benjamin writes in the first person, other times in the third, describing the frantically lascivious exploits of his alter ego, Georgie. Other times, the narrative unfolds in the form of correspondence between Benjamin and this therapist, nebulously named “Dr. C.” Georgie meets (or, maybe, he conjures) Claudia, a sultry sexpot who becomes his sexual companion, wife, muse, and perpetual source of angst. At one point, they’re married and live in a sprawling mansion; at another, Claudia is his older, French inamorata, and they rob banks together. Harnisch announces in a prefatory note that the book is composed in a nonlinear fashion as a series of Benjamin’s potentially hallucinatory imaginings. However, this note is unnecessary and even condescending, as none of the competing storylines seem plausible enough (or are delivered sedately enough) to be other than fantastical. Also, the prose is, at best, uneven: “ ‘Photograph me, Georgie,’ she whispers. ‘Picture me. Print me. Capture me and keep me in your memory. I just love, love, love pictures. Take more pictures of me. Please, please, please, Georgie-boo-boo!’ ” Eventually, after a tragedy, Georgie desperately attempts to keep his memories alive by constructing a wax museum. The author is to be commended for considerable ambition, as it takes some audacity to thoroughly dispense with the traditional structure of the novel to more palpably represent Benjamin’s profound illness. However, Benjamin is the only character that’s given even a hint of depth, and readers’ only access to him is through his maniacal reveries. The book’s principal defect isn’t merely that it’s hard to follow, but that it’s impossible for readers to care enough to make the effort worthwhile.

An admirably daring account of psychosis, but one that’s too disjointed to sustain interest.

Harnisch (Freak, 2016, etc.) presents a semiautobiographical book of meditations on mental illness and the world at large.

The author explains in an introduction that his book is “an intentionally non-linear, plotless narrative that reflects the chaotic structure of Jonathan Harnisch’s mind.” And, as the contents make evident, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a more apt description. The 21 short chapters feature titles ranging from the raunchy “Ode to Granny the Tranny: Nurse Natalie” to the more perplexing “I am a Responsive Santa on Steroids.” The book was written, to some extent, as a response to Myriam Gurba’s 2011 book Wish You Were Me, and it offers a loose foray into Harnisch’s thinking that’s full of singsong prose (“Maybe at a museum. At the MOMA—The motherfucking Museum of Modern Art”). Topics include schizophrenia and a lost connection with actor Mel Gibson: “He and I have built memories together, just memories, and the resurrection of reconnecting. We haven’t been in touch since 2005 or 2006.” There’s also a graphic love rant (“I’m sick over you. I want to throw up all my love on you”) and a note on personal endurance (“my resilience emanates from the greatest lesson I’ve learned: laughter”). This book is every bit as free-wheeling as the introduction implies, providing a glimpse at its author’s inner workings—both in its flights of fancy and in its more earnest sentiments. It’s in the tradition of such other autobiographical writers as Kathy Acker (described herein as the author’s “fantasy date”), and it provides a light skim across the waters of a self-described “mentally ill artist” who’s not all too keen on how readers will feel about any of it: “Wander the reader astray, do not attempt to care for the reader, kill the reader.” Overall, it’s an assuredly brief collage of varied, unabashedly unpolished feelings.

An untethered collection of one man’s thoughts that introduces readers to the possibilities of chapbook-style constructions. 

A teenager struggling with mental illness bonds with a classmate and his philosophy teacher in Harnisch’s (Porcelain Utopia, 2016, etc.) latest novel.

After Ben Schreiber enters Wakefield Academy, his new boarding school, “Georgie Gust,” his angry alter ego, takes over. The school’s popular crowd, particularly its athletes, mock the oddball newcomer’s behavior, including his twitching caused by Tourette’s syndrome. The boy seeks escape in alcohol and, at one point, engages in anonymous sex with two girls he meets at a local bar. Yet the teenager also has other, sweeter experiences, which he relates in the first person, including in diary entries addressed to a “Dr. C.” He forms connections with Claudia, an “attractive, conservative, troubled girl” dating the school’s top jock, and Heidi, his encouraging philosophy class instructor. He hangs out with Claudia at the cliffs near the school, as well as at the town street fair, and she even allows him to kiss her. Thanks to Heidi’s support, he gains the confidence to compete for the Winterbourne, a student essay contest that his parents would like him to win, as its prize money would pay for college. Claudia and Heidi are also in mourning: Claudia’s policeman father committed suicide some time ago, and Heidi’s sister with cerebral palsy recently died. By novel’s end, Ben has made significant progress but also suffers a shocking loss. Harnisch, who acknowledges his own schizoaffective disorder, has written several other novels featuring Ben Schreiber. This latest iteration tones down the erotica of past permutations, which have included an adult Claudia serving as a torturer-for-hire. The result here is a more palatable tale of teens that offers a striking snapshot of mental illness, as well as some sympathetic secondary characters. Unfortunately, although this impressionistic narrative effectively reflects Ben’s fractured mental state, it also feels incomplete, as 14 pages are taken up by synopses and chapter breakdowns; it also leaves several plot points unexplained, including who “Dr. C” is and how much other characters are aware of Ben’s condition.

An arresting, if underdeveloped, depiction of teen angst and mental disorders.

Kirkus Reviews has removed our review of Jonathan Harnisch’s novella When We Were Invincible, which was submitted to Kirkus Indie for review, because the author incorporated some of the work of Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Karl Marx without attribution. The amount of plagiarized content was under 2 percent.

A collection of personal essays exploring the author’s experiences battling schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

Prolific writer and filmmaker Harnisch (Porcelain Utopia, 2016, etc.) explores his personal struggle with mental disorders in this short collection of autobiographical pieces that he originally wrote for his “online community dedicated to mental health.” Throughout his adult life, he writes, he’s received myriad diagnoses from doctors, including PTSD, depression, and schizoaffective disorder. His book elucidates the day-to-day activities of a person who suffers from such conditions, and the author mentions frequent communication with therapists, a demanding cigarette addiction, and many sleepless nights. At times, the prose is hard to parse, and the content can feel repetitive. However, the author shares some incredible insights into what it’s like to suffer from the rarely understood symptoms of schizophrenia. In one essay, for example, he describes his experience of paranoia: “We have become the target of a vast conspiracy stretching on invisible webs….It lives in the telephone wires, the cell towers, the papers, and even online….It nests in the hearts and minds of my family, friends, and loved ones.” He also sheds light on what it’s like to suffer from delusions: “Symbols, mythology, and connections, even coincidences, take on a very deep and personal meaning, a very deep and personal context.” Ultimately, although this work is challenging and heavy, it’s also uplifting, as the author never loses hope for recovery; instead, he remains tirelessly optimistic: “I keep moving ahead, as always, knowing deep down inside that I am a good person and that I am worthy of a good life.”

A courageous, if difficult, self-portrait of one man’s suffering as well as his hope for recovery.

A surrealistic psychological novel about one man’s struggle to know his own mind.

The latest work from Harnisch (Living with Serious Mental Illness and Physical Disabilities, 2016, etc.) details the story of a man named Ben, a writer and long-term mental patient who’s been through the psychiatric treatment mill for a significant chunk of his life. He’s had a wide variety of diagnoses, from schizoaffective disorder to Tourette’s syndrome, and he’s been in torrid, mostly unhealthy relationships with a variety of women, including the domineering, alluring Claudia Nesbitt, with whom he’s obsessed. Ben’s accounts of his thoughts and adventures ripple with writerly affect; he’s constantly aware of his own way with words, and he holds his talent in high regard: “I’ll stick a lotta non sequiturs and utilize some wit in crafting the individual sentences,” he writes, “and who knows, they might even border on brilliant.” The key figure in his accounts is Georgie, his alter ego and repository of many of his strongest, most troubling urges. “Georgie comes and goes,” he writes, “but he’s always been a part of me.” Indeed, he’s an invented lightning rod for some of the impulses he’s trying to control. The bulk of Harnisch’s novel deals in a picaresque, roundabout way with Ben’s efforts to come to grips with his own mental state. Ben’s life is filled with sex and drugs, and the author describes these elements with an unvarnished directness that some readers will find unnerving and perhaps distasteful (the sex-related language, in particular, is quite explicit). But that same feral directness is part of the point of the narrative, as it underscores Ben’s intense grappling with the chaos inside and outside his head. Some of Harnisch’s storytelling devices work better than others—the narrative’s rapid time shifts are particularly jarring—but the book as a whole is compelling.

A bluntly honest psychosexual odyssey.

A young man battling extreme mental illness brings his sadomasochistic fantasies to life in Harnisch’s (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) latest novel.

As this riveting story opens, Georgie Gust, a suicidal Tourette’s syndrome patient, tells his doctor he wants to leave the mental institution where he’s been committed. When the doctor puts him off, Gust finds himself buffeted by violent fantasies of escape, and he even prepares to hang himself. The novel plunges readers into the mind of a man at war with his own urges, memories, and sexual obsessions. After a scene shift, Gust’s chauffeur, Ben, delivers him to his empty home, where Margaret, his only friend, visits to check on him. However, she annoys him because “she seems to care.” Later, Gust, a foot fetishist, gives a pedicure to his sexy neighbor, Claudia, in a scene lit with unexpected poetry and poignancy. As the narrative viewpoint flickers among Gust, Ben, and a quasi-omniscient third-person perspective, Gust’s voracious appetite for pain prompts him to hire Claudia to torment him. (He has wealthy parents, so he spends cash liberally.) When Claudia’s house goes up in flames, she moves in with him, and their sadomasochistic bond descends into extraordinary, hallucinatory violence. In Claudia’s hands, Gust discovers new depths of masochism, and she finds joy in tormenting him. Despite the garishness, brutality, and squalor of many passages (which are not for the squeamish), more sophisticated readers will appreciate the extraordinary feat Harnisch has accomplished. He lucidly, poignantly conveys a mind riven with what are, after all, human vulnerabilities: mental pathologies, shameful fantasies, anguished doubts about the natures of reality, love, and memory. In the hands of a lesser writer, these themes would splinter the narrative. Fortunately, the author masters his material; readers will believe the voices that vivify it and compassionately wish them to find the healing that eludes them.

An extraordinary, harrowing odyssey into an embattled self, full of humor, compassion, and a rare understanding of mental illness.

Harnisch (Second Alibi, 2014, etc.) offers a novel that investigates the fractured mind of a schizophrenic.

“Let’s get the facts straight up front, to avoid any confusion later,” the author states at the start of this wild, candid book. “I am a person first, a human being, just like anyone else. Maybe a little different, that’s all.” That difference is a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and this extensive work explores the realities of mental illness through a whirlwind of fictional, narrative pieces and personal reflections. Along the way, it takes readers to places of depravity and confusion. Its characters include Ben Schreiber, a precocious but mentally ill youngster in Armani jeans, who explains his troubled life to the ever-calm Dr. C, after trying to rob a bank with a cellphone. Schreiber discusses his alter ego, Georgie Gust, a masochist and foot-fetishist, who’s wealthy enough to pay his neighbor Claudia to torture him; indeed, he seems capable of enduring any type of humiliation, so long as it doesn’t involve actually working. The first-person narrator regularly interrupts the proceedings to offer generally off-topic details: “(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Commercials for unappetizing products shown at meal times…feminine hygiene products, jock itch, yeast infections, etc.” The scattered narrative uses diverse literary mechanisms, to say the least, mixing elements such as journal entries, a screenplay, a straightforward melodrama involving a Tourette’s sufferer at a private school, occasional celebrity name-dropping (“I met Joanna Cassidy, Dick Van Dyke, Robert Downey Jr, Mel Gibson, and others”), and a dapper figure named John Marshal, who, when asked his opinion of a party, responds, “I’d scarcely be a good judge of that…. My life is taken up with writing.” Making sense of it all in any traditional way, it would seem, isn’t really the point. From horrific scenes of child abuse (“She did. She raped me. My grandmother”) to glimpses of triumph (“I can start taking control of my life”), this long book’s many scenes of anguish and hope are difficult to take in, by any estimation. Whether readers will find the difficulty worthwhile depends largely on their tolerance for twisted tales.                  

A repetitive, explicit, fractured, lengthy and honest book, with an overall effect that mimics the confusion of its title.

A semiautobiographical exploration of mental illness from Harnisch (An Alibiography, 2014).

With conditions ranging from tobacco addiction to schizophrenia, this mixture of personal reflections, fictional characters and a portion of a screenplay investigates what makes the mentally ill tick. Writing at times as his fictional protagonist Ben Schreiber, other times as Ben’s alter ego, Georgie Gust, and occasionally as himself, the author takes readers on a journey involving troubled young men with troubled young minds. The narrators—including, in various narrative formats, the psychologist Dr. C; Claudia, the seductive neighbor; and an older, supportive wife named Kelly—grapple with their psychological problems for the benefit of the reader. What, the reader may wonder, is it like to suffer from the hallucinations of schizophrenia combined with the tics of Tourette’s syndrome? As the author asks, “What do you do when people assume your truths are delusions?” The answers to such questions and the ways in which they are portrayed prove complex. Mixing diary entries concerning the daily struggles of the fictional Georgie with a screenplay detailing past abuses of the fictional Ben, messages are often jumbled though not without merit. For instance, when the narrator announces that “I had a paranoid spell last night. [My wife] was texting me, and I was convinced that it was my stepmother impersonating my wife,” the sting of schizophrenic paranoia is made real. As the author says: “Of course my life would be easier without schizophrenia—sure I wish I didn’t have this condition.” Occasional statements prove less than informative—“Sometimes I’m more productive than at other times”—and throughout the book, even the most careful of readers are likely to feel some confusion navigating scenes including a sexually abusive grandmother and chapter endings such as “Georgie places the letter in his messy desk’s drawer and walks out with a winter coat on and the whole scene changes completely.” Whether all such elements come together to form a memorable impression of illness or merely a collection of fragmented stories depends greatly on the reader’s willingness to follow along on the path provided, no matter how many twists and dead ends are on the way.

Wildly varied in style and content, making for an informative and strange trip through the experience of mental disorders.

A fragmented debut novel about life lived under a fog of schizophrenia from author Harnisch.

Benjamin J. Schreiber has a number of problems, not the least of which being that he tried to rob a bank with a cellphone. Mentally ill, though protected by a powerful father and a trust fund, Ben finds himself in therapy instead of jail. While in therapy, Ben explores his alter ego, a masochist named Georgie Gust. Much like Ben, Georgie depends on wealthy parents; a state of affairs that he uses to explore all types of humiliation and kinky sex. After Georgie hires a neighbor named Claudia to torture him in new and inventive ways, he succumbs to a type of twisted love only his peculiar mind and circumstances could produce. Book Two drifts back in time and finds a high school-aged Georgie attending a prestigious private school in New England. Afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome, Georgie has a hard time making friends. When Claudia, the girlfriend of a popular lacrosse player, takes an interest in him, it naturally causes problems. Following chapters become yet more disordered, with names and afflictions repeated, though the circumstances tend to vary. It’s 1987, and the reader sees Ben’s suburban New York family home being remodeled while his unhappy mother goes about her private demise. Later Georgie marries a woman named Clio, though he longs for a waitress named Claudia. At one point, Jonathan Harnisch introduces himself as a mentally ill artist in a string of beat-like sentences: “Thoughts. Thoughts bombard my head, my brain. My psyche.” What is the reader to make of these worlds of obsessions, disorders and well-to-do young men? Those looking for an anchor in this swirling sea will have difficulty finding one. Taken as a fictionalized account of a disparate mind, the book succeeds—although not without moments of melodrama and repetition. Claudia and Georgie’s teenage relationship often proves no more exciting than an after-school TV special, but at another point in the book, when the torturer-for-hire Claudia must find new levels of debasement to explore, Georgie’s pain is very real and not for the faint of heart.

As complex as the disorder it seeks to explore; makes for a frequently disquieting read.