Making good on ‘Mirraculas’ challenge
NEW YORK — In 2009, Sandra Allen’s uncle sent her a typewritten manuscript of his life story in ALL CAPS. Bob had been living alone in a trailer in Northern California for years, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and his text, suffice to say, was not an easy read. But Allen was transfixed.
In her compelling debut, “A Kind of Mirraculus Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia,” she deconstructs Bob’s angry yet earnest telling of his life story, from his young adulthood in the Bay Area to his own recollections of repeated institutionalization and treatment. Allen adds in historical, medical and family context and her own lovely prose (she has a graduate degree in creative writing ), but she still allows a most unreliable narrator to tell his own story (with spelling errors and all). The result is both a bracing work of art and a loving tribute to a man whose voice, no matter how unpolished, deserves to be heard. The interview has been edited. You call your book a cover version rather than a translation of your uncle’s manuscript. Why is that?
My story takes this raw material that my uncle sent me — his life story that he typed in all capital letters on his typewriter. He was living alone in the desert for a long time, so it was not necessarily something that other people who didn’t know him seemed to be willing to engage with. I was figuring out, how can I make this something that people will care about? Because my finding, when I was reading his story for the first time, was “Wow, my whole head had been changed.” I wanted to bring more people into that. Fortunately I’ve got this skill set. I’m a writer.
The metaphor of a cover version appeals to me because I think “translation” is not a great word for my interpretation of his text . I like the idea of a cover because Bob was a rock musician and so much of the book is about music. If there’s one thing my uncle and I have in common it’s that we’re both artists. A really good cover, like Jimi [Hendrix] covering the national anthem at Woodstock, gives the song a whole other flair. It adds to what the song itself is. How did you figure out the logistics of turning this text into your own cover version? Did you research mental illness ?
The book contains two threads that each have their own fonts: There’s the cover of Bob’s story, which comprises the bulk of material in the book, and that’s what I spent the first five years writing. My interest wasn’t in writing a book about schizophrenia or anything bigger. I was frankly intimidated by the topic.
When the project became more serious from a publishing standpoint, I had already been trying to get smarter about mental illness. But I knew the stakes had risen — with a major publisher and a subtitle with the word “schizophrenia.” So I spent the last couple of years focusing on the second element of the text that pops in and out, which is in my own voice. And it’s where I add in family context and historical context about Berkeley in the ’60s and ’70s, or about psychiatric history and medical context — what’s known and what’s not known about the category of schizophrenia.
I read everything I could, and I interviewed anyone who I thought might have perspective on this. I spent a lot of time talking to people and reading texts that conflicted with each other. I was trying to get a sense of what is the full picture of the debate and also how can I animate the debate to my reader. Tell me a little more about the debates about schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that’s been around for about a century. It’s a descriptive diagnosis — it’s something that a psychiatrist would observe in a patient. Psychiatric diagnoses like schizophrenia are hypotheses. There’s a debate about whether it’s a valid category, whether schizophrenia refers to something different within the body of someone given that diagnosis than someone who isn’t. Is there something going on in terms of the chemistry of their brain or their genetics? Or could we see something on a brain scan?
The answer right now is they don’t know. It’s an open debate. But what is clear is that the label “schizophrenic” is a very real thing with social consequences. If a doctor tells you you’re schizophrenic, then you believe things about your own body and brain, or your own future and what you can become in life. Bob’s book was very much written in order to make the point that he had been labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic. How is your family dealing with the book?
Bob was a hermit who nonetheless stayed in touch with many members of our family. He didn’t ask anyone’s permission to write down the story of his life, which obviously includes their lives. My hope is that folks who knew Bob will be heartened to see him in this light and also to see his work doing good in the world. Because that was his goal, and that’s my goal.