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July 22, 2007
ross & tom
Ross & Tom: 2 American Tragedies was the latest book on my Summer Reading List. An unauthorized biography, author John Leggett writes the story of two young writers whose lives end in suicide in the late 1940s. Reading the intricacies of what went on in the heads of Ross and Tom as they wrote and attempted to write, as well as the description of simultaneously experiencing publishing success and severe depression, were intriguing.
The stories of Ross and Tom are told independently of each other, but they were in fact living and experiencing their first literary successes around the same time. For both of these men, the road to success played havoc on their pride and insecurities. While the anxieties, paranoias, and depression surrounding great success in a sense seems "normal," the contemporary understanding of mental illness in the 40s led doctors to prescribe electric shock therapies and barbiturates for their severe depression. While the author of Ross & Tom more readily blamed the pitfalls of success and sudden fame as the ultimate downfall of these two men, I was surprised by his lack of recognition of the role that the combination of depression and barbiturates had to of played.
But the intriguing part of the book isn't the few pages of the author's reflections, but the stories of Ross and Tom themselves. I definitely recommend it.
art | By charity | 06:51 PM
Comments
* missed you tonight. i forget - have you seen life is beautiful or cinema paradiso? because i think the coxes once said they didn't see them and.....
Posted by: jane. at July 22, 2007 09:40 PM