Book Tamers| book reviews

When Nietzsche Wept made me wonder how much does a writer’s biography matter to what he writes. But a philosopher’s, a doctor’s- to what they do? I didn’t know that Irvin D. Yalom  is a famous psychiatrist until after I read the novel and my great expectations concerning a story placed at the boundary between reality and fiction weren’t met; after I labeled the book as a good topic used with clumsiness.

But the fact that the author is a psychiatrist explains many of the changes of style, also explains the fascination for some imposing portraits from the history of psychology (psychiatry in particular), the tendency to analyze the characters and to frame them, to reveal the human pattern. For this novel Yalom studied a few exciting possibilities, that Nietzsche, Freud and Breuer could at a given moment be met in the same context, and that the philosopher could have “healed” Breuer of his obsession for Ana O, while he himself is healed of headache and depression.

To consider this book a fictionalized biography seems too much. Yalom rather applies the probability theory on an indefinite field where characters we already know from other books are given a new identity. What is remarkable to this novel is the coherence and steadiness regarding the characters’ identity, given by their personal history, as Yalom sees it (and the way our own prejudices make us see it), by the lack of surprises of their built personality, by the expected ending. I appreciated the fact that within the history created by the author there are no hesitations, discrepancies or harshness. The events come one after another in a way that keeps the reader tensed, the conversations refer to both the genesis of psychoanalysis and Nietzsche’s writing and his portrait is convincing.

However, the way this dynamic history is written doesn’t meet a demanding reader’s expectations. At times arid, at times sentimentally-descriptive, the style tends to be an obstacle for the plot instead of normally describing it, emphasizing the circumstances in which the characters are put or the easiness of the conversations. And Viena’s portrayal at the end of the century is not even by far as lively as one would expect. Yalom could have used the topic Nietzsche at the therapist in a more ingenious way, with more boldness, resorting to the empirical less obviously.

Even if the cover states novel, I read it more like an irresolute account between fiction and biography, without the strength of a novel like Lord Nevermore, where there also appear real characters and events but in a strong, seducing assembly. However, I recommend the book to those who want to come close to Nietzsche’s philosophy or who are vaguely attracted to psychoanalysis and want to find a starting point. Also, I think it can be used as an intermediary reading between aesthetically demanding books or that require more effort.

Written by Mihaela