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Diary of a mad author

Jan Lars Jensen's Nervous System is a captivating chronicle of the delusional descent that followed the sale of his first novel, writes ALEXANDRA GILL

By ALEXANDRA GILL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Vancouver ? Jan Lars Jensen looks relatively sane these days.A pale complexion and the dark circles under his eyes suggest the polite, mild-mannered author in the poplin blue work shirt may still be suffering from insomnia. Thankfully, however, he does not mistake the cafe baristas for armed assassins or scream at his fellow patrons to hit the floor. Nor is he under any delusions that his new memoir may trigger a global apocalypse.

Nervous System: Or Losing My Mind in Literature is a captivating chronicle of Larsen's frightening plunge into madness. Five years ago, soon after selling his first novel to Harcourt Brace in New York, Larsen became increasingly convinced that the publication of his sci-fi thriller would spark a nuclear showdown. Seriously.

That first book, Shiva 3000, is set in a surrealistic India of the future, where the rigid caste system is back in place, Buddhist monks are routinely accosted with dung bricks, mechanized gods bulldoze through the streets, and a new deity, the libidinous Baboon Warrior, is a snout-faced national hero.

Far-fetched? Most definitely, but not nearly as implausible as the post-publication scenario he imagined. Jensen was so sure that his fabricated society and the book's warnings of religious intolerance would outrage Hindus that he honestly believed his publisher would be hit with thousands of defamation suits. Harcourt, he imagined, would pass on the damages to him, bankrupting his family, friends and everyone who knew him.

Recalling his doomsday train of logic, he writes about how he predicted the sea of spiralling lawsuits would eventually pit India against the whole country of Canada. The United States would get caught up in it, too, he figured. And when North Americans resisted transferring all of their material wealth to India, as the international courts would surely dictate, India would use nuclear blackmail to get Russia onside.

"Russia would fire missiles, or the United States would make a pre-emptive strike against Russia, one or the other, it didn't matter at that point, because the missiles would be flying back and forth across the world. The end would begin."

Boom. After several failed attempts to derail the publication of his novel, Jensen attempted suicide and landed in a Vancouver psychiatric ward for three weeks, where he'd lie in bed at night, "waiting for his killer."

Go ahead and call him crazy. That's exactly how Larsen describes his state of mind - later diagnosed as "major depression with delusional thinking" -- during this bizarre episode of prepublication jitters gone totally berserk.

"I'm someone who's delusional and also a writer, so I'm very conscious of finding the right words for things," Jensen explains with the same self-effacing sense of humour that leavens his book. "Crazy is not a word I would use to describe other people - then or now - because it's a pejorative term. But for me, crazy seemed like the only word that did justice to the experience. Mental illness is too innocuous."

Perhaps only a writer would give so much thought to the perfect word to describe his illness. Jensen says he certainly believes there is a link between mental illness and artistic endeavour.

"There are a lot of things about writing that are depressing," Jensen says, listing off imposed isolation, the sadomasochist ritual known as rejection slips and compulsive rewriting as some of the craft's more neurotic tendencies.

In Nervous System, he describes the similarity between the paranoia he felt in the psychiatric ward and the rush he first experienced as a creative-writing student at the University of Victoria when everything clicked and a story began to write itself. "I remember it happening in university," recalls Jensen, who is now 35 and lives in Calgary. "I thought 'this feels like I'm going crazy' -- but in a positive sense."

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for that feeling to escalate out of control. After graduation, he moved back home to the Fraser Valley, where he married his high-school sweetheart, worked in a community library and pounded away at his book.

And as he systematically recounts in Nervous System, it was much more than just the simple act of writing that drove him crazy. The overload of information in a wired society, websites that confirmed his worst fears, his mother's own suicide attempt, a bad reaction to anti-malarial pills and the two-sided fear of success and/or failure are among the many interwoven catalysts he feels might have contributed to his unhinging.

When hospitalized, Jensen swore he would never write again. Mind you, the potpourri of medications he was taking made it nearly impossible to read. He eventually returned to the keyboard, although his psychiatrist wondered whether his chosen topic - David and Goliath, from Goliath's point of view -- was a wise one. He has since finished the manuscript, and is shopping for a new publisher.

"I don't know how much they even knew about my situation," he says of Harcourt, the publisher that dropped him. "For them, the main thing is the bottom line and there was no financial incentive for them. I'm not sure how many copies [of Shiva 3000] were sold, but it didn't earn out its advance and the advance was not huge."

Although Jensen admits to still having mixed feelings about the Internet, Nervous System actually began as a blog on his website. He began writing it about three years ago.

"For the longest time, I just wanted to forget about that episode and put it behind me. Then there just came a time when I wanted to remember certain themes and details while I still could, and try to make something positive out of that whole experience.

"Someone in a call-in show said to me: 'You can write this book because you're well.' That's true. No two mental illnesses are alike, but to be able to make it real for the reader, to make it less taboo of a topic, and raise awareness, the more chances there might be for people to recognize it in themselves and in others."

When the publication date loomed, Jensen says he didn't have any serious bouts of anxiety. "It might have been that I was so close to the events, I felt better about them being in print. Everything about this process felt better."

Jensen isn't on medication any more. But ever mindful of the fact that depression will likely hit again, he keeps an emergency prescription around.

"I don't want to sound like a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industries - I had some terrible reactions to some of the meds I was taking. But if I had discovered alprazolam, or Xanax, many years ago, I think I would have led a happier life over all."

Since being discharged from the hospital, Jensen has pored through many books on depression.

"A lot of people wonder if depression has a purpose. It's been with us for so long - is there some evolutionary reason for it? The thing that interests me about depression is that thoughts of death are a symptom. My theory is, if depression has a purpose, it's to make us remember we're mortal, when we're otherwise healthy, and think about what we're doing with our time, which is ultimately limited. What is your purpose and what are you doing with yourself? I think that's what I ended up asking myself."

That said, if Jensen could turn back time, he would gladly forsake the newfound purpose of his writing, which he describes as finding truth in the bigger scheme of things. "I would probably give up both these books just to avoid that whole experience."

Posted by thinkum at April 21, 2004 09:47 AM