Ballard for University of Illinois Press’s Modern Masters of Science Fiction series, I decided to work exclusively on the Schreber book.
Finally, after I finished my monograph on J.G. I kept putting the book aside to work on other projects. Whatever the case, I treated each chapter like a poem, polishing every word and string of syntax, trying to create a certain cadence and rhythm.
Most of the chapters are straight fiction or nonfiction. I didn’t know where it would go or what it would amount to, although I wanted the style to reflect the subject matter, and I felt like it needed to be an antioedipal schiz-flow, with chapters that could be read on their own, in and of themselves, or as a totality. Finally, around 2010 or so, I started to write a book on him. I found myself unconsciously writing bits and pieces of his experiences into my stories and novels. Schreber’s madness was unique and dynamic, and that’s what drew me to him. I remain fascinated by the pragmatism, ease, and downright banality with which Schreber articulates the most nightmarish, surreal, bizarre phenomena, as if being raped by God and becoming a messiah is as ordinary as eating soup. Thereafter, Schreber started bleeding into my writing, especially the fiction. It was essentially a reading of how Proyas extrapolated Memoirs. In 2005, my article appeared in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Deleuze and Guattari’s depiction of him as a machinic body without organs was particularly compelling. During my research, I came across Freud’s famous 1911 case study, and I realized that a lot of literary critics and cultural theorists had referenced Schreber. I loved the film and wanted to write an article on it. The film is a loose science fictionalization of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, an autobiographical account of the German Judge’s schizophrenic breakdowns written between 19. What was your first encounter with the life of Daniel Paul Schreber? And when did you first realize that you wanted to write about him?Īlex Proyas’s Dark City introduced me to Schreber twenty years ago in 1999. I talked with Wilson about the genesis of the book and its unexpected scope via email. In revisiting the life of a man best-known for Sigmund Freud’s writing on his case, Wilson details the ways in which Schreber remains relevant today - and traces the way he’s left his mark on everything from medical history to popular culture.
It’s also an utterly gripping literary work, one that takes bold risks and makes incredible use of an unconventional structure. Harlan Wilson, is a nearly indescribable blend of unsettling fiction, historical rumination, and cultural criticism.
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