[Michael Juster]

Well, I am glad to see that my Lowell review has sparked two animated threads.

I'm not going to get into a point-by-point exchange, particularly with a couple of people who seem determined to misread my review, but let me make a few general statements:

1) I absolutely DID NOT criticize Jamison for using an older term for "bipolar." "As is Jamison's right as a clinician" was the phrase I used to introduce my ACTUAL criticism that Jamison only belatedly explains her use of terminology; my only criticism in this zone was that many readers will be confused because the explanation of the terminology comes so late in the book. This type of problem is a recurring one with this author--she also hides the ball on the fact that she married into the Lowell family and relied on her husband--not for the recounting of facts, but for expert medical opinion. That feature of the book crosses an ethical line I wouldn't cross.

2) I absolutely do criticize Jamison for largely assuming Lowell's "greatness" as a person and as a poet. In my view Jamison needed to explain what outside of his literary work would justify a claim of "courage." I saw almost no evidence to support her claim, and very little evidence of genuine remorse at any time about the many victims of his physical abuse--most of which were women & some of which were nearly killed. Nowhere in this long book does Jamison identify a non-manic period in which we can more sympathetically judge the character of Lowell. Nowhere in this long book do we see documentation that Lowell found it difficult to return to what he most loved doing after his institutionalizations.

3) My criticism of Jamison on Lowell's poetry is mostly based on her utter failure to make ANY assessment of the poetry and her only limited use of a few positive assessments in the secondary literature. My view of Lowell's work is pretty common: he wrote a few great poems; he wrote a larger number of dreadful poems; and there is a vast amount of other work about which there is much to admire but little to love. I consider myself somewhat open-minded in my assessment of Lowell's work & would have loved to see Jamison use her perspective to enhance my understanding of individual poems--in the way John Irwin's recent bio of Weldon Kees did. It's not that I disagree with Jamison's readings--I disagree with her decision not to even try to use the life to explain the art.

As for the cheap-shot ad hominem remarks, I have promoted bipolar into positions of great responsibility and selected a bipolar person to be the public face of the Social Security Administration--someone who became a cherished friend and co-worker. I actually believe that Jamison's book is unintentionally damaging to the people she clearly wants to help because she seems to argue that they can not be held morally accountable for anything--a standard that would disqualify them from significant jobs. She also consistently skirts history that contradicts her thesis--such as the controversy over The Dolphin and his Vietnam protests.

It is a widely praised but horribly flawed book.