Having written extensively as a clinician about intersections between creative genius, madness, depression, and suicide, Jamison examines Lowell’s writing and turmoil. She charts the advent of lithium for his treatment and intricately maps the confluence of hypomania with increased productivity, weighing the effect the illness had on his art ... Jamison’s understanding of literature is also 'fast, compound, legendary'; she draws from a vast knowledge while disclosing this larger than life poet who was loved, hated, and because of brain chemistry, often misunderstood. In addition to the luminaries quoted, her account is enhanced by memories offered by his daughter Harriet Lowell, and the inclusion of previously unreleased medical records that chart his, and his many relatives’, experiences with mental illness.
There are no half measures to Kay Redfield Jamison’s medico-biographical study of poet Robert Lowell. It is impassioned, intellectually thrilling and often beautifully written, despite being repetitive and overlong ... Nonetheless, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire achieves a magnificence and intensity — dare one say a manic brilliance? — that sets it apart from more temperate and orderly biographies. Above all, the book demands that readers seriously engage with its arguments, while also prodding them to reexamine their own beliefs about art, madness and moral responsibility. Reading this analysis of 'genius, mania, and character' is an exhilarating experience ... Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire would be an unqualified triumph were it not for Jamison’s penchant for overkill: Everything is treated a bit too expansively, many points and anecdotes are repeated twice or three times, and rather than quoting one authority, she quotes a half-dozen.
The line between elevated spirits and mania, often recognized only after it has been crossed, is the subject of Kay Redfield Jamison’s groundbreaking book ... Jamison’s book isn’t a biography. It is a case study of what a person with an extraordinary will, an unwavering sense of vocation, and a huge talent—as well as privilege and devoted friends—could and could not do about the fact that the defining feature of his gift was also the source of his suffering ... Jamison’s book is a real contribution to the literary history of New England, whose damaged sages Lowell read as a way to understand his own peril ... Jamison’s study tells us a lot about bipolar disorder, but it can’t quite connect the dots to Lowell’s work. Poetry doesn’t coöperate much with clinical diagnosis.
Two narratives are at war in this book: one about Lowell’s mania and one about his enthralling private life separate from the psych wards. I’m not sure Jamison appreciates all the remarkable material she’s accumulated. So often an anecdote, an observation, an interview is buried here, hidden by a tangent on, say, the history of mania going back to before Christ. Chapters need cutting. There is too much repetition. Still, Jamison has amassed a wealth of fascinating research about Lowell, which should serve scholars for years to come: his medical history, hospital reports, vivid interviews with many of his doctors and close friends, as well as letters and notes including the revealing notebook Lowell kept in 1973.
This book feels very much like a labor of love, even obsession, and perhaps projection: Jamison deeply empathizes with Lowell, and clearly treasures his poetry, which she quotes frequently and at length. Her analytical eye may at times be blinded by her love and admiration for her subject, and yet this is also the best book so far about one of our most polarizing contemporary literary figures ... Jamison is the first biographer who isn’t afraid of Lowell; neither tarnishing his monumental reputation nor admitting that an identification with his insanity intimidates her. Perhaps the time that has passed since his death and the resurgence of his reputation accounts for the former; Jamison’s own struggles with madness certainly account for the latter. While at times her identification with her subject — Lowell, it becomes clear, is a kind of hero to Jamison — clouds her critical vision, Jamison is the first biographer to succeed at humanizing this larger-than-life figure.
Although her approach to Lowell bears some similarities to Ian Hamilton’s 1982 biography in its detailed immersion in the life, Ms. Jamison’s impassioned advocacy and attempt to understand Lowell’s bipolar experience from the inside out are at a far remove from Hamilton’s dispassionate recounting ... Kay Jamison has provided us with a remarkably poignant, in-depth (and occasionally repetitive) look at the making of art under often hair-raising circumstances. She doesn’t skimp on the damage Lowell caused, both to himself and others, when he was at his worst, which makes the insistent re-emergence of his best self an act worth marveling at, as courageous and full of stamina in its way as that of any war hero.
Lowell's struggles with mental illness have been well documented, but this volume offers something unique: a detailed review of his medical records. It’s the first time such information has been made publicly available ... The sole weakness in Jamison’s nuanced, sympathetic portrait is her presentation of mental health research. Complicated data is shoehorned into the story, disrupting the narrative, while sophisticated concepts such as genome-wide association studies are glossed over, presented without explanation, preventing the reader from truly understanding the extraordinary advances that have been made in the study of bipolar disorder. We're brought into the most intimate moments in Robert Lowell’s life, but kept at arm's length from the science behind his erratic behavior.
Jamison, though her focus lies largely on his illness, is keenly aware that Lowell was more often than not sane and lovable; she does not let the reader mistake the madness for the man ... she makes a fairly convincing case that he would not have been the writer he was, or became, if it had not been for his illness ... Setting the River on Fire is a bit too long, in places redundant, at times a bit undisciplined. Jamison wants to cover everything, and her instinct is to include everything...It is, nonetheless, a fascinating and frequently moving book, one that adds considerably to our understanding of a challenging and essential artist, and one that for the most part avoids the standard perils of writing about mental illness in the context of artistic creation.
