Ned Zeman

Ned Zeman had it all - a career that was going well - he'd just landed a job as an editor at Vanity Fair magazine, a wonderful family, a fantastic group of friends and no lack of female company.

Was it the move? The pressure to succeed in his new position? His somewhat conflicted relationship with his latest girlfriend? Zeman found himself floundering - he was in the grip of a severe depression, soon unable to function. He sought help from therapists, medication and hospitalization. As the depression refused to be shifted and his life was spiralling out of control, Zeman decided to use what many think is a treatment of last resort - electroconvulsive therapy. You and I would probably refer to it as shock therapy with images of Nurse Ratched and Jack Nicholson springing to mind.

He is warned that the one serious side effect is memory loss. It is usually short term, with no lasting problems.

Not so in Ned Zeman's case. His amnesia is pretty much all encompassing. Not such a great thing for a man who makes his living as a writer and reporter. Rules of the Tunnel is Zeman's memoir of his "brief period of madness", reconstructed with help from friends, family, emails, notes and his own brief glimpses into his memory banks.

"You are an amnesiac. A person with impaired memory. In a major way. As in "Where are my pants?" and "What the hell am I doing in Yorba Linda?" As in today is June 15, 2008 and yesterday was January 15, 2007. As in "Where'd my f***ing life go?" and " I did what? When?"

At first the second person narrative annoyed me, until I thought it and realized that this made perfect sense. Without memories, it is if he is writing about someone else's life. This style adds to the sense of detachment.

I found Zeman's recounting of his compulsion to write about those who pushed the boundaries, living on the edge such as Timothy Treadwell, who thought he was 'one with the bears' - until they ate him, fascinating. He seemed to be searching for answers for himself through the exploration of other's lives.

Zeman's recovery is due in a large part to his 'support team'. His circle of friends are unbelievably supportive in helping Ned find his way back. I think their reactions and actions affected me more than Ned's situation. Again, the writing style seemed to put him at a distance from this reader. But, really, can one critique a memoir? This is someone's life that we are privy to. I applaud Zeman for opening up about his struggle and recovery. And encourage everyone to recognize those that could use someone to really ask "How are you?"

"Rules of the Tunnel:

Get up. Get the blood flowing. go somewhere. anywhere. Except to the shooting range or Ohio. Call someone, anyone. Some fifty-five million Americans have a mood disorder and every one of them feels a little less alone when the meet a fellow traveler.

Resistance is futile.
Adapt or die.
The future is yours.
These are the rules of the tunnel."… (more)

Plath, Hemingway, and Sexton among others. Clinical depression (and suicide) are often cozy bedfellows with creativity. Writers seem to be amazingly over-represented amongst the ranks of the depressed. Ned Zeman, a writer and editor for Vanity Fair, chronicles his own years fighting against this bleak and defeating disease in his memoir The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness.

Written after he pursued every treatment avenue possible: talk therapy, anti-depressents, hospitalization, and even ECT (electro-convusive therapy), Zeman tells of the high toll his illness took on his friends, relationships, and family. The ECT affected his memory, making him lose a great chunk of time, and leaving him an amnesiac. Something about his treatments, either the ECT or a reaction to the medications or some other unknown also triggered a lengthy manic episode where Zeman alienated his girlfriend and drove his friends to the brink with his behaviour. But he was one of the lucky ones, having people in his life stand by him throughout his long bout of depression and ultimately seeming to find the even keel he needed to break out of the debilitation that is chronic depression.

Zeman is honest about this period, not sugar coating his own flaws nor his ungrateful reactions to kindness and help. He obviously inspires great loyalty as a friend but the memoir starts too far into his life to explain this given his self-pitying portrayal of himself. The good news is that while he can be incredibly selfish, he is also quite humorous, allowing the reader to laugh despite the seriousness of his situation. The decision to write using a second person narrator was likely made in order to draw the reader closer into Zeman's experience, asking the reader to imagine him or herself directly into the book. A hard convention to pull off, here it is too jarring and pulls the reader out of the text instead. Where the book really sings is in Zeman's recounting of the biographical articles he wrote for Vanity Fair, covering the lives and deaths of unusual people. As he muses on his obsession over these people and looks at depression or bipolar disease as the driving force in their lives, he learns more about himself and the demons that surround him as well. The book was a quick read once I got past the narration and Zeman is humorously self-deprecating. His memoir is an interesting look at depression from the inside, written in an accessible, journalistic style.… (more)