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My Electric Journey Out of Darkness
by Ted Scheinman
Reminiscent of William Styron's Darkness Visible but with an appealing vein of humor, a magnificently written memoir of riding the depression roller coaster, choosing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and finding the path to happiness—with fascinating side-journeys into the nature of identity and memory.
Growing up in a hyper-educated, artistic, eccentric family, Ted Scheinman, the son of a medical doctor and an English professor, spent much of his precocious childhood as a writer and performer—and his greatest performance was as someone who was happy. He recognized his depression early and recorded its effects in a series of tragicomic journals, always hoping that the ritual of doing so would palliate if not cure.
While the clouds occasionally parted, particularly during Ted's years of intellectual questing at Hotchkiss and Yale—and, fleetingly, through his emergence as a successful journalist—his gloom kept returning, seemingly more debilitating each time. Eventually, a series of emotional plunges deposited Ted, at age thirty-five, in a psych ward in Washington, D.C. There, he began an intensive course of electroconvulsive therapy—considered by most a treatment of last resort. The controversial procedure saved his life, but it also exacted a price: he was now missing important pieces of his memory.
By turns deeply gripping, startlingly perceptive, understatedly hilarious, and heartbreakingly poignant, particularly in Ted's depiction of his romantic relationships, Jolt asks: How do our families shape who we are, for good and ill? How much of our character is ingrained versus sculpted by circumstances? How can we adapt when our memory fails? Perhaps most critically: what are we willing to sacrifice to have a chance at life?
Ultimately, this exceptionally engrossing memoir brings hope to anyone who has ever tried desperately to regain their footing and rejoin the world.
"Brilliant. Like some cockeyed modern version of Dante's Virgil, Ted Scheinman takes the reader on a vivid journey through his descent into a depressive inferno and his ascent back out. Only Scheinman's a lot funnier—imagine Virgil with the self-lacerating wit of Carrie Fisher or Augusten Burroughs." —Scott Stossel, National Editor of The Atlantic and bestselling author of My Age of Anxiety
"A beautifully written chronicle. In this generous and deeply compelling memoir, Scheinman probes his family history with compassion and insight—without a whiff of victimhood. His most impressive artistic feat is that he has written a book about devastating depression that is warm, hopeful, and threaded with humor." —Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
This information about Jolt was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ted Scheinman is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine and contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. His 2018 debut, Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan, garnered enthusiastic praise on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. His essays and reporting have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, GQ, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Slate. He and his wife make their home in Washington, DC.
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