By
– November 10, 2011
Danny Evans’s Rage Against the Meshugenah is a memoir of male depression: what the disease looks and feels like, societal issues that complicate coping, the subtle return of normalcy that heralds recovery. Evans assumes two jobs here: recounting his experience as an instructive example and offering support and advice for men who find themselves similarly stricken.
Evans elaborates his message of support with unflinching honesty and goofy good humor. He writes in a friendly, straightforward tone, enlivened by regular, and often quite funny, flights into hyperbolic description. His observations are sharp and lively, but his analyses are expressed in cliché language that renders them unremarkable. Surely no reader will be surprised to learn that dredging buried childhood emotions is hard but ultimately rewarding work. Evans is consistently likable, but not always compelling.The most surprising and important moments are when Evans admits that the disease made him not just unhappy, not just unlikable, but downright bad. In a bracing and unstinting self-examination, he describes how the numbness caused by depression nearly ruined his relationships with his wife and children — without making excuses or apologies. In the book’s grittiest and least humorous moment, Evans is a fearless advocate for men with depression, reassuring his readers that it’s ok if the disease diminished you — don’t feel ashamed; seek help.
Joshua Daniel Edwin was born into a family of incurably compulsive readers in Baltimore, MD. He now lives in Brooklyn, and is a student in Columbia University’s MFA program in Creative Writing.