In other cultures, melancholia is considered “a manifest of the sacred” (secular psychologist James Hillman defines depression as “hidden knowledge”); only we in the post-Freudian West see it as a pesky imposition–a bad hair day of the soul. And what was Smith’s depression manifesting to him? That he needed to accept Jesus, plant vegetables and get married. OK. But before you roll your eyes, remember Smith’s as smart as you; he knows how embarrassing his story is. “First the woman, then the church, then the garden, saves the man from himself. He runs like any bourgeois philistine from… nothingness. It wasn’t intellectually reputable.” If such humility is the only cure for depression, some of us will take vanilla. But some of us haven’t suffered like Smith. Thank God, we might add. Oddly, Smith’s thanking God too.
