The myth of mental illness and creativity

Michael Judge writes movingly of his encounter with the late Frank Conroy, author of the superb memoir Stop Time, as a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

I'll always remember Frank because he destroyed me on the pool table night after night at Dave's Fox Head, the roadside bar where I spent most of my nights--and money--in graduate school. ("The long shots are the hard shots, and the hard shots are the side shots!" he used to say with a devilish grin.) And because he was brave and kind enough to talk to a roomful of Iowans about the myths surrounding creativity and mental illness.

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It's more than a decade later, and I still hear his words as if he were speaking to me now. "The artist creates despite these conditions, not because of them." He spoke of his father's problems and of other members of his family who suffered from, among other things, depression. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't recognize some of these tendencies in myself," he said bluntly, but with the same gentle assurance that made him such a fine teacher.