Monkey mind A memoir of anxiety

Review by Booklist Review

This is no recovery memoir, Smith writes. Let me warn you now. Right there, you know this isn't one of your usual overcoming-adversity memoirs. When the book ends, Smith is still full of his anxieties, but he's better able to deal with them. Not as traumatic as Mark Vonnegut's The Eden Express (1975), which was about its author's descent into insanity, but written with the same sort of clarity and self-deprecating humor, the book explores Smith's anxiety and the intense irony of his mother being a psychotherapist and fellow anxiety sufferer. Anxiety, he tells us, is the most common psychological complaint, a clinical condition that is pretty much universal. Smith also explores the counterphobic impulse, which drives an anxious person to move toward rather than away from the thing that is causing the anxiety. Is that a sign of masochism, or is it a way for us to confront our fears? The book is one man's story, but at its core, it's about all of us, and anyone who reads it should find a few takeaways.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Anxiety is no laughing matter, yet afflicted journalist and editor Smith uses humor (such as his use of maxi pads to stem his profuse armpit sweat) as he explains the excess of thought and emotion also known as "Monkey Mind" in Buddhism. He traces its roots to his psychotherapist mother, a woman whose life is riddled with attacks she actively works to overcome in her 40s. Smith's attacks are exacerbated by the loss of his virginity in a menage a trois with two predatory older women whose advances he's too angst-ridden to rebuff. Smith also reflects on college, where the abundance of freedom and absence of personal space induces frequent tear-choked calls home. After graduation, he embarks on his first romance and lands a fact-checking job at the Atlantic. There, he writes his first article, which results in a libel lawsuit. When his two-year relationship falls apart, he steps out of his stress-addled head long enough to heed the advice of his therapist. Reading the harsh comments posted online about his article and tracking his thoughts and behavior for triggers helps him reroute his psychological circuitry and win his ex back. Smith does a skillful job of dissecting the mechanics of anxiety as well as placing the reader in his fitful shoes. Agent, Melanie Jackson. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Smith, author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and a contributor to various publications including American Scholar, Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, and Slate, explores what it means both to be momentarily anxious and to suffer from long-term anxiety. He understands that the same impulse that causes humans to run from wolves can also cause them-and those surrounding them-immense pain. Read by Paul Michael Garcia, the audiobook is by turns somber and hilarious. Smith, whose insights are hard-won, has written an intelligent and amusing memoir that traces anxiety's intellectual history and its influence on contemporary America. VERDICT Recommended for fans of self-help and memoir.-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Intimate, compelling memoir exploring the boundaries of the author's severe anxiety. Raised in a neurotic family consisting of two anxious parents and a brother suffering from hypochondria, Smith's (Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination, 2007) anxiety began in childhood. By his mid-20s, he had suffered multiple serious anxiety attacks. On the surface, Smith's life seemed happy. He recently graduated from college with honors, had a great job, loyal friends, a nice place to live and a wonderful girlfriend. "Yet every day was torture," he writes. "I slept fitfully, with recurring nightmares--tsunamis, feral animals, the violent deaths of loved ones. I have intestinal cramps and nausea and headaches. A sense of impending catastrophe colored every waking moment." Combining a droll tone and a sharp eye for detail, Smith chronicles his consuming physical and mental symptoms. He unrelentingly gnawed his nails until they became a bloody mess. Sweat, "the great unspoken foe of the chronically anxious," receives its own chapter. During a temporary job, the author squashed wads of toilet paper into his armpits, hoping the trick would stem the tide of his sweat. During a chat with his supervisor, he leaned over her desk and "the wad dislodged, rolled down my shirt sleeve, and landed beside her keyboard with a sickening splat." In addition to his personal stories, Smith describes the character traits exhibited by the different types of anxiety sufferers. He compares homesickness to anxiety and explains the radical difference between anxiety and panic attacks. During college, Smith perused the library, using literature as a diagnostic tool; he found Philip Roth's writing especially helpful. The author eventually found solace in meditation and cognitive therapy. Smith's narrative smoothly juxtaposes clinical language with often-excruciating details of a life lived within the painful framework of severe anxiety. A true treasure-trove of insight laced with humor and polished prose.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Monkey Mind 1. genesis The story begins with two women, naked, in a living room in upstate New York. In the living room, the blinds have been drawn. The coffee table, which is stained and littered with ashtrays, empty bottles, and a tall blue bong, has been pushed against the far wall. The couch has been unfurled. It is a cheap couch, with no springs or gears or wooden endoskeleton; its cushions unfold flat onto the floor with a flat slapping sound: thwack. Also on the floor are several clear plastic bags containing dental dams, spermicidal lubricant, and latex gloves. There is everything, it seems to me, but an oxygen tank and a gurney. I am hunched in an awkward squat behind a woman on all fours, a woman who is blond and overweight. Her buttocks are exposed and her knees are spread wide--"presenting," they call it in most mammalian species. I am sixteen years old. I have never before seen a vagina up close, an in-person vagina. My prior experience has been limited to two-dimensional vaginas, usually with creases and binding staples marring the view. To mark the occasion, I would like to shake the vagina's hand, talk to it for a while. How do you do, vagina? Would you like some herbal tea? But the vagina is businesslike and gruff. An impatient vagina, a waiting vagina. A real bureaucrat of a vagina. I inch closer on the tips of my toes, knees bent, hands out, fingers splayed--portrait of the writer as a young lecher. The air in the room smells like a combination of a women's locker room and an off-track betting parlor, all smoke and sweat and scented lotions. My condom, the first I've had occasion to wear in anything other than experimental conditions, pinches and dims sensation, so that my penis feels like what I imagine a phantom limb must feel like. The second woman has brown hair done up in curls, round hips, and dark, biscuit-wide nipples. She lies on the couch, waiting. As I proceed, foot by foot, struggling to keep my erection and my balance at the same time, her eyes coax me forward. She is touching herself. Now the target vagina is only a foot away. Now I feel like a military plane, preparing for in-air refueling. I feel, also, like a symbol. This is why I am here, ultimately. This is why, when the invitation was extended ("Do you want to stay? I want you to stay"), I accepted, and waited who knows how long in the dark room for them to return. How could I have said no? What I had been offered was every boy's dream. Two women. The dream. Through a haze of cannabis and cheap beer, I bolster my courage with this: the dream. What I am about to do is not for myself. It is for my people, my tribe. Dear friends, this is not my achievement. This is your achievement. Your victory. A fulfillment of your desires. Oh poor, suffering, groin-sore boys of the eleventh grade, I hereby dedicate this vagina to-- It is then that the woman coughs. It is a rattling, hacking cough. A cough of nicotine and phlegm. And the vagina, which is connected to the cough's apparatus by some internal musculature I could not possibly have imagined before this moment, winks at me. With its wild, bushy, thorny lashes, it winks. My heart flutters. My breathing quickens. I have been winked at by a vagina that looks like Andy Rooney. I feel a tightness in my chest and I think to myself, Oh dear lord, what have I gotten myself into? Excerpted from Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B. Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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