Gracefully Insane

Interesting look at the artistic and societal elite who have stayed in America's most famous mental hospital (James Taylor, Ray Charles, Susana Kaysen, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton), as well as the history of the institution itself. (Anne Sexton is actually the one who used the term “Gracefully Insane” for McLean residents).

Incredibly thorough in its account of everything McLean, which is both a blessing and a curse. Beam's writing is clear but anything but concise, and frequently segues into trivial, often unrelated side notes which may or may not be of interest. Each page is littered with names of individuals mentioned only once, random interjections that don't connect to the point, and so on. However, some of these rabbit trails are in fact interesting and even useful to know, and you'll definitely come away with a very broad, inclusive array of information on the subject. I do wish Beam had regularly included sources in footnotes in a more typical APA-type fashion, because some things I would have liked to look up later, but there is a section in the back of the book that details where his information originates (and I believe much of it was in oral form or otherwise unavailable to the public anyway). One thing to note is that this book is not a true account of patients' experiences at McLean, as the title suggests, though snippets of patient accounts are incorporated throughout. Although a great many aspects of the patient experience are included, the use of only small excerpts of patient recollections tends to make the book read more like an account of the institution itself, albeit well-peppered with anecdotes of patient life, than of the advertised “life and death” inside. I went into the book thinking it would be a highly detailed account of the patients and procedures of McLean, focused heavily on patients' own memories and accounts of their experience. In the end, it was not as patient-focused as expected, but proved an interesting and valuable, if occasionally tedious, read.