The first that he uses himself is of a tree wrapped around by a vine at some point, the vine squeezes the life out of the tree. Solomon writes that depression can only be evoked by metaphors (the abyss, the edge, the darkness).

The result is scary but far from dispiriting at times, Solomon's voice, calling to us from beyond the frontier, achieves a lonely rapture. Depression is a country that the undepressed can't enter, but Solomon, who has travelled there and knows it well, bends all his energy and talent as a writer to sending us snapshots from this terrifying land (mood, he writes, 'is a frontier like deep ocean or deep space'). Yet The Noonday Demon stands as a testament to all those qualities that are lost during times of deathly meaninglessness: it describes numbness with vitality, wretchedness with poetry, lovelessness with passion, fear with exuberance, slack-jawed horror with wit and tenderness, deadly silence with this fervent outpouring of words. In depression, he says over and over again, life loses its meaning the 'only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance'. Love, loss and despair ring out their melancholy notes. OL15844319W Page_number_confidence 96.72 Pages 582 Partner Innodata Ppi 300 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20200303194001 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 1176 Scandate 20200303033545 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9780684854670 Tts_version 3.In his first sweeping sentences, he gathers up the themes and even the words that will resonate through the following pages of linked autobiography, history, science, analysis, wrenched and luminous meditation on life and pain. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 17:00:54 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA1789408 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Col_number COL-609 Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

The noonday demon by andrew solomon