Writing
In 2005, Barber published Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, an account of his work with the homeless and also the story of his own experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The New England Journal of Medicine compared the book to William Styron’s Darkness Visible and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. The title essay of Songs from the Black Chair won a 2006 Pushcart Prize, and material adapted from the book appeared in The New York Times and on National Public Radio.
In 2008, Barber published Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, a critique of the over-use of psychiatric medications, particularly antidepressants, to treat and medicate everyday life problems. Comfortably Numb was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was called "a blockbuster" by Library Journal. Salon wrote: "Compelling. In Comfortably Numb, Barber brings a street-smart perspective... Offers something several of the other books don't: practical, therapeutic alternatives to antidepressants.”
Barber wrote pieces relating to Comfortably Numb in The Washington Post, Scientific American Mind, and The Nation. In promoting the book, he appeared on Fresh Air and national television. The paperback edition of Comfortably Numb was released by Vintage Books in February, 2009. He is currently writing a novel about a depressed detective who heals himself by solving a crime.
Read more about this topic: Charles Barber (author)
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... in writing you cannot possibly be interesting if what you say is not true, if it is what I call “a true lie,” i.e., a truth which gives the wrong impression. For no matter how subtly you lie in writing, people know it and don’t believe you, and the whole secret of being interesting is to be believed.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“Life.—No, I’ve nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)