Tentacles, Anchors and Shifts: Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

When this book came out a few months ago, students in my eighth grade classrooms clamored for it. One student in particular, a girl whose opinion I hold in very high esteem, gushed endlessly about the book. Another student bragged to me about having gone to Barnes and Noble to get his book signed by the author. What eighth grader brags about getting a book signed? It is rare. Thus I said to myself, What is up with this book? Who is this Ned Vizzini? I asked around. My neighbor happens to be a YA fiction writer and also works for a publishing house. She had a bad personal experience* with Mr. Vizzini and didn't have much good to say about him, which was an interesting counterpoint to the heaps of ardor I'd been hearing. Now I was truly intrigued. I bought the hardback(!) which has a neat cover.

NUTSHELL: A fifteen year old boy who lives in Brooklyn and goes to a prestigious high school is depressed. He can't eat, he throws up his food, he can't sleep due to "Cycling," an everlasting whirlwind of punishing thoughts looping through his consciousness. He feels suicidal. He is self-destructive. He is hot for his best friend's girl. He thinks about killing himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. On one very bad night, he calls the Suicide Hotline and ends up checking himself into the local hospital's psychiatric unit.
The rest of the book is spent describing his five days in the psychiatric unit. Craig, the narrator, meets new friends, reconnects with his artwork, gets a girlfriend, and helps others. He leaves a changed boy, connected to himself in a new truer way, able to see the beauty of ordinary life.
It is kind of a fairy tale.

This book has a lot of important things to say to young people. I related strongly to the story, having experienced teenage depression myself. While I found his five day transformation rather magical--it's akin to a Zen satori, actually--I found the journey he describes--healing through imagination, art, relaxing into imperfection, extending oneself to others, emotional intimacy, etc--very important and true.

Okay so what are Tentacles and Anchors and Fake Shifts and Real Shifts?
These are buzz words that Craig has given some of his psychological phenomena. These are aspects of his mind, his depression, his healing. I appreciated his being able to lable these things.
Tentacles: "evil tasks that invade my life"--these are perceived obligations that weigh Craig down, make him feel guilty and pressured. The tentacles are tangled up, all leading to one another, all stuck together. Tentacles are school assignments that feel unmanageable, emails piling up, and spiraling thoughts of failure.
Anchors: "The opposite of the Tentacles...things that occupy my mind and make me feel good temporarily." Anchors don't lead to rumination; they lead to action.

A Shift is what he's looking for in his mind. Fake Shifts are times when his mind appears to have changed, but then hasn't after all. A false front. False hope.
Craig says "I want there to be a shift so bad. I want my brain to slide into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did last fall of last year, back when i was young and witty, and my teachers said i had incredible promise..."

I know this feeling...the heartache of transitioning out of potential into manifestation. It is sink or swim time. But what I especially appreciate about this novel is the character's coming back to a childhood practice of making maps. This practice, this hands-on doing of something physical and symbolic, is a key to healing depression. Using the image of maps drives the idea home, in that making art whilst in the deep dark of a depression can be a map, a path to the light. Talking with a caring therapist is important, but nothing helps like diving into a drawing obsession for a while. It occupies the whole of oneself, and shows the self a way out of rumination, one the deadly symptoms of depression, which is, after all, a mental illness. In other words, the mind is ill in some way, so thinking is diseased and must be healed. Making art unites body, mind and spirit in a unique way, circumventing language and logic. Aaahhh.

In the hospital Craig meets all kinds of kooky characters which the author treats with great dignity and sympathy. They are fun to meet. They are supportive of one another and real and sweet. In the back of the book we read that Mr. Vizzini spent five days in the psych unit and wrote this book directly afterward, so one assumes that it is memoir-esque. So i have to wonder, has he kept in touch with Fiend One and Fiend Two, the two ex-baddest crack smokers in NYC? Were the patients really so fun to be around?

Craig, a teenage boy, is wrestling with his lustful urges, and his physical sexuality. He also feels tremendous pressure in his high school environment. I was so relieved when at the end of the novel he allows himelf to change high schools, opt for a school where he could focus on art and be himself. I witness the pressure that eighth grade students feel as they apply for high schools in New York City. It feels as if there are so few acceptable options, and the competition for them is fierce, when in truth so many options exist. There are so many various paths to success--in fact, so many definitions of success, that it is a lack of imagination more than anything else that leads to this arbitrary narrowing. Students must be encouraged to find their best way, the path that offers each person his or her most satisfying journey on the way to self-realization and life work. Not everyone needs to live highest on the hog. Not everyone is cut out to be a risk-taking artist. Not everyone is meant to broker stocks. Not everyone needs to have a family. There are millions of possibilites for a rich life.
It's Kind of a Funny Story is ultimately the story of personal acceptance, self-awareness, and a broadening of perspective.

What do you think defines success?
Do you make art? If so, how do you feel while making it? After a piece is finished?




*He sought her out after having read her blog which mentioned him...hello!

Push by Sapphire

“Push,” the titular touchstone of this novel, strikes at definitive moments like the low, penetrating tone of a hammered gong. Push. Push. Puuuuusssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

This heartbreaking novel is told from the point of view of Precious Jones, a sixteen year old girl living on her own after having her second child by her own father. She tells her story in graphic, raw, honest detail, and it is the story of a life you can’t believe a person could survive through. Yet Precious, illiterate and hanging on to sanity by a thread, survives with dignity and sensitivity. She survives by pushing. Pushing her self up a steep hill, pushing through the static and interference of her infected memories, to find a life of her own.

This book is difficult to read. It is, as one reviewer describes it, merciless. It will not spare you. I became depressed while reading it, deeply sad at the brutality humans can inflict upon one another, horrified at what some parents can do to their own children. At the same time, I was deeply moved by this positively regal young woman. Precious? Regal? Well, something about her is regal. She carries herself through a tortured existence with the innate conviction that she has a life worth living, worth developing. She never loses sight of her desire to be educated. She does not give up. Push. This insistence on living feels regal to me. Strange. What do you think? How would you describe Precious?

This is the story of one woman’s determination to become educated. At its core it is a story of survival through learning, through community, through sharing experiences, through telling your story, your heroic journey. The book ends with a series of stories, a “book” that Precious’ class creates. These stories are the stories of young women with none of life’s advantages, girls who are beaten down in every way, yet find ways back to themselves, and to independence. I would like to tell everyone to read this book, but I fear that some might not be able to quite take it. The language and scenes can be rough, but sometimes life is rough, and though we want to avoid pain, we cannot always do so. In fact, it is often valuable to face pain, another’s pain; this is the way to develop real compassion and peace. Likewise, when we are in deep personal pain of our own, it is often a relief to find a simpatico story of some kind, a story that can show one way out of desperation and traps. When we feel like a fellow traveler on the hard road of life, rather than a lonely ghost, it can give us strength to continue on. Push.