Comic Book Melancholy

At his blog, Steve Gerber has made this curious comment.

It's only in the last few weeks that I've been able to pin down tentatively a dominating characteristic of my writing over the past couple of decades.

Much of it originated in depression.

And the stuff that did is, generally speaking, the less interesting stuff. Or the stuff that doesn't seem quite there.

The best of my work, I think, has always had its roots in righteous outrage, compulsive curiosity, or reckless abandon.

This reminds me of a book I read recently called Against Depression by Peter D. Kramer. In it, the author talks about research into the biological aspects of depression and critiques the way depression has become a part of our culture. He talks about the popular idea that depression is a gateway to creativity. This viewpoint is that without depression we wouldn't have the works of Poe, van Gogh, Woolfe, and many other great artists. In addition, there's the idea that melancholy in art gives the work greater depth. He goes on to explain:

It is no longer that melancholy leads to heroism. Melancholy is heroism. The challenge is not voyage or battle but inner struggle. The rumination of the depressive, however solipsistic, is deemed admirable. And this value applies even in cases when the interior examination fails due to a lack of moral courage. No matter that the protagonist remains callow and self-deluding. Melancholic sensitivity is noble by definition. [pages 221-2]

While I can often scoff at excessively optimistic stories, excessive cynicism can be just as bad. It can give a story less credibility by contriving one bad scenario after another until genuine tragedy loses its significance.