On my days off, one of my favorite places to haunt is the dusty stacks of the used book store where you can find some of the best, worst, and strangest selections of what the literary world has to offer. Take Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Madness, by David Joseph Weeks, a neuropsychologist with the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Weeks started this study via word of mouth to look at the defining characteristics of what he describes as “the eccentric personality type.” He examines various historical and contemporary figures in trying to determine whether they were insane or just daring to deviate.
The term “study” should be loosely applied however, as it relies more on anecdotal evidence than any other. Plus, trying to quantify and qualify degrees of weirdness is more than just a little impossible since it is so subjective. Yet it’s fun to read about founding father Benjamin Franklin’s penchant for nudity (“open air baths”) and nineteenth-century figure Joshua Abraham Norton’s self-proclaimed role as “Emperor of the United States and Mexico.” Where else would you find out about the owner of the largest collection of garden gnomes in the world or about a woman who loved her house so much she arranged to be married to it?
Even those who find the dictionary to be a bit dry will enjoy the story of behind one of the contributors to the most well known dictionary of all, The Oxford English Dictionary. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, tells the story of an American doctor, W.C. Minor, a Civil War veteran locked away in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for murdering a man in a fit of schizophrenic rage. Minor managed to contribute numerous references from the comfort of his cell, having been allowed access to all of his books, and came to the attention of Professor James Murray who was fascinated by the man’s prolific submissions.
Murray and Minor spent roughly twenty years corresponding before, as the myth goes, Murray discovered his pen pal’s situation when he went to visit the supplier of over 20,000 entries in his asylum. I call it a myth because one of the descendants of Murray discovered that he’d known all along that Minor was committed; he just didn’t want to embarrass the man. But it makes for an interesting and humorous read anyhow, especially if you’re interested in the finer points of lexicography.
And since Halloween is coming up, what better time to re-examine the struggle of man against himself in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Shame on you if you haven’t read this classic case of schizophrenic brilliance recounting the saga of one man’s struggle against his darker half set in the gaslit backdrop of Victorian England. The respectable Dr. Jekyll drinks one of his own experiments to become the evil Mr. Hyde, known to haunt the shadows of London.
On a lighter note, one could also pick up the child’s fairytale of the topsy-turvy reality of Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson), the penner of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In both these stories, the dizzying play of words, mixing lunacy and logic every other paragraph, make it delightful and palatable no matter what your age. Dodgeson, a mathematician, is especially adept at creating mental puzzles only Escher could love.
For more titles of books only an oddball could love, email [email protected]. Otherwise, happy Halloween.