Madness Transformed: Jonathan Harnisch’s Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia Is the Defining Novel of a Generation
Book Review — Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia by Jonathan Harnisch In Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia , Jonathan Harnisch offers a literary cannonball into the depths of fractured identity, erotic obsession, and the raw nerve endings of human consciousness. It is less a novel and more a living, breathing psychotic episode, rendered with hypnotic precision, unrelenting honesty, and a transgressive courage that recalls Burroughs, Genet, and Faulkner in equal measure. Harnisch, who lives with schizophrenia, PTSD, and Tourette's syndrome, writes from within the storm. Through the distorted mirror of his alter ego Georgie Gust and his tormentor-turned-lover Benjamin J. Schreiber, the novel becomes an extended act of exorcism, confession, and literary rebellion. Claudia—lover, muse, phantom, fetish—floats at the center of it all, haunting every hallucination, every surge of desire or despair. She is as much metaphor as woman, both the cause of and salve for Georgie's psychological unr...