Goed. Volgende boek van het te lezen stapeltje. "The Tao of Travel"* van Paul Theroux en verdraaid op bladzij 85 stuit ik op de volgende zin over beroemde reizigers: "A large number have been depressives or bipolar types capable of serious gloom: Livingstone sulked in his tent for days,Vancouver locked himself in his cabin, Speke shot himself, Scott sometimes wept, Nansen was suicidal and so was Meriwether Lewis". Vervolgens krijgen ze in hoofdstuk 8 "Fears, Neuroses and Other Conditions" allemaal een psychiatrisch etiket opgeplakt: Tobias Smolett: 'deep unhappiness, discontent, the epitome of the unhappy traveller', Lady Hester Stanhope; 'merily restless, melancholic, and frustrated before she left England in 1810', Francis Parkman: 'a physical wreck', David Livingstone: 'a manic depressive obsessed with his bowels', Sir Richard Burton: 'his explosive temper and pugnacity earned him the nicknames "Ruffian Dick" and "Dirty Dick"', Captain George Vancouver: 'fits of temper and depression', Captain Robert Falcon Scott: 'depressive, hypersensitive, lachrymose', Fridtjof Nansen: 'suffered from suicidal melancholia', Jack London: 'alcoholism from an early age (....) he took morphine and died from a morphine overdose at the age of forty', William Burroughs: 'drug addiction for the whole of his adult life', Graham Greene: 'manic depression', Dr. Samuel Johnson: 'Tourette's-like disease, depression, sloth', Henry Morton Stanley; 'inferiority complex', Apsley Cherry-Garrard: ' clinical depression', William Somerset Maugham: 'violently pessimistic', Gertrude Bell: 'depression, Geoffrey Moorhouse: 'fear of solitude, empty spaces and the unknown', Evelyn Waugh: 'paranoia', Joshua Slocum: 'mental lapses', Bronislaw Malinowski: 'suffered from depression, anxiety, rage and feelings of rejection', en Edward Lear: ' suffered frequent grand mal epileptic seizures from early in his life, frequent melancholia, and a depression he called "the morbids"'. Ik denk dat ik deze zomer maar thuis blijf.*ISBN : 978-0-241-14525-8
