Books

Melancholia in the Subjunctive Mood

By Bradley Lewis | March 2, 2012

Grammarians tell us that even our verbs have a “mood,” and the subjunctive is the mood of “what if?” The loss of the subjunctive with regard to depression is unfortunate because the cultural and phenomenal world of depression, whatever else we may want to say about it, is a world of uncertainty and a world of multiple points of view. Gary Greenberg’s book is a sustained meditation on depression that stays largely in the subjunctive mood.