Martin Amis somewhere writes that readers were always shocked to discover that Vladimir Nabokov was not, in his personal life, a nymphet-obsessed lurker of park benches who shot kittens and poisoned the elderly in his spare time. In fact, he was a lovely and meticulous butterfly specialist whose own happy family (consisting of wife and son) was unlike all other happy families in that its patriarch was a literary genius. Why should this be so startling? Because the notion that madness and talent -- especially the kind of talent that gives us a book like Lolita -- are inextricable from each other is a long-standing one and has, it would seem, some justification in evolutionary psychology. Here's Roger Dobson in the Independent:
Creative minds in all kinds of areas, from science to poetry, and mathematics to humour, may have traits associated with psychosis. Such traits may allow the unusual and sometimes bizarre thought processes associated with mental illness to fuel creativity. The theory is based on the idea that there is no clear dividing line between the healthy and the mentally ill. Rather, there is a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits without having the debilitating symptoms.
Most advanced math departments look like homeless shelters for a reason. And I doubt even his trusted friends would have relied on Lord Byron, who feared going insane his entire adult life, to feed their dogs while they were away on vacation. Einstein comes closest in the popular imagination to refuting the rule that all intellectual giants are cracked, but even in his dealings with his ex-wife and children the father of relativity could exhibit a subhuman disregard, cold but also a bit "off." How far down the long slide must we travel until we reach Hannibal Lecter?
Indeed, there does seem to be a vaguely understood Darwinian utility in letting the gloomy and morbid and nutso space to roam free amid the species. About four per cent of the population is said to be some type of conscienceless sociopath, ranging from the sort who can't quite "connect" emotionally with others to the sort who invent identities for themselves and set about the slow, systematic destruction of anyone they perceive as threats. (See Martha Stout's illuminating and chilling volume The Sociopath Next Door.) It hardly helps that most of these empathy-empty creatures are quite charming.
Popular culture has taken this theory to lower depths in the form of the clever Showtime series Dexter, which features a brilliant blood spatter analyst working for the Miami Police Department, who moonlights as a psychopathic serial killer. His adopted father realized this morbid fact early on and decided to harness it, and so now Dexter murders bad guys exclusively. He's what you might call a high-functioning lunatic, performing a valuable clean-up service that no one else wants to perform, or can, really. The audience is supposed to feel seedy about admiring such a tenebrous figure, and yet the sexy ad campaign for Dexter -- which would provoke post-Nietzschean heart murmurs in Allan Bloom -- testifies to an enduring fascination with the criminal and amoral and ultra-violent. The illicit thrill experienced by sane people rooting for a madman guarantees that madman's perpetuity in the genome.
It's not postmodern, it's primordial.
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