Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Kathleen Norris
Modern people are familiar with the language of depression. Acedia, “a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world” is like depression but is more a spiritual condition related to sloth than a psychological one. Or so Kathleen Norris argues in “Acedia & Me”. I think she’s right and that she performs a valuable service by resurrecting the concept of acedia. I only wish the book were less about her experiences of acedia and more about how one goes about the business of defeating it.
Much of the book is devoted to her husband’s death. I found those parts quite depressing (in the non-clinical sense), but that’s more a reflection of my taste in non-fiction than a comment on her book.
