In Porcelain Utopia, prolific novelist Jonathan Harnisch again features his recurring character Ben Schreiber, a troubled young man who has been hospitalized in a mental health facility after attempting a bank robbery while under the influence of drugs and is now under the care of Dr. C, his new psychiatrist. Like the author, Ben has been diagnosed with a number of physical and psychiatric disorders, including Tourette's syndrome, borderline personality, and schizoaffective disorder, to name a few, and Dr. C believes that having Ben work through his relationships with the characters in his head will lead to a breakthrough of sorts. She encourages Ben to explore on paper his experiences with his alter-ego Georgie Gust, Georgie's girl (and obsession) Claudia, and numerous other people, as well as his family. Meanwhile, Ben longs to make his mark and sell his experiences as an autobiography. Through his writings, diary entries, and sessions with Dr. C, Ben explores the ideas of reality, perception, morality, sex, spirituality and love. Through prose that is gritty, raw, and vulnerable, readers are instantly transported into Ben's world. His tics, hallucinations, and mania leave one feeling uneasy, yet sympathetic to Ben's plight. All of the characters are endowed with distinct voices and relatable and intense emotions, and come with an inherent and undeniable charisma. As a result, readers are never certain who is real and who is an hallucination. Harnisch's novel has many moments of explicit, even disturbing sex, which some readers may find offensive. However, these moments tend to feel organic to the characters and more introspective in execution than gratuitous. Although suffering occasionally from editorial mistakes (e.g. dropped words, formatting issues), Porcelain Utopia is a satisfying and moving reading experience --a gripping account of one man's difficult quest for self-acceptance and belonging.
This work is articulate, coherent, and insightful in its portrayal of the shifting world of the schizophrenic. Prolific author Jonathan Harnisch gives an intimate look at the inner world of a young man tormented by a range of psychiatric and physical disorders in Porcelain Utopia, the third book in his An Alibiography series. Harnisch's protagonist, Ben Schreiber, has been hospitalized after his arrest for a drug-fueled attempt at bank robbery. Diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, narcissism, borderline personality, PTSD, and schizoaffective disorder, Ben--thirty years of age, affluent, and highly intelligent--suffers from troubling delusions and hallucinations. Ben begins treatment with a psychiatrist, Dr. C, to whom he must reveal the various personalities who share his mind and body, and their sexual fantasies and fetishes. But he does not believe psychiatry can help him and fears that becoming "normal" will destroy his creativity. As an author with schizophrenia, Harnisch uses his intimate knowledge of life in a double reality to create a vivid, intense portrayal of a character who experiences his inner life as a full-time, kaleidoscopic, exhausting fantasy in which illusion is more interesting, and more real, than daily life. The book's strong, to-the-point prose keeps the pace of the story moving evenly through the character changes, psychological ruminations, and sexual activities, both real and imagined, that characterize Ben's high-strung personality. Cycling between suicidal despair, cynicism, humor, and hope, the book explores the labyrinthine manner in which the mind attempts to keep past trauma hidden and skillfully brings to light how a patient's creative gifts can serve as as an adjunct to therapy. The text is articulate, coherent, and insightful in its portrayal of the shifting world of the schizophrenic, and it presents only occasional errors in grammar, syntax, and word usage. The dialogue, which includes conversations between both hallucinatory and real-life characters, is convincing and poignant. Diary entries, philosophical musings, multifaceted inner reflections of various real and imagined persons, and records of therapy sessions reveal the struggles of the divided mind and highlight the profound loneliness, self-hatred, and desperate search for relief through drugs and sex that can characterize the lives of those who suffer from severe mental illness. The book's swirling cover art sets the stage for the mental and emotional turmoil of its protagonist. An outline helps guide readers through the ever-changing world of the schizoaffective mind by presenting brief summaries of the events in each chapter. Raw and disturbing due to the explicit and often pornographic sexual acts and fantasies described in the story, including childhood emotional and sexual abuse, Porcelain Utopia is for adult readers who are interested in exploring the healing potential of creative expression and the workings of a tormented, yet fascinating and resilient, mind.
Harnisch (The Oxygen Tank, 2016, etc.) offers a novel about the complicated world of a mentally ill mind. Benjamin J. Schreiber, who suffers from a range of psychiatric disorders, finds himself in court-mandated therapy with Dr. C. "It was either therapy or prison," Dr. C tells readers, following an incident in which Ben acted oddly at a so-called "non-cash bank." Ben then embarks on a journey to investigate his troubled world. Using writing as a release and Dr. C as a guide, Ben explores the realm of his alter ego, one "Georgie Gust," detailing their intertwined lives. The murkiness of their relationship is summed up by Ben's insistence that he will often "send [Georgie] gifts and then keep them for myself." As a result, the novel puts into play the ambiguity of reality. The concept of fractured identities is at the heart of this adventure that encompasses a visit to a foot-fetish club and family recollections: "Life with mother was always borderline this, crisis-after-crisis that." In other words, it's an adventure that's as scattered as the disorders it portrays. It throws in a generous collection of literary devices, including diary entries, parenthetical pet peeves ("Backs always itch where and when I can't reach to scratch"), and the controlling character of Claudia Nesbitt, who engages in various, unusual sexual activities. If it all sounds disorienting, that would seem to be the author's intention. Readers intrigued by such a swerving tale can expect to encounter all manner of kookiness and, ultimately, honesty; as one journal entry insists, "I let my freak flag shine with my mentally ill mind and unsurpassed resiliency." That said, the novel is occasionally repetitive (the terms "schizophrenia" and "schizophrenic" appear with enough frequency to lose their meaning) and unapologetically crude ("Her vagina looked so lonely"), so it's certainly not a story for the squeamish or those seeking more conventional constructions. A scattered account of a scatterbrained life with all manner of depravity and, underneath it all, earnestness.
