The Georgie Gust Exhibit

A Jonathan Harnisch Film Thursday, December 24, 2015

JONATHAN HARNISCH:AUTHOR MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE SCHIZOPHRENIA ARTIST BLOGGER PODCAST HOST PATENT HOLDER HEDGE FUND MANAGER FILM TV PRODUCER MUSICIAN

Monday December 21, 2015

The Week That Was

Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent

THERE'S A FINE LINE BETWEEN GENIUS AND MADNESS. I HAVE ONCE AGAIN DELETED THIS LINE. -- Jonathan Harnisch 

Lover in the Nobody Paperback – December 15, 2014

by Jonathan Harnisch (Author) $9.99 on Amazon.com … and the reviews keep coming in….

A young man battling extreme mental illness brings his sadomasochistic fantasies to life in Harnisch's (Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia, 2014, etc.) latest novel.

As this riveting story opens, Georgie Gust, a suicidal Tourette's syndrome patient, tells his doctor he wants to leave the mental institution where he's been committed. When the doctor puts him off, Gust finds himself buffeted by violent fantasies of escape, and he even prepares to hang himself. The novel plunges readers into the mind of a man at war with his own urges, memories, and sexual obsessions. After a scene shift, Gust's chauffeur, Ben, delivers him to his empty home, where Margaret, his only friend, visits to check on him. However, she annoys him because "she seems to care." Later, Gust, a foot fetishist, gives a pedicure to his sexy neighbor, Claudia, in a scene lit with unexpected poetry and poignancy. As the narrative viewpoint flickers among Gust, Ben, and a quasi-omniscient third-person perspective, Gust's voracious appetite for pain prompts him to hire Claudia to torment him. (He has wealthy parents, so he spends cash liberally.) When Claudia's house goes up in flames, she moves in with him, and their sadomasochistic bond descends into extraordinary, hallucinatory violence. In Claudia's hands, Gust discovers new depths of masochism, and she finds joy in tormenting him. Despite the garishness, brutality, and squalor of many passages (which are not for the squeamish), more sophisticated readers will appreciate the extraordinary feat Harnisch has accomplished. He lucidly, poignantly conveys a mind riven with what are, after all, human vulnerabilities: mental pathologies, shameful fantasies, anguished doubts about the natures of reality, love, and memory. In the hands of a lesser writer, these themes would splinter the narrative. Fortunately, the author masters his material; readers will believe the voices that vivify it and compassionately wish them to find the healing that eludes them.

An extraordinary, harrowing odyssey into an embattled self, full of humor, compassion, and a rare understanding of mental illness.

--Kirkus Reviews

*STARRED REVIEW

Lover in the Nobody by Jonathan Harnisch

(Reviewed: December, 2015)

Equal parts existential nihilism and fetishistic erotica, this darkly hypnotic novel--in which the lines between reality and delusion are hopelessly blurred--chronicles a mentally ill man's search for meaning in his life, or at least some kind of profound corporeal satisfaction.

Georgie Gust, who has Tourette's syndrome and may be schizophrenic, is also a hardcore masochist and foot fetishist and believes that finding the "everlasting orgasm" is what he needs to change his life. The son of independently wealthy parents, Gust has frequented kinky sex clubs for years without any real fulfillment. But when he becomes enamored with his next-door neighbor--a middle-aged paramedic named Claudia--he offers to pay her to be his torturer, his "personal trainer in pain."

But the fiery redhead takes her job a little too seriously and the humiliation quickly escalates to brutal, life-threatening assaults. His alluring dominatrix with the "perfect, long, skinny toes" is quickly transformed into a psychotic madwoman who is systematically destroying his life: "...that bitch, that whore, that woman I love and hate. She created a paradise and then set it aflame. She is my world and its end, my kinky sex goddess, my creepy-crawly nemesis."

The brilliance of this storyline--and it is brilliant--is in the author's use of the unreliable narrator. The novel begins with Gust in a psych ward after an apparent suicide attempt. As his story unfolds, t

Amazon.com: Jonathan Harnisch: Books, Biography, Blog ...

I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't know what I want to see. My world used to be worth living for, but now it's hard enough just to be me.

Life is short, but it's also wide. So to my dear friends, fans, and readers, just for today, I'm done. I am done crying, fighting, and trying. I am just done. Ever feel this way? I sure do. But I feel I should be rewarded for my struggles and my pain. I will win. So my wish to all of you is that you never, ever, ever, give up! Don't you dare give up. Make a fucking plan and work for it, every single day, hour, minute, and moment.

If you want something badly enough, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. There are only two options: Make progress or make excuses. No more fucking excuses! Excuses be gone! To quote Pope John Paul the Second: "An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded." Are excuses more important than your dreams? Live. Live life. Be happy.

Some days you have to say "screw it, I did what I could today" and just let go of all the stuff you wanted to do. Life is too short to be angry with yourself for being human. Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep the faith. It will all be worth it in the end. I am thankful for my struggle because otherwise I wouldn't have stumbled across my strength. You will survive through hard times. Just believe that things will work out.

I could go on and on, but I resist the temptation. Sometimes you have to hold on to your sanity. There are people that have achieved mastery by making you believe that you are the crazy one. Just hang in there. We are all survivors of something. We all have the scars to prove it! Just keep going. Just keep going. We've got the power! You can do it; we can all fucking do it.

I feel so passionate about this right now. I feel realistic and optimistic, all the while knowing that my moments, seconds, and hours bring change, all sorts of change. I think of turning this diatribe into a longer writing excise, perhaps a blog post or the beginning of my new book, The Brutal Truth—a book written as an affirmation of life. Keep calm, and breathe, one breath at a time, accepting, when you can, each battle, no matter how big or small, one step at a time. Take baby steps, if you will. Great times lie sparkling ahead.

Does my life preach louder than my writing? I hope so. However, realistically, sometimes it's hard to practice what I preach. I think this is common for many. Thank you for taking the time to read my rant of inspiration—my introduction. I am an author that mainly writes erotic and transgressive fiction, often with very disturbing clarity and embellished with addiction, fetish, lust, and love. My professional writing is known to use pornography as a narrative device. This has attracted much criticism, but I try to keep it real.

The bottom line for my literature is to inspire hope, inviting others to question themselves, their reality, and their sanity by sharing my complicated experiences as a result of my diagnosis with schizophrenia. My work has been considered brilliant, and I keep at it. My point in mentioning this is that I have a heart that speaks. I am who I am. That is for sure. Honest, brazen, and often uncensored—with a stream-of-thought style. I invite you, my readers, to allow the brutal truth to sink in. Take what you want and leave the rest. I write from pure passion at the moment and that will change naturally according to my fluctuating brain chemistry. I feel fucking inspired, determined, uncut, and raw.

Please understand we are all human beings. We all fuck, up, and we all have our triumphs. We overcome—even if sometimes there is no closure. I try to get by—today—just like everyone else. What is the truth, the brutal truth? What is the final answer to all life's dilemmas, to all our vacillations of mood, thought, and perception, to all our triumphs and lo

Second Alibi: The Banality of Life by Jonathan Harnisch

 

From Arts & Entertainment

"Genius. I loved this book."

 

From Worldnews Network

"This story is now shedding light on the experiences of schizophrenics in a language that the non-sufferer can understand."

 

From WOWK 13 News, W.Va, WV

"Harnisch's sense of the inner machinations of human experience spring into life through the text." 

 

From Editor, Second Alibi: The Banality of Life 

"My brain was spinning by the end. It's brilliant."

 

What...is it like to suffer from...schizophrenia combined with...Tourette's syndrome? ...[Harnisch's] answers to such questions and the ways in which they are portrayed prove complex. Mixing diary entries...with a screenplay...messages are often jumbled though not without merit, [as] when the narrator announces that "I had a paranoid spell last night. [My wife] was texting me, and I was convinced that it was my stepmother impersonating my wife." Wildly varied in style and content, making for an informative and strange trip through the experience of mental disorders.

-- Kirkus Reviews [Print Magazine Featured Book]

 

Afflicted with schizophrenia, Tourette's Syndrome and other mental illnesses, the prolific and gifted Jonathan Harnisch has transformed the harrowing raw material of his life into what he calls "transgressive fiction" in semi-autobiographical novels such as Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography and Living Colorful Beauty. With Second Alibi: The Banality of Life, he revisits the abrasive, triangular psychodrama of his brilliant, questing psychotic Ben Schreiber, Ben's libertine alter-ego, Georgie Gust, and the sadistic temptress, Claudia Nesbitt, who torments them both, while also including a moving plea for understanding that stands apart from the disturbed fevers of his fiction. 

This is a story, I hope, about my coming to enlightenment," Harnisch writes, and in that vein he enlightens us, too, about the fantastic terrors of schizophrenia: "What this life is like with the ups and the downs, the confusion, the love and the hate; the black and the white." He tells us about his moods abruptly shifting 25 times in an hour, his suicide attempts and addictions, the grim realities of sleep deprivation and the fear that his beloved wife has been reading his mind. 

Second Alibi toggles unpredictably between semi-coherent rage (Harnisch says he often writes when symptomatic) and cool detachment, and it deploys several forms: Harnisch's sexually-charged fiction (Claudia is "a slow-moving serpent with a tongue of fire and the ass of a bombshell"); a 106-page screenplay featuring dialogues between Ben and his old antagonists, and with his life-saving therapist, "Dr. C"; self-lacerating entries from "Georgie Gust's" 2005 diary, and the author's clear explanations of his condition, apparently written at moments when his symptoms have subsided. 

At times, Harnisch is energized by the very power of his illness. "The mind and the sickness is all so sublime," he writes, "the heart of living, colorful beauty." But in his most lucid moments, this brave and eloquent writer struggles mightily to escape the dark woods of madness: "As always, my journey continues, on and on."

-- BlueInk Review

 

Harnisch's words and images dance vividly and repeat themselves in strange succession; even his most self-conscious writing has rhythmic energy and flair.

Jonathan Harnisch doesn't so much showcase literary genius as he grapples with it in his experimental autobiography, Second Alibi: The Banality of Life. Genius is a creative spirit he chases. When he gets his hands on it, when genius possesses him, the results are stunning. Parts of Second Alibi radiate with originality.

With a self-referential postmodern style reminiscent of William Burroughs, Harnisch chronicles his hell-bent search for personal truth. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental disorders, he explores all aspects of his personality: his alter ego, Ben; his alter ego's alter ego, Georgie; and their mutual love interest, Claudia. Harnisch wrangles to the page episodes of madness and lucidity, hospitalizations, hallucinations, love affairs. He searches every experience for meaning, sometimes exhaustively, and offers up whatever truth he can.

If there's fault in Harnisch's methodology, it's that he overanalyzes and micromanages his own creative process. For example, the book's third act flounders in a sea of platitudinous journal entries about living with mental illness, the writing process, the progress of his manuscript, and his ultimate aspirations as a writer. Although well-intentioned, the entries become preening and laborious. At one point, the author admits, "I feel like I am forcing this writing."

The book's first and second acts are much stronger--the first relayed in stream-of-consciousness passages, and the second in the form of a screenplay. In the first act, Harnisch produces the stuff of poetry. His words and images dance vividly and repeat themselves in strange succession: "The living, colorful sound of the mysterious telephone still haunts us, even me. It rings and rings, again and again." In these passages, even his most self-conscious writing has rhythmic energy and flair: "The sensation of sensational sex and blue movies, the characters and chaos, onslaughts of sketches, prototypes ... of expanding pounding putty and pus, some sex and violence. I'm built for it."

The second act, the screenplay, offers the book's most absorbing and sharply written drama. Harnisch appears to be a natural in the medium, exploring past trauma through scene and dialogue. The screenplay ends with amazing profundity. "And sometimes you just have to listen to the sounds of your life," Ben says. "That kind of silence. That deep remarkable hollow stuff."

Second Alibi provides an honest window into the "hollow stuff." Harnisch is at his best, though, when he leaves his inner critic behind and allows his creativity to color the world around him.

-- Foreword Clarion Reviews

conditions are interlinked with the incomprehension of non-sufferers, which

provokes him to explain his reality. He has explored a range of media,

including film, music, and now the written word, to help the general public

understand exactly what it feels like to suffer from schizophrenia. By

fictionalizing the day-to-day meetings of multiple personalities, he is

illuminating a corner of psychiatry that few understand. As an author with

schizophrenia, Jonathan Harnisch is ideally placed to share the unusual

perception commonly defined as 'mental illness'. Harnisch is not dealing with

an altered reality, but a double reality. His main characters, Ben Schreiber

and Georgie Gust, perfectly illustrate how two lives can share the same body.