Reading Writing and Lunatic

Oscar Levant wrote, “There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.”

My own oft quoted version is, “The dividing line between genius and insanity is nonexistent.”

Same sentiment.

The evidence to support this claim is rife through history. The composer Schuman wrote most of his great works between increasingly frequent bouts of clinical depression. I’m sure he wasn’t alone. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear.

In a sense, this is the essence of creativity. For really creative people, the normative boundaries that stop most people simply don’t exist, or have little power. When someone says, “That’s impossible,” the creative person asks. “Why?”

Novelists go beyond the bounds of social norms to find interesting people and situations. Most people are repulsed by the criminal minds invented by writers like Ruth Rendell, Patricia Cornwell and lately, Nevada Barr (read Burn if you dare). Repulsed, we read on, intrigued at the same time.

A creative person can get inside the mind of an insane one, because the only thing that separates them is impulse control.

Perhaps more frightening than the minds of fictional psychopaths are the actions of real sociopaths and serial killers. The BTK killer was a Lutheran deacon and city compliance officer in his hometown. He only murdered people in his spare time.

Erasing that line is especially important while writing about crime in industry. Corporations were declared “persons” before the law in the 1800s, but the Supreme Court could never grant a business a soul. They are by definition amoral. I find it interesting that sweatshops in Asia and Central America engage in exactly the same practices that American and European firms I before labor laws were enacted.

Sure, but what kinds of crimes would be unique to an industrial setting?

Can you see a company using human “volunteers” to develop air bags? Air Force Col. Stapp and Wayne State University professor Patrick tested themselves, but who would willingly crash a car at 30 mph? How about if survival wasn’t all that certain? The car companies used cadavers and animals— monkeys and pigs— but they were hardly volunteers.

Ethics laws changed drastically after news leaked about a longstanding program to observe untreated syphilis at the Tuskegee Institute. Today, the public frowns on human experimentation. Using Human crash test subjects is an intriguing subject that most writers would shy away from.

Another revulsive topic is causing fatal industrial accidents to foment racial unrest to weaken unions. Companies did all sorts of unethical things to break unions. During the thirties, Henry Ford hired thugs to beat union organizers, in an effort to keep his workers from organizing. If he was more sneaky, maybe he’d have caused a few accidents. Who knows?

Lastly, I offer manner of death as a revulsive topic.  One of the most intriguing legal cases over the last thirty years was the trial of Claus von Bülow for attempting to murder his heiress wife by insulin injection. She was found in a coma in 1980, and clung to life in a persistent vegetative state until 2008. Claus was acquitted.

Suppose someone like Claus locked his diabetic wife in a room with a two pound box of chocolates. The result would be the same, a diabetic coma and eventually death, but how much more dramatic (or insane, depending on your viewpoint)? Death by Chocolate.

Of course great crimes require great justice, at least in fiction. I am very much in favor of poetic justice in sentencing. If someone is guilty of ordering airbag crash deaths, shouldn’t he die the same way? Shouldn’t a violent rapist lose the tool of his trade as he goes down for his crime? I should think so.

Let the punishment fit the crime. Is that insane, or what?