Young author's depression led to book, life lesson

~ "It's Kind of a Funny Story" is supposed to be an indictment of zero-sum cultures.

NEW YORK-- It is both inspiring and dispiriting to talk to Ned Vizzini.

He's 25 and has already published his third book. Yet he struggles with depression severe enough to require medication. He's humble and wants young people to keep their personal dramas in perspective. Yet when he describes his own future happiness, much of it hinges on book sales.

"There is a certain perception that because I've done what I've done I have sort of made it," Vizzini says. "That's not true. There's a lot more work to be done. But that is about where the logic ends. The rest of it is illogical. Yeah, depression is illogical."

It is also the subject of Vizzini's most recent book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story."

The novel tells the story of Craig Gilner, a Brooklyn teen who studies like crazy to get accepted at Manhattan's prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School. Once in, he realizes he may have sacrificed the satisfaction of being exceptional among average students to become average among exceptionals. It's a feeling he really can't handle.

Of course, much depends on how you define "average." A grade in the low 90s apparently doesn't cut it in Craig's confused young mind. His closest peers, a bunch of pot-smoking, hormonally raging annoyances, don't help.

Vizzini, a tall, dark-haired young man who grew up in Brooklyn and carefully measures his responses, has some special insight into the challenges facing Craig. He attended New York's uber-accelerated Stuyvesant High School. His experiences there have influenced all three of his books.

"I learned at Stuy," he says. "I learned about competition and kind of the absolute nature of life. There are winners and losers. ... High school was a brutal social arena where you learned the way the world really works."

Vizzini acknowledges that his frame of reference is narrow, limited to elite, highly driven students in New York City.

Still, "It's Kind of a Funny Story" is supposed to be an indictment of zero-sum cultures in general, he says.

"I would like for things to be a little bit different," he says. "I would like for people to be able to explore their interests a little bit more as young people, as opposed to be thrown into a cutthroat social and academic environment from the time they're 8 or 9."

For Vizzini, being a young author proved far more daunting than he'd expected.

His writing career began with articles about his life that he wrote for the New York Press in the 1990s. Using many of those stories, he published a quasi-autobiography, "Teen Angst? Naaah..." when he was 19. "Be More Chill," a novel about a young man's quest for coolness in high school followed four years later.

And the heat was on for him to produce more.

"Early on, I think I was a little bit ignorant of what it meant to have your name in a newspaper," he says. "I thought it was all fun and games, you know, and it's not. It brings with it pressures and responsibilities that could be difficult."

Vizzini worried about his ability to produce another book. The worries wouldn't go away.

"I was having a dinner with someone and I threw up. I couldn't eat," he recalls. "I went into the bathroom. And I was like, 'This is a good meal. Why can't I eat it?' It was because I was worried about my book -- worried that it was going to be a failure, worried that I was going to be a failure."

One night in November 2004, the thoughts got so intense -- suicidal, actually -- that Vizzini checked himself into a hospital's psychiatric wing. Craig, too, opts to go to a hospital instead of committing suicide.

Both Vizzini and his fictional protagonist experienced a time out from the world. In the ward, simple tasks mattered most. Now you wake up. Now it's time to eat. Now you're in a group. Now you go to sleep.

"In many ways, I'm disturbed by how much I liked it," Vizzini says. "I shouldn't look back at it so fondly, because it's not the real world. It almost feels like cheating a little bit to give yourself up. But it was definitely necessary."

By the end of the book, Craig has realized his plight really isn't as bad as that of many others and that he may be more of an artist than an "executive pre-professional."

But Vizzini, a Hunter College graduate who majored in computer science and will start teaching in New York City public schools this fall, never left writing. In fact, after five days in the hospital, he went home and within days began writing "It's Kind of a Funny Story." The writing was cathartic. A month later he had the draft.

"He's very savvy about the business, and he's very mature as a writer," said Alessandra Balzer, Vizzini's editor at Hyperion Books for Children. "Even people who don't maybe aspire to what he does can find some solace that someone as talented and savvy as Ned can have these insecurities and fears."

Vizzini says the response among young readers so far has been both empathy and gratitude. He's free with his advice to teens feeling crushed by the burdens of the world.

"The best coping strategy you need to have is a peer group, a group of people you're not competing with," he says. "They're friends. They want to see you succeed.

"I think it's really helpful to keep your own situation in perspective as a young person. If you read up on the way a lot of people in the world live you can realize how much you have to be thankful for."

Still, Vizzini questions how successful he really is.

At one point, in an awkward, almost unconscious way, he describes how he still looks at future book sales as one way to predict if he'll be happy. Later, he acknowledges that's perhaps not the most healthy attitude.

He still deals with depression, and continues to take meds.

"I'm not suicidal," he says. "That option has been crossed out for me. That's really what this book is about, making that decision to live."

---

On the Net:

www.nedvizzini.com