A madman's defence

A Madman's Defense, one of the series of autobiographical novels by the great Swedish playwright, gives the author's version of his marriage to his first wife, Siri von Essen. The book is a searing and astonishingly frank account of the dissolution of a union in which the protagonist depicts himself slowly being driven mad as his wife mocks his work and his manhood, consorts with other men, and leaves him to live with a Lesbian friend. Although this book stands on its own as a novel, it has particular interest for the student of Strindberg's dramatic works. As Evert Sprinchorn points out in his Introduction: "A Madman's Defense is one of the most fascinating of Strindberg's works for the light it sheds on his genius as a playwright. The situation it presents is resolved in The Father, which was written before it, and in which the wife is permitted to drive her husband to utter insanity. In Miss Julie and The Creditors, which followed closely upon Defense, the Siri-Strindberg relationship is studied from two other points of view, both clearly set forth in the novel. Few authors have let us examine so closely the creative process -- the process by which 'real experiences' are subjected to the pattern-making genius of the artist to produce different versions of the truth."