There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Frederick Exley

“My stamina was such that most of the time I’d complete no more than three or four sentences run together precisely the way I wanted them, and by then I would be literally too tired to sit up in a chair. Rising . . . I would take the half-dozen steps to the bed . . .” And so on. From Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, a classic novel/memoir of daydreaming and despair in the modern world.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Samuel Johnson

“I hope to put my rooms in order. Disorder I have found one great cause of Idleness.” Johnson wrote such notes to himself all his life, but it never seemed to do much good. His rooms remained frightfully messy and he continually fretted over being idle. Dr. Johnson was a textbook case of neurotic tics and habits. He compulsively tapped fence posts with his walking stick as he passed them (and he broke into a nervous sweat if he missed one), he habitually counted his steps from place to place, he grimaced and stretched as he spoke, and he blew out his breath like a whale following a lengthy remark. Johnson was never at ease in this world (he once went so far as to hide in a tree to avoid a visitor). One way he coped was to turn to the comparatively straightforward world of mathematics; in times of particular stress he might be found patiently figuring out how many times around the world all the gold in England could be wound if it were pounded down into strips 1/50″ thin.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Florence Nightingale

After serving tirelessly on battlefields all over the Empire, Florence Nightingale turned the tables at age 40 and became a voluntary invalid. For six years she insisted upon being carried from place to place and for the most part she was content to stay in bed. Following a period of partial recovery, she, at age 52, decided she was dying and requested permission to live as a patient in London’s St. Thomas Hospital until she did so. Since there was nothing particularly wrong with her (fainting spells, extreme weakness), she was dissuaded from her plan. She lived another 40 years.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Franz Kafka

One of the brighter entries in Kafka’s diaries: “Vague hope, vague confidence. An endless, dreary Sunday afternoon, an afternoon swallowing down whole years, its every hour a year. By turns walked despairingly down empty streets and lay quietly on the couch. Occasionally astonished by the leaden, meaningless clouds almost uninterruptedly drifting by. ‘You are reserved for a great Monday!’ Fine, but Sunday will never end.”

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Marcel Proust

The French novelist spent the last 17 years of his life in his cork-lined room at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, in bed, writing. This neurotic fantasy come to life evolved as Proust, always sickly and nervous, found he simply could no longer stand the sounds and smells of life. Proust feared brain tumors and dizzy spells, he slept fully clothed, even including gloves, and he regularly burned choking amounts of fumigation powder in his room. He also licked the neurotic’s problem of how to fit everything on the bedside table: He had three tables within easy reach – one contained books, hot water bottles and handkerchiefs; the second held a lamp, a watch, pens, spectacles, notebooks and an inkwell; the third was for his Evian water and lime, coffee and ritual morning croissant. Naturally, Proust wrote obsessively (and in obsessive detail) about the past.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Dylan Thomas

“The ordinary moments of walking up village streets, opening doors or letters, speaking good-day to friends or strangers, look out of windows, making telephone calls, are so inexplicably (to me) dangerous that I am trembling all over before I get out of bed in the morning to meet them.” Free-floating anxiety, later drowned in drink.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Alice James

The sister of Henry and William, and talented in her own right, Alice James remained an invalid for much of her life, although there did not seem to be much physically wrong with her. “Oh, woe, woe is me!” she wrote at one point. “I have not only stopped thinning but I am taking unto myself gross fat. All hopes of peace and rest are vanishing – nothing but the dreary snail-like climb up a little way, so as to be able to run down again! And then those doctors tell you that you will die or recover! But you don’t recover. I have been at these alternations since I was nineteen, and I am neither dead nor recovered.”

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Alexander Graham Bell

“I often feel like hiding myself away in a corner out of sight. Whenever I try to say something I stop all conversation.” Not a bad reason for inventing the telephone. Bell, who regularly retired at 4 a.m. and had to be routed out of bed at noon, was known to hide in the attic in order to avoid going to parties. More curiously, he greatly feared having moonlight fall upon him as he slept. On nights of the full moon he walked through the house pulling curtains and placing screens to protect the rest of his family from the hideous light.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Anthony Trollope

The English writer (“Chronicles of Barsetshire”) constantly fretted about his word production. “According to the circumstances of the time . . . I have allotted myself so many pages a week,” he once wrote. “The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went.” Trollope worked with a pocket watch placed before him on his desk; he strove to write 250 words every 15 minutes.

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

John Adams  “I have had poverty to struggle with; envy, jealousy and malice of enemies to encounter, no friends, or but few, to assist me; so that I have groped in dark obscurity.” That was Adams at age 30, not sounding very much like presidential timber and sounding much more like a potential assassin. A neurotic, if able, snob from a New England family steeped in self-abnegation.