Nervous System: or Losing my Mind in Literature [Hardcover]

"You know your life has changed when you wake up in a psych ward," writes Jan Lars Jensen with the signature dark humor that permeates what might otherwise be a bleak account of a talented young writer's descent into psychosis. The futuristic, fanciful Shiva 3000, set in India, was Jensen's first novel. As the publication date drew near, Jensen became obsessed by the idea that the book would bring about the end of the world. In the author's escalating, delusional scenario, Shiva 3000 would be hated in India, setting off a series of lawsuits that would initially target the publisher, Jensen, and his family. Before long, the entire country of India would pit itself against all of Canada and the United States, the crisis reaching such a pitch that India would threaten a nuclear strike against Russia unless the Russians launched nuclear missiles at America on India's behalf. "The missiles would be flying," Jensen concluded. Doomsday was nigh.

Although Jensen endured two stints in the psych ward--and months as an outpatient--it can be argued that the duration of his emotional recovery encompassed the publication of this superbly written book. Nervous System is intelligent, winningly devoid of self-pity, and laced with often wicked, sometimes self-lacerating wit. It is perhaps fitting, then, that whereas writing sent Jensen over the edge in the first place, it was writing about the experience of psychosis that helped to bring him back. "When I saw my novel's publication approaching, I had the uneasy feeling that this...tale set in a distant place...contained all there was to know about me. But maybe, I eventually had to admit, the descent that accompanied it more truly reflected me. That was the story. It had been coming for a while." --Svenja Soldovieri

"As a brave, unflinching look at mental illness, Nervous System is revelatory; as a candid, conflicted view of the creative process, it is a revelation." -- Robert J. Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun

"Nervous System is not just a compelling memoir, it's an important one. Mental illness manages to be both glamorized and stigmatized in our culture. What is often missed is what Jensen shows us convincingly: the moment-to-moment unhappiness of losing your mind ... Both harrowingly authentic and poignantly understated. This is, if we're lucky, as close as most of us will get to going really crazy." -- Joel Yanofsky, The National Post

"[A] weird and brilliant memoir ... Jensen's writing is smooth and elegant, his narrative suspenseful, his sensibility witty ... he delivers a smart and sympathetic narrator - himself - whose personal adventure, as terrifying as any in the thriller rack at the drug store, captures the catastrophes of the present, the ones lurking much closer to home." -- Nancy Wigston, Toronto Star

Jan Lars Jensen noticed that when his writing was going well, it felt as if something came unhinged in his mind. The rush of ideas and language felt like losing, wilfully, a little mental stability. But true madness didn't come until he published his first book.

His novel, Shiva 3000, was categorized as science fiction, but nothing in the book could match Jensen's own apocalyptic delusions and visions. And just as literature prompted his slide into psychosis, so did it play a significant role in his subsequent recovery--his world was defined by words and writing.

Jensen's novel didn't set the world on fire, literally or metaphorically--at different times he expected it to do both--but it did provide an extraordinary experience. Gripping and harrowing, darkly comic and deeply moving, Nervous System is the memoir of a novelist who almost let his vivid imagination get the best of him.

Jan Lars Jensen's first novel, Shiva 3000, was published by Harcourt in North America and Macmillan in the U.K. and was listed in the Guardian as one of the top 10 fantasy novels of all time. He lives in Calgary.