Pharmakon

Spanning more than 40 years, Dirk Wittenborn’s Pharmakon is a novel about the dawn of the antidepressant industry, a psychologist patriarch and his messed-up kids. This is a lot of plot for one book to chew, but the opening section is focused enough to show off Wittenborn’s gift for mixing feisty storytelling and suggestive, almost yearning character descriptions. You can tell early on that this family drama is being quietly loaded with undetonated anguish.

William Friedrich is a frustrated early-1950s Yale psychology professor and father of four. After overhearing fellow faculty member Bunny Winton talking about a trauma-relieving drug used by shamans in New Guinea, he convinces her to help him perform a study on a group of students and locals. This, Friedrich thinks, could be their ticket to notoriety—until one unhinged genius in the study commits an act that will loom over the doctor for life.

After this incident, the book shifts forward in time and loses momentum describing the childhood of Friedrich’s son Zach. Churning out sloppy and subtle sentences at about a 50-to-1 ratio, Wittenborn drags us through Zach’s myriad transformations—from dreamy loner to jock to love-struck pot-smoker to antidrug spokesperson. Zach’s changes, and the Friedrich family’s dysfunctions in general, are bluntly described with leaden analysis. The book administers ironies that go down like horse pills—most notably, the father with a keen eye for human behavior fails to understand his own children. So it’s a relief when we return to an aging, self-reflective Dr. Friedrich. Despite his faults, he wants to help, and this lends the book a genuine sadness.

Wittenborn reads Mon 4.