In the Realms of the Unreal

I choose the alias "Henry Darger" for my aquaintance in honor of Chicago's own Henry Darger.  Never heard of him?  I'm not surprised.  There is, however, a museum. Well, there are actually several museums.  The works of Henry Darger are on permanent display at the Chicago Institute of Art and the Outsider Art Project at Intuit, as well as several other prominent art institutions across the country.  In the appreciation of "Outsider Art," Henry Darger is a superstar, but he sure didn't live like one.

Intuit took possession of all the items in Henry Darger's modest living space and recreated the room:

The Henry Darger Room

Henry Darger was an orphan, his mother dying while he was very young, his father impoverished and unable to care for him.  He spent some time in an orphanage before being moved to a psychiatric asylum after his care-takers expressed "his heart was not right."  There he was subjected to the forced labor and harsh punishments that exemplified institutions of this type in the early twentieth century.

He would later escape the asylum at the age of 16 and find employment with a Catholic Hospital as a janitor.  He would work there until his retirement 51 years later.

It was in this time that Henry Darger took up residence in a room in Lincoln Park, not far from Du Paul university, and write the staggeringly long "In the Realms of the Unreal." This enormous work was typed on 15,145 pages and comprised fifteen weighty volumes.  These are accompanied by detailed personal journals, weather journals, and letters he exchanged with his (and what would seem to be his only) friend, a Mr. William Shloder.

"In the Realms of the Unreal" describes a world of magical creatures, one populated by free, happy children who are forced to rebel against a nation of monstrous tyrants engaged in child slavery.  The text is a panoramic view into the vivid, highly detailed, imaginary world that Henry Darger coexisted in.  Accompanying these texts are surreal water-color paintings, hundreds in total, where tracing of children taken out of newspapers and magazines are painted into colorful and bizarre landscapes, showing a sharp contrast between the realistic children and the magical world they existed in.

No-one knew this incredible work existed until shortly before his death, when he was hospitalized with growing ailments, and his landlords debated what to do with his possessions should he die.  A journalist recognized the great artistic merit of this enormous work and was able to preserve it.

Though this Henry Darger is often diagnosed (by psychologists, today, looking back on his solitary, eccentric life) as autistic, with Asperger's Syndrome, he has many qualities in common with MY Henry Darger.

In particular, this Henry Darger's magnus opus, a gigantic 15,000 page epic, was inspired by his loss of newspaper clipping of a little girl.  This loss was symbolized in his tale as the murder of that girl, a murder that would spark a violent war between children and monsters.  These fifteen volumes, which would take him ten years to write, all sprang from the theft (alleged) of this simple newsprint photograph.

My Henry Darger lost something, too.  And that's how he found me.

Henry Darger

Welcome to the inaugural post of my blog: Project MK-Ultra!

This blog is meant to satifsy the requirements of my Technical Writing Course ENG420.

In deciding what I was going to blog about, I had a few different ideas.  At first I was going to write about my love for Alternative Country Music, a genre of music misunderstood by Alternative Music and Country Music fans both.  Chicago is home to an incredible Alt-Country Band, Wilco, and I planned to name my blog in honor of their seminal album "No Depression."

Then, seeing interest from my professor regarding my part-time career as a pencil jockey for the pen-and-paper games industry, I thought about writing about my experiences there.  I decided few people would want to read about how many tons of light lasers a Clan Vulture mech loads out, whether High Elves and Eladrin are the same species or not, or what Shadowrunners are really referring to when they discuss 'Essence.'

It was as I was contemplating this blog that I was contacted by an acquaintance of mine.  I use the term acquaintance because those individuals suffering from Schizoid Personality Disorder rarely form friendships in the traditional sense.Though it's unlikely that anyone reading this blog will know this man, I will be referring to him using an alias.

Henry Darger is that man living in that house on your block that you've never met.  He's the man you work with, but never see outside of work, the one who never talks about his family, girlfriend, wife, or friends and by all accounts has none.  He gets up, goes to work, goes home, and cloisters himself away from the rest of the world and the people in it.  He's a hermit.

It is difficult to say how many people in the world suffer from Schizoid Personality Disorder because the disorder is marked by secretiveness and self-reliance.  Those who suffer from the disorder rarely seek assistance and so the professional community has difficulty counting them.

Henry Darger is a man that suffers from this disorder and this blog will be dedicated to my experiences with this man.  He has agreed to allow me to interview him, but those interviews will not appear here in transcript form.  Instead this blog will take a journalistic form as I explore my relationship with Henry Darger, discuss his way of life, his thoughts and feelings, and my own personal musings.  My goal is to reveal the existence of this hidden disorder and encourage understanding in those who may meet similarly eccentric and private individuals.