Jonathan Rosen Talks About His Blockbuster Book and the Metaphors of Madness

Jonathan Rosen no longer believes that “the world exists to be put in a book,” but he has written one — “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions” — that could do for schizophrenia what Ernest Hemingway’s “Death in the Afternoon” did for bullfighting: serve as the definitive account and emerge as an American classic. Jonathan Rosen in conversation with A.R. Hoffman, April 18, 2023, at New York. Filmed by Derlis ChavarriaJoining The New York Sun to reflect on the book, Mr. Rosen recalled knowing its protagonist, Michael Laudor, from the time they were both 10 years old. Mr. Laudor was a pugnacious prodigy whose brilliance made Mr. Rosen into a kind of protege, running a half step behind his incandescent friend with that mix of envy and admiration particular to aspiring adolescents. Messrs. Rosen and Laudor both went to Yale. Mr. Laudor then went to Bain Capital and Yale Law School before his illness arrested his meteoric meritocratic rise. He persisted long enough to be profiled in the New York Times and secure millions of dollars in memoir and movie deals before abstaining from his medicine and, in a horrifying development, murdering his pregnant fiancee, Caroline Costello. “The Best Minds” tells this story, and Mr. Rosen contends with how Mr. Laudor’s “psychosis” made him into an “almost sacred figure” for all those who were so captivated by his charisma that they failed to contend with the cracks that spread like spider webs through his mind. Mr. Laudor’s is a tragedy that is tied up with public policy and the story of psychiatry itself. To describe the book, Mr. Rosen uses the metaphor “houses,” which give the book’s sections their titles. There is “The House on Mereland Road,” a nod to New Rochelle, where both he and Mr. Laudor grew up. Then there is “The House of Psychiatry,” where Mr. Rosen dilates on the push toward deinstitutionalization that began in the 1960s, when illness took on the shape of metaphor rather than medical reality. “The House of Law” tells about how the law arrogated to itself determinations of mental fitness and sanity and how the same legal sages who oversaw its rapprochement with psychology were the ones who gave Mr. Laudor and his delusions cover at Yale. As Mr. Rosen notes, these men were a “part of Michael’s story even before they met him,” because they had imagined the regime that ultimately failed him and those he harmed. Mr. Rosen tells the Sun that “law and psychiatry had eloped” and “gotten married a long time ago,” with the result that “lawyers were able to determine the kind of psychiatric care you might get” and “psychiatrists had been invited into the courtroom.” The professors at Yale saw Mr. Laudor as a “kindred spirit,” even as they could not bring themselves to “throw the ring of power into the furnace and just say no.”The book’s final section is “The House of Dreams,” encompassing those who trafficked in Mr. Laudor’s story, none the least Mr. Laudor himself. There was the incredulous New York Times, who described him as living with an “invisible wheelchair.” There was Hollywood, which saw him as material and readied the director Ron Howard and the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt to play him. As Mr. Rosen explains, “the very thing that appealed to Hollywood was his illness. And so that became his marketable skill.” The story of another schizophrenic, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, would garner four Academy Awards. Mr. Laudor’s story went from “The House of Dreams” to a house of horrors. The New York Post branded him “Psycho Killer” on its front page. It is the part of Mr. Rosen to tell a story he calls marked by “brokenness.” He allows that “Yale Law School gave this story to the Times. The Times gave the story to Hollywood.” Mr. Laudor, institutionalized for close to a quarter century, cannot tell it. Costello was stolen in her prime. Mr. Laudor’s teachers have aged, those who knew him receded.Mr. Rosen conveyed the intimacy of this project, its nearness to his heart, and its distance from his understanding. He reflects that If the story “hadn’t already been told publicly,” he could not have written it, but that he also would have been stymied “if I hadn’t been personally connected to it.” The book is about Mr. Laudor, but it demanded the full measure of Mr. Rosen’s mettle, and his mind.

Jonathan Rosen Talks About His Blockbuster Book and the Metaphors of Madness

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