“Why would you go and throw away that money? How could anyone do that?” I heard that a lot over the last few years.

“To write a book?  Are you nuts?” ”Don’t you wish you had that job in Philly now that the economy’s so screwed?”

Yes, and No.  Philadelphia’s economy is on life support, and its legal profession is a nest of bottom feeders lowballing each other for the last scraps of business left in the city.  Better to wash dishes than drown a lifer on that slowly melting iceberg.

But it’s a little more than that.  If you like to write, if you think you’ve something to say, and for reasons unknown, you’ve an ability to string words together in a form other people like to read, writing is Involuntary.  You couldn’t turn it off if you liked.  The idea of pissing half a million dollars in earnings out the window to loose that skill on the masses – to get a ISBN number, and your work on the shelves of the stores, and downloaded by untold crowds of readers you’ll never meet sitting in airport lounges – seems entirely logical.

There is no option.  Some people simply have to write.  And in the mass of junk texts dumped into the marketplace every day, from the self help tomes of snake oil salesmen promising to make you svelte or rich overnight, to the 18 font ghost-penned memoirs of Kardashians and Real Housewives of ________ fameballs, thankfully, some of the deserving authors still get book deals.  Somewhere, in some dark corner of an office in New York City, hidden behind yellowing galley copies of ancient paperbacks, an editor who remembers the definition of literature, and the difference between the concepts “commercially viable” and “quality” still greenlights books that matter… books aimed at doing what books were supposed to do – get to the deeper truth.

…And entertain us.

I count myself lucky to have a writer who’s authored such a work as a friend – Dr. Rob Dobrenski.  And yes, this is a plug for his book, Crazy, Notes on and off the Couch, which hit the book stores last week.  I was given an advance copy of the book, and as my blurb on the back of it testifies, Crazy is an amazing text.  Is it Hemingway? No.  Is it Fear and Loathing in the world of psychological therapy?  The Ulysses of shrink books?  No.

But what would be?

All Crazy is, which is all it needs to be, and which alone is a stunning achievement, is a crucially true look at what it’s really like to be a psychologist.  What your psychologist is thinking when he’s sitting across from you.  What he’s experienced, in layman’s terms, unvarnished… the nuts he’s engaged in his trade, how doctors discuss them off the record, and how often the therapist is the one most in need of therapy.

Most psychologists wouldn’t write a book this honest, about themselves or their profession.  There is a back story about it’s publication, about the brushback Dr. Rob faced from members of his profession in writing so openly about a psychologist’s work.  Without getting into specifics, let’s put it this way – Rob paid for this book, conceding professional opportunities in exchange for the ability to write what he did.  Like any other business, some of the insiders didn’t want Rob discussing what goes on behind the curtain.

But don’t think Crazy is a tell all.  No, Crazy is literature, and even if another psychologist had the guts to pen what Rob did, he’d never do it as well.  I’ve worked with Dr. Rob for several years, observed his writing, and the prose just gets better and better.  The book reads smooth as silk, and the subject matter’s eminently accessible, even for one with no knowledge of therapy (yes, it’s true, I’ve never been to therapy, at least that I can recall).  You can pass an hour with the thing and never look once at your watch.  And that, really, is the test of a good book.  The mark of an author who can write. The mark of an author who suffered for his work, put everything he had into it, and deserves to be read.