biography, autobiography, memoirs : DARKNESS VISIBLE A Memoir of Madness<i> By William Styron (Random House: $15.95; 84 pp.) </i>

A law professor once said that legal scholarship had two problems--one its style, the other its content. I have a similar reaction to William Styron’s new book, and say so reluctantly because it touches on a serious subject: depression, which brought the novelist to the edge of suicide.

“Darkness Visible” is not, in fact, about depression, since Styron says his bout was essentially beyond description; nor is it about his depression’s effect on other people, family and friends making but cameo appearances; nor does it concern the medical world’s understanding of the disease, Styron limiting himself to writing, in essence, that his doctors couldn’t do much. He does touch on the connection between depression and creativity, citing Camus, Randall Jarrell, Primo Levi, Virginia Woolf and so on, but there’s nothing here that hasn’t been said better elsewhere.

It’s a major stretch to think that a modest speech given at a medical school (Johns Hopkins), then adapted as a magazine article (Vanity Fair), could happily find a third life between hard covers.