The Book of Laughter and Forgetting  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

In May 1777, Comte de Mirabeau, 18th century French aristocrat was imprisoned at Vincennes. There he met Marquis de Sade, both of them imprisoned by lettre de cachet, both libertines; however the two disliked each other intensely. They both wrote prolifically in prison, both suffered from graphomania, Mirabeau would write letters to Sophie, Le libertin de qualité and the Erotika Biblion; Sade was incarcerated in various prisons and insane asylums for about 32 years (out of a total of 74) of his life; much of his writing, starting with his debut Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man was done during his imprisonment.

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1. The obsessive compulsion to write books.
2. The name of various surrealist technique, see entoptic graphomania

According to Kundera, graphomania is the groundless claim, sometimes being large-scale, of being a writer:

"The irresisitable proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors, and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down the streets and shout: 'We are all writers!'" --The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

External links

• Sade and graphomania
• Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea.

See also

• Monomania
• the case of the Marquis de Sade, best illustrated in the 2000 film Quills.