Mr. Wamblie was a success story: upper middle class, wife, kids, suburban affluence and executive status. He has lost it all in a mid-life crisis that includes a year in a psychiatric hospital and ends where the book begins: in a YMCA room. With his constant ruminations and regret, Wamblie is the darker side of life. He reminds us he pursued living without thinking until certain demon questions engulfed him. Is Wamblie a martyr, a prophet or the engine of his own undoing? Are Wamblie’s obsessive questions merely self serving? Are Wamblie’s caregivers in denial or just more willing to accept the limitations of life? Finally, is Wamblie sane? Do we really know what sanity is and, if so, can we measure it? If Wamblie’s fears (while exaggerated) are essentially justified, how can the hospital acknowledge them and still maintain the important divide between sane and insane? This is the ‘ceremony of innocence’, the unanswerable conundrum that everyone seeks to avoid.

What are the main themes of your book?

My book poses questions about the nature of sanity. Do we really know what it is or how to measure it? Does our capitalist, consumer society throw people away unnecessarily? Are people like the main character really so unreachable?

Who or what inspired your story?

Working in a psychiatric hospital and seeing how much some patients were driven further into their illness by the institution that’s supposed to help pull them out of it.

What do you like best about your primary characters?

My main character is a human being who should not be isolated by the other characters to the degree he is. His story is a tragic one along the lines of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. It’s not so much what I like about him as how much I feel for him as all the other characters innocently push him further and further away.

What are their worst peculiarities?

The main character was a business executive success story. Now, his employer has taken everything away precipitating a mid-life crisis that includes a year in a psychiatric hospital. His diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia because he thinks everyone is against him. That causes the other characters (his wife, children and people he works with as well as all the professionals he encounters in the hospital) to push him away due to their own discomfort with what he is going through. So, are my character’s fears reasonable to some degree? If they are, how can those who know him acknowledge that without fearing they may be drawn into insanity themselves?

How does your main character evolve?

He evolves downward. Everything and everyone conspires to drive him further into his illness rather than help to pull him out of it. It is a very common story that’s invisible to most people. If you’ve ever seen a homeless person talking to themselves and obviously out of touch, you might ask how they got there. My novel is about how a once productive member of society got there.

What’s the principal message you want to send to your audience?

When big business suddenly pulls the rug out from under an executive by firing them and that causes a nervous breakdown, our mental health system doesn’t always serve them well. A little less power and control and a little more compassion might be a better approach. A patient needs to be reached as a human being to be helped, not pushed away for not acting normal, for not accepting and admitting they are sick. That approach accentuates the paranoid feelings you’re supposed to be helping them overcome. Perhaps the reason they think people are against them is because they are.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has said about your book?

“I found this to be an unforgettable and unique novel where the reader actually enters the mind of a psychiatric patient!! I’ve never read something so extraordinary!!!” The entire review is available here.

Where can we purchase it? Amazon

About Timothy Victor Richardson

A poet for over 30 years, Timothy Victor Richardson was originally educated as a special needs teacher and psychologist, the background from which his novel, “Ceremony of Innocence”, was derived. The strongly metrical language of this novel is an indicator of the author’s major focus: poetry. Richardson’s work has impressed some of the finest poets of the 20th century including former U.S. Poet Laureate, Richard Wilbur, Pulitzer Prize winners James Merrill and Anthony Hecht, Guggenheim fellow and MacArthur recipient, Rosanna Warren and Nobel Laureate, Joseph Brodsky among others. Some of Richardson’s poems have been published by “The Partisan Review”, “Harvard Divinity Bulletin” and other publications, but more of his work has led to films: eight complete and two in progress.

“The Force of Poetry” captures a Richardson poetry reading and presentation on the meaning, mechanics and significance of poetry. Digital technology is employed to convey traditional and complex poetic forms as they are explained. In its endorsement, Maine Public Broadcasting said; “The effect is to inject life and heartbeat into what is often thought of as an inert, hard-to-read art form, and the result is both educational and entertaining.” “The Force of Poetry” is available on Amazon. A taped presentation about Richardson’s epic poem on the inner life of Abraham Lincoln , “Mandala”, has been shown on cable channels. Short films of single poems are available on internet sites with a CD of poetry readings by the actor Jeff Flint in progress.

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