Who gets to decide what's sane? Explore the metaphor in modern literary asylums.
Who decides what's sane—and who benefits from that decision? Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Han Kang's The Vegetarian. Literature's mental asylums are rarely just hospitals—they're stages where our culture's deepest conflicts play out: Who has power over whom? What separates sanity from madness? And what happens when the price of freedom is being labeled insane?
The mental asylum has long served as a powerful metaphor for our deepest fears—helplessness, corrupt authority, and losing our grip on reality itself. In this presentation, we’ll explore how writers transform the institution into a mirror, using mental asylums to ask dangerous questions about conformity and control. From the electroshock therapy of The Bell Jar to the colonial gaslighting of Wide Sargasso Sea, from the wartime bureaucracy of Catch-22 to the contemporary memoir Girl, Interrupted, these literary asylums still speak to our moment, when questions about institutional power, diagnostic labels, and the right to define our own reality feel more urgent than ever.
Joel Clements is a local writer and teacher. He has taught literature and writing for Bend LaPine schools, COCC, and OSU-Cascades, and presented multiple Deschutes Library and Novel Idea seminars over the years. As a writer/performer, he has contributed to multiple regional and national publications, and his most recent short film appeared in festivals in the US and Europe. “The Times” once identified him as a humor writer of note. He worked professionally as a storyteller and comedian for several years. He lives in Bend with his wife, Michele, and kids, Zoe, Oscar, and Phoebe.
2026 A Novel Idea Book Selection:
Supersonic charts the rise of a boomtown city in the American West where ambition outpaces memory. In the present day, PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth is determined to rename her daughter’s elementary school after her late grandmother—a beloved music teacher and Japanese internment survivor. What begins as a symbolic family gesture spirals into a kaleidoscopic, multi-generational story of struggle—for and against change, and over who gets to define the future.
Through interwoven lives—an opioid-addicted 19th-century conman, a disgraced Navy seaman building a jet that will fly faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad turned weed entrepreneur, and a family haunted by the ghosts of progress—Supersonic reveals how each era tries to remake the same ground beneath its feet. At once intimate and panoramic, the story channels the restless energy that propels the West.
About the Author:
Thomas Kohnstamm was born and raised in Seattle. He still lives in the same house he grew up in—now with his wife and two children. A freelance writer for over twenty years, he’s been a Spanish & Portuguese translator, travel writer, video & animation producer and has covered subjects ranging from rainforest conservation to quantum computing to backcountry skiing. Supersonic is his third book.
Learn more about A Novel Idea
Questions? Contact jennym@deschuteslibrary.org
AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Adult Program |
The Sisters Library features 8,300 square feet of space, all housed in an exterior design that includes a partial wraparound porch with the Western appearance for which Sisters is famous.
