Download or read book Songs from the Black Chair written by Charles Barber and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Day after day, night after night, desperate men come to sit in the black chair next to Charles Barber?s desk in a basement office at Bellevue and tell of their travails, of prison and disease, of violence and the voices that plague them. Between the stories, amid the peeling paint, musty odor, and flickering fluorescent light of his office, Barber observes that this isn?t really where he is supposed to be and reveals his privileged youth in contrast to his own nightmare of mental illness. By relating these troubled lives to his own, Barber illuminates some of the most disturbing and enduring truths of human nature.