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Forget You Must Remember, a novella

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Forget You Must Remember
A novella
by Nathan Hansen with art by Anne Austin Pearce

“Nathan Hansen fully comprehends the depth of this journey. The understanding of mental illness and his compassion for and knowledge of it makes this story compelling.”
—Mariel Hemingway, Author, Actress, Health and Wellness Advocate

“ … in its idiosyncratic realized-metaphors, and object posings of the, perhaps, ultimate (institutionalists) subjective situation, Nathan Hansen’s fine piece of writing, here is, I think, important, and even reminds me of, say Kafka …”
—Dow Mossman, Author of The Stones of Summer

“Powerful stuff. A clear and strong voice to be reckoned with.”
—Dan Fante, author of Chump Change, Mooch, Spitting Off Tall Buildings, and Short Dog

“Forget You Must Remember burns its way into our consciousness like the drugs and delusions that have scalded its narrator’s mind and soul. Gisick’s life is unextinguished by depression, paranoia, addiction, and the labyrinthic procedures of the ‘recovery’ process, but he is without hope or direction. Nathan Hansen takes us to the center of chaos and leaves us there, looking out through warped, funhouse mirrors of insanity while science and the state look dispassionately inward — testing, treating, and analyzing a man whose enduring humanity is irrelevant to everyone except Gisick himself, and the readers who simply cannot forget him.”

—Steve Heller, Author of What We Choose to Remember and The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman, President, Board of Directors, Association of Writers & Writing Programs

Nathan Douglas Hansen, author of this semi-autobiographical novel, spent five years with the U.S. Army followed by multiple stays in V.A. psychiatric units — all of which culminates in a captivating story that sheds light on the ebb and flow of psychosis and the walls that seal it off in obscurity.