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Unglossed with second thoughts or self-justifications, Wilson's impressions sometimes recall the heartless mirth of an otherwise very dissimilar writer of the period, Evelyn Waugh. If friends got divorced, or somebody disappeared, or a girl slit her wrist with the top of a spaghetti can—well, the other revelers could not pause too long over the misfortune lest they lose their grip and go under too. Wilson himself almost did. In 1929 he suffered a nervous breakdown, probably from the cumulative strain of deadlines and tangled romances. While in the sanitorium he became addicted briefly to the drug paraldehyde.
Recovered, Wilson set about "accomplishing work which I had begun to feel was long overdue." The best early result was the superb study of the exquisite Symbolist movement that was to become his first major book, Axel's Castle. ("Living? We'll leave that to the servants," said decadent Count Axel.) This departure exacted its melancholy price. As the decade ended, Wilson was falling away from old companions, from the "outlaw" life of the Village, from youth. The mood was summed up by his favorite cousin Sandy Kimball, a schizophrenic whom Wilson visited in an institution: "Life's all right if you can
Stand it."