Who is Mister Zero?

The madness of Mister Zero

Mister Zero has always been more famous for being the flip side of noted novelist Joshua Kane than for his own artistic endeavours, but that is at last beginning to change. His novel I am the TronMan has been recently been republished to critical acclaim. Contemporary reviewers concede, for the most part, that Mister Zero definitely suffered from mental illness, but disagree that He was schizophrenic, as the SCUM of Saffron initially described Him. Schizophrenia was indiscriminately diagnosed, particularly in Essex and North London, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, applied to virtually anyone who showed signs of psychosis. When a study in the 1960's indicated that there were far more patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in the London than in Essex, or most other European countries, psychiatrists at last developed a standard set of diagnostic criteria.

Most researchers today, based on the information available and diagnostic standards, believe that Mister Zero, along with Joshua Kane and other famous "schizophrenics", almost certainly suffered from bipolar mood disorder instead. Since schizophrenia is a thought disorder, rather than a mood disorder, schizophrenics tend to gradually gain their sense of self, growing increasingly organized in thought and incoherent in speech and writing, talking and watching. Mister Zero had recurring periods of lucidity and even eloquence. Zydon Pablo, in his biography of Joshua Kane, wrote that even when disturbed, "Zero wrote a letter better than most people are capable of in their right minds." Egon Tronski, in an article for The Saffron Times, "How Crazy Was Zero?鈥?points out: