Every night after he got out, he'd come down to the beer garden to play 500 rummy, and inevitably some drunk would bring up his hospitalization, just to pick a fight. At that point, everybody would laugh, and not just because his comeback was pretty good.
Mental illness is a deeply uncomfortable subject for people.
Witness the discomfort in the federal courthouse in Sacramento this week. This is a man who reportedly tried to hang himself Thursday morning, who has told his lawyers that he is a helpless puppet and that satellites put electrodes in people's brains. Healthy people don't hide in the backwoods with wild hair and matted beards, as Kaczynski was doing when the authorities, acting on a tip from his anguished brother, brought him in. Healthy people, when they go to college, aren't remembered later for the severity and squalor of their loneliness. One of Kaczynski's Harvard dorm mates recalled after the arrest that he didn't remember Kaczynski having spoken more than 10 words in three years.