Psychopath, or just plain crazy?

Salon.com has an informative article (actually a week old) on Henry Darger and his work, by way of reviewing a John MacGregor book on Darger's life and work. Not just an overview of the reclusive "outsider artist" whose life work was a 23,000-page, single-spaced opus about a war against children, called "The Vivian Girls," the article mentions controversies surrounding the man who discovered Darger's work, art dealer Nathan Lerner.

I saw an exhibit of Darger's work in New York last spring. The paintings are fascinating. Obsessive, beautiful, weird, they are an amazing reflection of the clash between a disturbed mind and American culture.

The Salon article wonders just how disturbed Darger was. The question raised by the article -- pretty hard to answer at this point, as Darger has been dead for 30 years and his work is practically impossible to study in its entirety -- is whether he was just a weird, obsessed recluse or actually a violent psychopath who might have murdered one or more children. There's no evidence for the latter theory, but Darger's own work certainly makes the question an interesting one.