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Ten extraordinary literary suicides
Timesonline.co.uk ^ | January 25, 2008 | Gary Lachman

Posted on 01/28/2008 7:01:32 PM PST by forkinsocket

From bullets, to poison and even swords, over the years writers have taken their own lives in an atonishing number of ways. Gary Lachman, a founding member of the rock group Blondie and now a full-time writer, explains ten fatal characters ‘So many, I had not thought death had undone so many.’’ T.S.Eliot’s The Wasteland

1. Empedocles – jumping into a volcano

Legend says that Empedocles, one of the earliest Greek philosophers, killed himself by secretly jumping into Mt. Etna in Sicily; his idea was that the volcano would destroy his corpse and people would think he had been transformed into an immortal god and had been raised to the heavens. This ruse was uncovered, however, when Etna, not agreeing with Empedocles' plans, threw up his golden sandal.

2. Thomas Chatterton – poison

"The marvellous boy," as Wordsworth called him, committed suicide at seventeen, defeated in his battle against an uncaring, philistine London, which he had hoped to conquer after leaving his provincial, mercantile Bristol. Ignored or rejected by those who should have recognised his gift, Chatterton was left to starve in the archetypal garret, too proud to beg or even to accept help when it was offered. He struggled valiantly and defiantly, writing his poems, articles, and stories, sending them to editors, only for them to become lost in the wash of hackwork flooding Grub Street, or worse, printed without payment. Finally, his fate became unbearable and he decided to end it all, tearing his last poetry to bits in his death throes, succumbing to the arsenic he took that dreadful night of 23 August 1770 in Brooke Street, Holborn. There is a chance, however, that his death was really a result of an accidental arsenic overdose, which he took in order to cure a case of syphilis.

3. Heinrich von Kleist - gunshot

On 21 November 1811, on a grassy knoll overlooking the Lake Wannsee just outside Berlin, the playwright and novelist Heinrich von Kleist put a bullet through the heart of his companion Henriette Vogel, a 31-year-old woman with incurable cancer, and then placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth and fired.

4. Gerard de Nerval – hanging

A student of the occult, he was also famous for walking a lobster through the Palais-Royal in Paris. After two stays in an insane asylum and several bouts of madness, he finally hung himself with a filthy apron string he had carried for years and which he assured friends was really the Queen of Sheba’s garter.

5. Jack London – morphine overdose

Addicted to morphine and opium, London was a phenomenal drinker and was one of the first major writers to publicly confess to his alcoholism. In his passion for excess, it is easy to see a subliminal death-wish, a desire to pass beyond the limits of the self. London admitted to once almost drinking himself to death in a binge, and on another occasion, he stumbled into San Francisco Bay and “some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me.” London drifted for hours with the intention of letting himself drown, but sobered up in the end and was saved by a fisherman.

6. Virginia Woolf – drowning

Leaving Leonard Woolf what must rank as one of the most heartbreaking farewells (“You have given me the greatest possible happiness,” she told him. “You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came…”), on 28 March 1941, after filling her pockets with stones, Virginia walked into the river Ouse, near their home, Monks House, in the village of Rodmell in Sussex, and drowned herself.

7. Ernest Hemingway – gunshot

Hemingway was a writer with an interest in the question of suicide, a question which he eventually answered by blowing his brains out, although there is good reason to believe that the electro-shock therapy he received as treatment for his depression, and which left his memory and his ability to write in ruins, was what finally sent him over the edge.

8. Sylvia Plath – gassing

On the night of Sunday 11 February 1963, after leaving them glasses of milk and slices of bread for breakfast, although they were too young to feed themselves, Sylvia opened the window of her children’s room in her maisonette at 23 Fitzroy Road, in the Primrose Hill area of North London. Then she carefully sealed off her kitchen door on the floor below with towels and adhesive tape, left a note on the pram to call her doctor, laid out a cloth for a pillow, turned on the gas and put her head deep inside the oven.

9. Anne Sexton - gassed herself in her car

Divorced, living alone, estranged from friends and family, she had been emptied by her misery, and her alcoholism had deadened her creativity. Her suicide, though not unexpected was a surprise. There was no note, no warning. After a final lunch with her long time friend Maxine Kumin, at which she seemed normal, at least for her, Anne, got into her car in her garage and turned on the ignition. The radio was playing. It was the act, her therapist wrote, of a lonely and despairing alcoholic.” In a tribute to her in the New York Times, Erica Jong wrote, “Anne Sexton killed herself because it is too painful to live in this world without numbness, and she had no numbness at all.”

10. Yukio Mishima – hara-kiri

On 25 November 1970, before a literally captive audience, Mishima performed hara-kiri. His lover and disciple Masakatsu Morita, who would also attempt hara-kiri, after several attempts failed to decapitate Mishima as planned, leaving incomplete the kaishakunin part of the ritual, aimed to relieve the agony of disembowelment. Both received their finishing touches at the hands and sword of a third member of Mishima’s Tatenokai (Shield Society), a kind of private army that Mishima hoped would be a model for a new, right-wing Japan, recapturing the samurai glories of old.

Extracted from The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides: Dead Letters by Gary Lachman, published by Dedalus on February 7, 2008, priced at £9.99.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: literary; suicide
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To: puroresu
Mishima was an odd guy. A Japanese ultranationalist who surrounded himself with a cult of gay bodybuilders/weapons enthusiasts.

That's one story Kurosawa wouldn't touch, that's for sure!


But Paul Schraeder did! His Mishima is one of my all-time Top Ten films, and hardly anybody's seen it. The non-linear nature of the film with the use of b&w for the flashbacks, color for the story of Mishima's last day and saturated candy color for the literary adaptations is stunning. A must!
41 posted on 01/30/2008 2:09:40 PM PST by GodBlessRonaldReagan (Big dog, big dog, bow-wow-wow! We'll crush crime, now, now, now!)
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To: Borges
Hemingway was awful, simply awful.

His self indulgence was legendary in almost every aspect of his life. Food, liquor, women, you name it, Hemingway over indulged.

It wasn't admiration for his writing that drove his career, it was envy.

He was a pitiable man who died in a contemtible manner.

L

42 posted on 01/30/2008 2:11:19 PM PST by Lurker (Pimping my blog: http://lurkerslair-lurker.blogspot.com/)
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To: forkinsocket

Al Gore choking on a spotted owl sandwich.

Sorry, wishful thinking.


43 posted on 01/30/2008 2:11:44 PM PST by CholeraJoe ("A dead whale or a stove boat!")
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To: windcliff

ping


44 posted on 01/30/2008 2:17:16 PM PST by stylecouncilor (I'm a loner Dottie; a rebel.)
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To: Lurker

I’m not defending his lifestyle just the best of his fiction. The best of the short stories are just great.


45 posted on 01/30/2008 2:24:31 PM PST by Borges
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To: Borges
Well then we must agree to disagree. The only thing I enjoyed about Hemingway's short stories was their brevity.

L

46 posted on 01/30/2008 2:28:00 PM PST by Lurker (Pimping my blog: http://lurkerslair-lurker.blogspot.com/)
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To: geopyg

Yeah, but Hunter having his remains shot out of a cannon was pretty original.


47 posted on 01/30/2008 2:29:58 PM PST by dfwgator (11+7+15=3 Heismans)
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To: Borges

Not particularly. I’m a big O’Hara fan — not many of us left.

To clarify my take on Hem. I find it fascinating that towards the end he sunk into self-parody while F. Scott continued to plug away and was actually climbing back up just prior to his death.


48 posted on 01/30/2008 3:03:26 PM PST by durasell (!)
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To: Lurker

If you judge writers by their lifestyles and circumstances surrounding their deaths, then you’ll be reading mighty few books.


49 posted on 01/30/2008 3:05:15 PM PST by durasell (!)
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To: durasell

Well, H lived a lot longer than FSF.


50 posted on 01/30/2008 3:11:01 PM PST by Borges
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To: GodBlessRonaldReagan
But Paul Schraeder did! His Mishima is one of my all-time Top Ten films, and hardly anybody's seen it.

I've seen it and it is also one of my all-time favorite films. The soundtrack by Philip Glass is incredible too.

Seeing the film also encouraged me to read a couple of biographies about Mishima as well as his partial autobiography Confessions of a Mask. I guess I'm not into literature enough to read his novels.

51 posted on 01/30/2008 3:17:40 PM PST by wideminded
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To: Borges

Well, H lived a lot longer than FSF.


Proof positive that marrying a series of increasingly richer women is better for your health than marrying just one crazy woman.


52 posted on 01/30/2008 3:18:57 PM PST by durasell (!)
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To: durasell

Thank goodness Vladimir and Vera had a happy marriage.
53 posted on 01/30/2008 3:21:04 PM PST by Borges
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To: stylecouncilor

Thanks for the ping. Interesting info.


54 posted on 01/30/2008 3:24:26 PM PST by windcliff
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To: Borges

So did Tolstoy, apparently.


55 posted on 01/30/2008 3:29:49 PM PST by durasell (!)
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To: durasell
I judge Hemingway by his writing, which to be succinct about it, sucked.

L

56 posted on 01/30/2008 4:37:22 PM PST by Lurker (Pimping my blog: http://lurkerslair-lurker.blogspot.com/)
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To: Lurker

I’ll probaby regret asking this, but what books by Hemingway have you read?


57 posted on 01/30/2008 4:40:56 PM PST by durasell (!)
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To: durasell
"Old Man And The Sea" was tolerable. "For Whom The Bell Tolls" was interminable. "Farewell To Arms"...pure dreck. Started "The Sun Also Rises" but realized there was no reason to further subject myself to his contributions to American literature.

L

58 posted on 01/30/2008 4:50:17 PM PST by Lurker (Pimping my blog: http://lurkerslair-lurker.blogspot.com/)
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To: Hardastarboard

Yeah, he is only one of the Greatest writers to come out of America. I’m sure you like Steven King much better.


59 posted on 01/30/2008 4:51:36 PM PST by fish hawk (The religion of Darwinism = Monkey Intellect)
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To: Lurker

Year, millions of readers all over the world prove your point. LOL get real. So you have an opinion even it it has not backing by the public and critics.


60 posted on 01/30/2008 4:55:20 PM PST by fish hawk (The religion of Darwinism = Monkey Intellect)
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