I wasn't sure what catagory to specifically put this in. But it seems like every other lit author specifically that I hear about either has offed themselves, died in a gun duel--depending on how early in American history we're talking about, or--in the case of European history with Thomas Hardy and I'm almost guessing Lewis Carrol as well--gave up and wrote poetry the rest of their lives.
The only reason I'm uncertain about Carrol is I'm not sure whether his poetry came first or later than Alice In Wonderland.
So my question is, is depression in the literary fiction community more common than in commercial fiction? Or is it that it's the ones with depression that usually make the news?
The ones that come to mind within a modern context--are David Foster Wallace and Sylvia Plath.
We seem to be making a false conclusion. There are many more writers that are literary geniuses that have not taken their lives. While I believe intelligence and depression are found in many of the same people, I don't believe it to be the case that great writing is parallel to great depression. We like to focus on the lives that end tragically because we find something in them that speaks to us on a very personal level. But often, it is nothing more than trying to find similarities with our own demons. Shakespeare, Twain, King, Palahniuk, Angelou, Marquez, Neruda, Carver, Austen, Morrison, Vonnegut, etc. These are just a few that come to mind that are great, but didn't bite the proverbial bullet.
That's true, I wasn't thinking about them. Plus a lot of the great children's authors weren't depressed (as far as I know at the moment.)
L.W. Flouisa,
What I'm about to say is going to come off super harsh but it needs to be said. Never spell "a lot" the way you just did again.
I think a safe assumption to make in regards to this topic is that if anybody is going to devote their lives to and shape their passions around exploring, analyzing and detailing aspects of their/man's existence, of deconstructing modern life, they risk getting pinned under the weight of the resultant existential rubble.
Thanks, just fixed it. : D
Yea that existential rubble's a killer.
In Dutch there's an established author who wrote a book on literary novelists and their suicide. It's quite interesting, but I believe it hasn't been translated into English;
Some evidence that the part of the same part of the brain is responsible for creativity and mental illness.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/secrets-of-the-creative-brain/372299/
Not an answer to the OP, just a bit of trivia:
E/duard Leve/ delivered a book on suicide to his publisher ten days before he killed himself.
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/suicide
Haven't read it. The thought of it creeps me out.
Suicide would not be so great had it not been for the context of his suicide days after furnishing the manuscript. The writer who wrote the foreword includes a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre where he says an artist's life can only be made coherent after their death, and this is undoubtedly true in Leve's case. I read it in about an hour and a half on a plane home from New York. It was quite boring.
In another point of trivia, Yukio Mishima turned in the manuscript of the final book in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy before his attempted coup on the Japanese government and his following ritualistic suicide. In the tetralogy, the plot of Runaway Horses, the second book, provides a fictional account of a student's attempted coup that mirrors the one Mishima actually attempted.
I can get with Mishima.
His writing anyway.
Yeah, Mishima is tragically serious but I still love him. He's one of my top three authors for sure. I also appreciate the fact that he was a bodybuilder, thus helping to fight the stigma that all weightlifters are douche brahs.
Wow, that's a weird turn of events. I wonder how that publisher must of felt.:/
Proud.
John O'Brien also committed suicide after writing Leaving Las Vegas, his novel about suicide, apparently two weeks after learning it would be made into a movie. According to Wikipedia, his father has stated that the novel was his suicide note.
Not sure why I added that, but this seems to be the morbid facts & trivia thread.
Yea Silvia Plath was similar in that regard--her Bell Jar being thought by some as being a suicide letter.
I'm actually extremely curious about Old Man And The Sea, I've wondered at times if like some of these books had hints in them. Or it they really were just like regular novellas and novels.
I think I remember hearing about an illustrated version of Old Man And The Sea a while back.
Wait, why the curiosity about Old Man and the Sea? I'm not big on Hemingway so I don't know, was that the last thing he wrote before offing himself? As for any grave clues, I dont think it had any. It was just a boring novella about the triumph of the human spirt.
As for books centered on Suicide, it seems to be a death sentence for authors. As for me, Im hoping to turn in my manuscript about a writer who turns in his manuscript ten days before he becomes rich and successful and famous because of that novel and hope that I become rich and successful and famous because of that novel.
simulacrum, those sound like the kinds of hopes that lead an aspiring writer to despair and suicide. Reverse, reverse psychology. Your friends here at LR will be keeping an eye on you...
Nelly Arcan did the same thing---wrote a book about a failed suicide attempt and then killed herself. Exit is the English title. It is something like an Invisible Monsters meets Dream Story (book that Eyes Wide Shut is based on).
My question on a lot of these would be was it the last thing they wrote before they died, or was it the last thing they finished before they died? I'm not saying it was, but for all I know Hemmingway had Old Man and the Sea all but finished except for half a chapter for 15 years before he died.
Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea a decade before he died, and won the Pulitzer and Nobel years before his suicide (so I agree with what I think you're inferring).
I'm not a Hemingway scholar, so may stand corrected, but I don't think he belongs in this conversation at all. He's more the type of man that would end his life if he went years and years and couldn't write another good novel.
I'm not saying it was a great example, but you've missed the point. What you published last doesn't have to be what you wrote last or right before you died.
I'm still not sure I follow your point. Are you saying that a suicide note must be the last thing someone writes before they die?
That's not what he's saying.
I'm saying that assuming something they wrote who knows when that happened to be published right before they died as a suicide note isn't a good idea.
I think I follow you now: Just because it was published right before they died doesn't mean it was written right before they died? It could have been written years before, but the timing of publication leads people to jump to the conclusion that it was a suicide note?
If that's what you mean, I agree--but I think in the above examples (and generally, in such cases) people are not making assumptions based on timing, but on subject and theme.
On a related topic, has anyone read the novel (or seen the film) Morvern Callar? It's a brilliant plot concept built from the author/suicide convention.
RE: Morvern Callar --- Hadn't heard of it before. The postmortem fate of unpublished work is a more delicate subject than I thought when I was younger (and hadn't written so much). The concept of literary executor seemed kind of pointless, the story of Kafka wanting his manuscripts destroyed struck me as crazy; but if it's not taken care of somehow, who knows what would happen? I'm reading Kafka's stories now, and some of it's good, but I do actually feel weird knowing he wanted it to no longer exist. Was Brod really just an exploitative ass, or did he somehow know better than the author? I don't know the story in any detail to guess.
We could make the same case for Dmitri Nabokov and the Nabokov estate regarding the publication of The Original of Laura. Of course, this pleases the readership but betrays the author. This subject, Kafka's specifically, is the basis of Kundera's series of essays, Testsments Betrayed. It's interesting to note that Kafka, whom Kundera calls "the untouchable of untouchables," has attained such prestige considering most of his works were incomplete, and we have heretofore unpublished manuscripts by Kafka still awaiting publication. The question of whether we are disgracing an author's legacy by publishing their incomplete work is tricky. Of course, what legacy would Kafka have had if Max Brod did not betray his friend's last will and testament regarding his manuscripts considering nearly all of Kafka's work is incomplete?
Yes, Kafka's renown is due to the continued publication of his stuff. But, if he cared about renown, why would he instruct someone to destroy his manuscripts? This is quite a different thing from Nabokov's single unfinished work being published, perhaps for profit, perhaps for posterity & interest. Nabokov was prolific and popular, and felt that one book should go unread; Kafka was relatively obscure and not very prolific, and wanted it all gone. Of course, either author could've burned the manuscripts themselves, and I wonder why they hadn't. (Perhaps they didn't have the only copies?)
So a literary executor is the one that inherits your estate? I guess it pays to have one that follows your will to the dot. While I'd want to publish some stuff, so stuff I intend for me exclusively.
That just makes me feel squeemish.
Not exactly. Kafka's estate (or an archive, I don't remember) has battled Max Brod to prevent his manuscript's from being seized and published. In Nabokov's case, both his wife, Vera, and his son, Dmitri, have agreed to publish The Original of Laura.
@jyh, I am not speaking of Kafka having any sort of feelings toward his renown because we are speaking of the legacy of a figure who is deceased and, as such, can feel no emotion. I'm speaking of the actions taken on (or against, considering your view) his behalf.
@sim --- I get that. I didn't think you were saying Kafka was pleased from beyond the grave. But is it not possible to be disrepectful to someone who can't feel it? Of course it's possible.
Stefan Zweig commited suicide because he thought the world would be an aweful place with the Germans ruling. He didn't think it would get better. He had some kind of affinity for depression.
Not sure if there are any unfinished (un)published work.
@jyh - yes, that was the point I was driving at in the questions I asked,
Hey a Kafka zombie, sounds like an excellent book.
As someone with bipolar disorder (i.e. depression and mania) with a dash of anxiety, I find that writing about these things can be both helpful to me (catharsis) and also helpful to others (knowing you're not alone, spreading awareness, etc.).
But writing in general (like reading) is a form of escapism, of creating new worlds, or reshaping the world we live in already. It's awfully tempting when you're depressed to turn to that sort of outlet, especially if you are creatively inclined already.
I already love your style! I find myself more productive writing while extremely depressed.
I think I'm in the minority on this one- I can't write if I'm down, bored, let alone depressed, it's too demotivating. Angry? Maybe, at least it's directed outward. But excited or motivated is my preference, and that's how I get when I'm being productive, which only feeds the cycle.
^^^
Me too, Thuggish. My brain trips over itself when I feel like crap. I need some kind of excitement/stimulation to kick me into gear.
^^^ me thirdsies.
I always had a kind of reactionary depression. Not only do I identity what's wrong in my life, I like to find friends in similar slumps and try to help them. I know odd.
Sometimes it picks me up, but I don't suffer from depression.
