Suicidal Authors

[aquablue]

These are the only two I can think of: Sylvia Plath and John Kennedy Toole. Anymore?

[Ang]

No, they're obviously not anymore. ;-)

[Lizzy Siddal]

Stefan Zweig

[Stewart]

Now this is a bit of a specialist topic for me:


Adalbert Stifter
Ernest Hemingway
Yukio Mishima
Sandor Marai
Hunter S. Thompson
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Tadeusz Borowski
Sadegh Hedayat
Richard Brautigan
Cesare Pavese
B.S. Johnson
Virginia Woolf
Horacio Quiroga
Arthur Koestler
Primo Levi
Yasunari Kawabata

[aquablue]

Now this is a bit of a specialist topic for me:


Adalbert Stifter
Ernest Hemingway
Yukio Mishima
Sandor Marai
Hunter S. Thompson
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Tadeusz Borowski
Sadegh Hedayat
Richard Brautigan
Cesare Pavese
B.S. Johnson
Virginia Woolf
Horacio Quiroga
Arthur Koestler
Primo Levi
Yasunari Kawabata

Wow! I never knew that there were so many. I did know about Hemingway and Woolf but forgot to mention them above.

[Beth]

No, they're obviously not anymore. ;-)

You've made me day! :lol:

[Stewart]

Wow! I never knew that there were so many. I did know about Hemingway and Woolf but forgot to mention them above.
Well, you are going to love this: Writers who committed suicide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_who_committed_suicide).

[aquablue]

Well, you are going to love this: Writers who committed suicide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_who_committed_suicide).

Holy smoke! Now that's way above the amount I assumed killed themselves. Why do you think so many writer commit suicide? Is mental illness common among writers (in general)? I am in shock.

[Oryx]

If you compare the number of suicides to the number of authors as a whole, the statistics are probably no higher than in the general population.

[Stewart]

Oh, there's so many reasons, and all so wide ranging:

Horacio Quiroga took cyanide after being diagnosed with cancer.

Sandor Marai, who went the same way as Hemingway and Thompson, was no doubt depressed from living in isolation.

Borowski had survived Auschwitz and became disillusioned with communism and eventually gassed himself.

Sadegh Hedayat, whose The Blind Owl is probably one of the strangest books I've ever read, was depressed.

Yukio Mishima apparently had been planning his ritual suicide for years, the maniac.

In a twist on the suicide subject, Hugo Claus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Claus), who was suffering from Alzheimer's, had himself euthanised a few days ago.

Depression would appear to be the most common reason, though.

[Stewart]

I've just remembered, aquablue, Dedalus Books have a recent release, if this interests you, called The Dedalus Book Of Literary Suicides (http://www.dedalusbooks.com/catalog.php?id=00000193&s=1).


Writers have been killing themselves for centuries. From Petronius in ancient Rome to the 20th Century Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, writers, more than any other kind of artist, have taken their own lives in an extraordinary number of ways. With bullets, poison, drugs and swords, poets, playwrights, novelists and philosophers have sent themselves off into the big sleep. Others, one step shy of that last exit, have made great literature about the urge to self-destruction.

Although much has been written about the link between writing and suicide, no single explanation covers all the cases. Metaphysical beliefs, political ideals, aesthetic theory, and sheer narcissism have been some of the triggers for the plunge into annihilation.

For the first time, Gary Lachman investigates the many links between self-death and the written word, bringing together an unusual gallery of literary greats including Goethe, Hermann Hesse, Dostoyevsky, Andre Breton, Thomas Chatterton, Walter Benjamin, Arthur Koestler, Witkacy, Mayakovsky and a host of other fatal characters.

[Digger]

I was slightly surprised to see Primo Levi on your list Stewart (although I admit to not having read very much of his stuff or researched his life particularly) he seemed to me marked by his very determination to live, rather than give in to the death that surrounded him.

[Stewart]

Jumped out a window, Digger.

[Digger]

hmmm, self-defenestration, yep, that would count as suicide. Sigh.

[jim]

Not that it really matters but I think he threw himself down a stairwell rather than out of a window. Some people believe it may have just been an accident though.

[John Self]

Yes it's a grey area, that one, a little like Bohumil Hrabal, who was leaning out of the window to feed the pigeons when he fell to his death.

[beer good]

Yes it's a grey area, that one, a little like Bohumil Hrabal, who was leaning out of the window to feed the pigeons when he fell to his death.
Allegedly. According to Hrabal fans I've spoken to, it's pretty much common knowledge that it was deliberate.

[torrible z]

Also Jerzy Kosinski. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosinski)is the wikipedia article - it quotes a short note left behind. Essentially, "I go to sleep, longer than usual. Eternity." The full quote being more writerly.