Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane,
Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and
Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving
their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of
literature with gaping holes. Their reasons for killing themselves,
when known, were varied and, quite often, unreasonable. Some were
plagued by depression or self-doubt, and others by frustration and
helplessness in a world they could neither change nor tolerate.
Profoundly moving and morbidly attractive, Final Drafts is a
necessary historical record, biographical treatment, and
psychological examination of the authors who left this "cruel
world" by their own hands, either instantly or over long periods of
relentless self-destructive behavior. It is also a devoted
examination of references to suicide in literature, both by those
who took their own lives and those who decided to live. Mark
Seinfelt has selected many well-known (mostly fiction) writers,
from those whose work dates to over a century ago-when the medical
community was ill-equipped to deal with substance abuse and
depression-to more recent writers such as Kosinski, Michael Dorris,
and Eugene Izzi, who have left a puzzled literary community with a
sad legacy. Seinfelt reveals that many authors contemplated ending
their lives in their work; were obsessed with destroying
themselves; were unable-in the case of the Holocaust-to live with
the fact that their contemporaries had been killed; believed death
to be a freedom from the horrors that forced them to create; and,
sometimes, were simply unable to withstand rejection or criticism
of their work. Other noted authors discussed in this volume include
John Berryman, Ambrose Bierce, Harry Crosby, John Davidson, William
Inge, Randall Jarrell, Arthur Koestler, T.E. Lawrence, Primo Levi,
Jack London, Jay Anthony Lukas, Tom McHale, Yukio Mishima, Henry de
Montherlant, Seth Morgan, George Sterling, Sara Teasdale, Ernst
Toller, John Kennedy Toole, Sergey Yesenin, and many others
General
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