Suicides

by Robert Burkenhare 

Out There

Bohumil Hrabal is said to have died by falling from a hospital window while feeding birds perched on the ledge. He leaned too far out there, in his fiction and in his last moments. Confession: I didn’t finish I Served the King of England, a book that is said to be untranslatable, though that never stops people from trying. Maybe that book is untranslatable. I found the English version occasionally fun and sometimes a slog. Though the same can be said about life itself. Perhaps this is what Hrabal thought as well. Maybe in his last moments. His doctor apparently believed the cause of death was suicide. The story about feeding birds might’ve been cooked up by family? Friends? A literary executor? Someone concerned with the author’s reputation? That rules out literary executor, as we all know that a suicidal end is a sure way to literary notoriety. 

Vibrant Darkness 

It’s easy to dismiss the efforts of Mark Rothko. Sure, you can do what he did, but you didn’t. I say there’s more there than we see with a causal eye. Note the stark difference in his most famous red squares and the later black and gray pieces that heralded his suicide. One need not be a shrink to see the correlation, though can we say we know the contents of an artist’s soul (much less psyche) after viewing their art? Especially now, as defenders of the vile implore us to separate the art from the artist. Forgetting all that for a minute, Rothko’s late work connects with me more than the celebrated Black in Deep Red or any of the more colorful paintings. Stark, almost drab, yet vibrant despite the darkness. Perhaps that is the best we can say about Rothko himself, for all accounts are that he, like a lot of artists, was a shit. And given to creature comforts that made his doctor issue a warning, ignored. But that’s not what got him. Pills and a razor. One has to imagine the mess he made, nothing like the ordered geometry of his art.

A Perfect Hit?

I should have stronger feelings about Abbie Hoffman. Not a Chicagoan, but forever associated with my city. 1968 was perhaps his best year, despite the police brutality and legal trouble. Prior stunts, like throwing fake money around the New York Stock Exchange and trying to psychically levitate the Pentagon, made his reputation. While I admire a good gadfly, Hoffman’s shenanigans always filled me with equal parts admiration and annoyance. I’m on his side, sure, but I suspect that his side was a pan-leftism lacking dimension. And that his larger concern was fame (though who could begrudge anyone that desire?). And I couldn’t find a copy of Steal This Book to steal once the bookshops started keeping it under lock and key. Nothing like making socialism a museum piece. But his suicide strikes me as most interesting, especially as he’d been talking a lot about assassinations made to look like suicides. Could he have been victim to the very conspiracy he was investigating? Possibly, though it’s hard to accept that anyone could eat as many pills as he did unwillingly. I suppose the coroner’s report could be fudged, but here I go down a rabbit hole of paranoid thinking. If anything has taught me to give Occam’s Razor credence, it’s Abby Hoffman’s death. But maybe the powers that be knew that such an impossible to fake death would pull the wool over all of us. Or maybe they made it so clean to intentionally whet our skeptical appetites? Cause suspicion while creating deniability. Any accusation is sure to be ignored as way out there. A perfect hit. Clever. Or maybe the uncertainty is the point. We’ll never know and in that unknowing lie the seeds of chaos. 

Tears for Iris

Iris Chang… Oh, Iris. I can’t imagine what tormented the author of the astonishing book The Rape of Nanking, though I’ve read that a deep depression took its toll. The less substantiated claim is that her research drove her to suicide, or at least worked in tandem with whatever else was going on. I buy that. Dwelling on the worst of humanity is sure to have a deleterious effect. What I can report is that the screening I saw of Nanking, documentary/staged reading focused on the Japanese’s horrific massacre of the Chinese in 1937, reduced me to tears when the final dedication to Iris Chang appeared on the screen. I left the Gene Siskel Film Center a wreck. So much horror for the world, much less one intrepid chronicler. 

Original End

Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Painted Bird. At least so the dust jacket staring at me says. Somehow, a large group of people thought the book was a memoir. My copy clearly indicates that the book is a novel. Were earlier editions more ambiguously labeled? Did Kosinski make the claim himself? Whatever caused the confusion, apparently Kosinski encouraged it, as the idea that he lived through the trauma documented in The Painted Bird helped his celebrity. Simple readers have always celebrated experience over imagination. But when the truth surfaced that Kosinski was not (as the protagonist of the novel was) dipped in a pit of feces, causing him to lose all speech, the author’s reputation began to tarnish. And then came the accusations of plagiarism. And the regrettable on the record shit-stirring. Like Truman Capote, Kosinski seemed too distracted by partying to ever again get anything as good as The Painted Bird down on paper, assuming he did write it. Alright, Steps is a damn fine book, and I hear The Hermit on 69th Street is actually readable, but Kosinski is forever the socialite in my head. Or was before he took his life with a wicked combo of booze and pills and a plastic bag over the head. His suicide note was certainly original.    

No Gonzo

The less said about Hunter S. Thompson the better.

This is Whatever

Speaking of lionized writers, David Foster Wallace might have been equally dismissed by yours truly had I not a grudging respect for his mind, even if I find his fiction sometimes too beholden to charm. By 1996 I was already too old for Infinite Jest. But the guy was hard to avoid. His “This is Water” address to Keyon College’s graduating class of 2005 has been cited and shared often enough. It may be his most read piece of writing, probably his most quoted. That he shot himself a few years later might cause the reader to scrutinize certain passages, possibly reject the whole thing, but I’m happy enough to take the ideas at face value and leave the poor old fragile genius’ legacy alone. Anyway, he did enough to bend his halo while he was alive. Let the archivists do what they will to both mend and bend it further.  

Last Confessions 

I never really cottoned on to the confessional poets. Maybe some Sylvia Plath at one point, but I’ve rarely returned to her work. Ditto Anne Sexton. Robert Lowell used to make me excited, but rereading him now I don’t see much to remind me why I ever went out of my way. “Skunk Hour” and a few others still do it for me, but there are just as many duds. John Berryman is maybe the most exciting of the bunch, but even he couldn’t keep it up for long. Lowell distinguishes himself for, despite being manic enough, dying of a heart attack whereas the others took their lives. Last confessions of the confessional poets. Sexton and Berryman wrote about the subject enough that their suicides may not have come as great shocks. The others may have as well. I’ve not read them in their entirety so I can’t say for sure, but even so, the Romantics didn’t off themselves even though they argued for suicide as the truest form of freedom one has over their life. What was going on with this bunch? Probably a lot of things we might be better at treating today. Their work, especially Plath’s, remains popular, ensuring their poems will live on, though I wonder if a culling is in order. They sought to end things. Should the academy do likewise?

Save the Mystery

Vladimir Mayakovsky is a lot of fun, though I wonder if I’m missing something in the translations I have at hand. I met a Ukrainian woman, a Mayakovsky admirer, who turned me on to him. She told me that Mayakovsky used to play a daily game of Russian roulette. That sounds apocryphal, but I don’t want to spoil the myth with research. Google is such a fucking mystery assassin. Unlike Mayakovsky, I’m not going to pull the trigger.

Disorder 

At one point, I had nothing other than Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures on the turntable. I was in the right place for the mood of that record, though I never idolized Ian Curtis the way my older brother and sister elevated Jim Morrison to God-like status. Being the age that I am has its advantages. I like to think we younger siblings of those late-60s hippies have less naïveté and see fallen musicians less as heroes and more as cautionary tales. Curtis’ suicide by hanging is intriguing. He used a clothesline. A strange way to make a noose. Apparently, his wife didn’t realize he was dead, the means of death being so domestic. Just doing some chores. The cause of his demise? The usual demon, depression, exasperated by epilepsy. Can we use Curtis’ troubles as a key to understanding Unknown Pleasures? Maybe. The subsequent band New Order was certainly a lot more upbeat. Guess the show must go on. 

Blame Woolf

That movie where Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf garnered new fans of the great writer. I saw the movie on a second date with a woman I wanted to impress. The movie was her idea. I wanted to get dinner. Movies are never a good way to get to know someone. You lose nearly two hours of time you could otherwise spend exchanging anecdotes and witticisms and assessing whether or not the person is worth the effort. But I went to the film and sat through the devastation. Later, over a drink, she asked, “Have you read Woolf?” I told her I had, and that she, who had not, should. I may have recommended The Waves, a poor choice now that I think of it. It’s the one most sure to drive away the uninitiated. Better to have started with Mrs. Dalloway, heavily featured in the film. I’m not sure which she chose, but a week later she rejected my invitation for a third date. I was tempted to blame Woolf, whose suicide, as portrayed in The Hours, seemed to impact my date. It was all she could talk about over that drink. “She put rocks in her pockets. So sad.” The thought of Woolf, or maybe Kidman, drowning didn’t exactly create the romantic environment I’d hoped for. This is the last time I let Virginia Woolf ruin a possible romance, I told myself, having also suffered a break up after watching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with a girlfriend. Cockblocked from the grave.

Last Spell of Grandiosity

It’s difficult to argue that Lord Byron killed himself, but his fight for Greek independence can be viewed as a suicide mission. At least it might be for anyone with as little military training as the great poet. What did he expect, that he’d be crowned king of Greece once the Turks were defeated? Maybe. The guy certainly had spells of grandiosity. Who knows, maybe he had a shot at the gig. According to a friend whose last name has “opoulos” as suffix, Byron is mentioned in the Greek National Anthem. Or some fight song. But sadly, his poems and his image are all he’s left with. The whole Byronic Hero thing. Better legacy, probably. History is never kind to royal figures. And what better end than dying for a noble cause? On horseback, moustache and roguish attire, sword in hand, cough in throat. Dashing. Dead. Lived fast and died young and left a handsome corpse. That’s the way to go.

Thanks, Dorothy

I used to think about killing myself. Which is to say, I used to imagine it. I used to walk along Lake Michigan and see the No Diving signs and think, Fuck it. More a common existential crisis than serious consideration of ending things. But the idea of falling, falling, falling deep into cold water, letting it fill my lungs, cotton-eared movement the last thing I’d sense in this life, I could imagine it clearly. And then the small part of my brain that clung to Parochial School lessons slapped the thought away. A sin. Eternal damnation. But I am supposed to have walked away from that shit long ago. And I do see some of the Romantic Poets’ ideas about suicide as having merit, though I’m probably misremembering them. If the truest form of agency is in the decision of how and when to cease living, well, why am I leaving so much to chance? Kurt Vonnegut wrote that he’d been committing suicide slowly via cigarettes for years. Me too. Maybe I should just wait a little longer and let my lifestyle do the job. My heart and lungs can bear the burden that scares my hands away from action. Or maybe it’s the realization that, unlike anyone named above, my suicide will be unremarkable. After all, I don’t share the fame of those artists. So maybe it’s not their deaths that makes them so interesting but their lives. And their art. Which means I should work harder on mine. My art and my life. Maybe in another decade I’ll get famous enough to kill myself and inspire someone else to do likewise. Talk about the power of art. But then I realize that my suicide will have to be unique, and how creative can I be? The suicides of everyone listed above, and countless others, will make mine seem unoriginal. Goddamn anxiety of influence. Aw, fuck it. As Dorothy Parker, a failed suicide, wrote, “You might as well live.”