Another interesting book I started reading purely for its awesome title. I’ve been on a reading rampage lately, devouring any book about suicide, looking for any pearls of wisdom I might’ve missed in my lifelong obsession with the subject. So far nothing has changed my mind.
So on the heels of nonfiction memoirs by authors who later killed themselves, I’m now exploring fictional thoughts which are just as valid, since no one’s an authority after they’ve killed themselves and afaik Hades doesn’t have a publishing house in the material world.
I was expecting this book to be light hearted and comic, but aside from its cheeky title it’s taking a serious tone. I’m only 2 chapters in, but the author/main character’s suicide-prevention schtick is that anything is better than death. He illustrates this metaphorically by making the main character a vampire damned to exist in an undead state, unable to enjoy the pleasures of life, so he runs a suicide hotline trying to convince people to keep living at all costs. Very cool premise.
But (so far) it kinda falls short of the mark because the obvious argument is that we’re all going to fucking die, so what difference does it make that we scratch out a few desperate decades of a miserable life if we’re going to end up doomed for eternity anyway?
We’ll see if he addresses that, or if it’s a fatal loophole.
My suicide book recap so far: the best is still Cheslie Kryst’s “By the Time You Read This”. This is because she specifically avoids the subject of suicide, neither condoning nor condemning it, and that gives the book an air of authenticity that the others (openly anti-suicide) don’t have.
In second place is Ned Vizzini’s “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” which is clearly anti-suicide, but it takes the perspective of a 15 year old kid so he’s not preaching at us; we’re free to form our own opinions, especially in light of Ned’s suicide 10 years later. The book itself is light hearted, at times pretty funny, which keeps us from getting too depressed.
Third place might be Judy Collins’ “Sanity and Grace” which isn’t about her suicide (she’s alive & well) but about her son’s suicide and how she handled the crushing depression of losing a child which nearly pushed her over the edge. The book seemed to be leading somewhere until she fell back on the standard “faith” deus ex machina (literally), so it fell flat on me but it was honest and genuine so who can argue.
Last place, ironically, is the otherwise brilliant writer Albert Camus who wrote “The Myth of Sisyphus” which takes a philosophical approach, fine & dandy, but he overlooks the fact that some of us aren’t fucking privileged like he was, and we don’t have the luxury of waxing philosophical when we’re suffering a torment so hellish that we’re a fireplace-poker away from gouging our goddam eyes out.