Dead Poets Society

Over the weekend my friend relayed to me over the phone that one of the most respected writers of his generation, David Foster Wallace was dead, apparently by his own hand. Continuing a long, sad trend of writers getting stuck in their own heads and deciding that for whatever reason their life has to end.
On a personal level, I was broken hearted to learn that a writer whose work I related to as much as Wallace would no longer go on, and the realization that it is nearly impossible to understand what drives any person to end their life suddenly.
For some reason, the idea of the tortured artist resorting to suicide has become a romanticized situation-- in some cases producing comments like "they were so brave", or in the worst case, creating lemmings that decide to follow their lead.
What is it about writers and suicide? What propels our public fascination with those who decide that they will pass the veil of death on their own terms. How quickly we deem them martyrs. It seems that while Autumn is upon us, Wallace's passing feels almost familiar.
"Soon I will be dead. I am going to take the path which many regard as cowardly, feeble, or neurotic, and kill myself." Scottish writer Colin Mackay wrote in the introduction to his autobiography and subsequently his final work Jacob's Latter. Two days after completion, Mackay was dead by his own hand.
On their 2006 album Boys and Girls in America, The Hold Steady paid tribute to another scribe whose life ended on his own terms, romanticizing "There was that night that we thought that John Berryman could fly. But he didn't so he died."
Within a year, another well known underground group, Okkervil River, would pay lyrical homage to Berryman as well. He was a well respected poet whose work (like many poets of his time) never seeped into the conscience of popular thought, except, sadly, to end up in a Wikipeida entry on writers who committed suicide.
Ernest Hemingway breathed life and ideas into his countless novels and articles over his 61 years as a writer and observer. In the early summer days of 1961 his body lay lifeless when Hemingway (a man never known to do anything easy) rested the butt of a double barrel shotgun on the floor and pulled both triggers.
Both Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton took their own lives, and while maybe not the typical definition of suicide, Jack Kerouac and Delmore Schwartz both drank themselves to death.
What is it about a writer taking their own life that gets reduced to an asterisk next to the statistics of their life and death? In some cases like Plath and songwriters like Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain it is even celebrated by some as a factoid, their deaths imitating art. Is it a reflection on our societies inability to cope with a tragic event? Is it a collective showing of selfishness that we even try to make sense of an issue that is inherently personal? Could it really be as simple that these people had lost all taste for life and simply did not want to go on?

It is virtually impossible to rationalize the idea of ceasing to exist, much less by your own doing.
An odd example in the argument for the right to chose when and how life ends came in the form of a suicide note of an artist who never reached the critical acclaim John Berryman or the iconic status of Hemingway. Wendy O. Williams, singer of the 80's punk-metal band The Plasmatics and the woman titled "The Queen of Shock Rock" said as her final statement:

"I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm."

As a chainsaw wielding, mowhawk sporting rock-and-roller, Williams might not be seen as much of an expert on a wide variey of subjects but for what it's worth, she took her stand, lived and obviously died true to her ideals, but was she right to do so? Is anybody really?

Whatever the case, with the passing of Mr. Wallace his voice is now silent. It's a tragedy no matter how you look at it.