[tw: suicide]
January 20, 2015 11:00 AM   Subscribe

A stranger e-mailed saying he planned to kill himself. What was I supposed to do?
posted by and they trembled before her fury (66 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
I read this in the print edition on Saturday (it comes early for subscribers). The range of reactions from the recipients of those messages was really interesting, and all over the map. I thought it did an interesting job of trying to understand why this person would send such a message to a bunch of people who had no idea he existed.
posted by phearlez at 11:16 AM on January 20, 2015


What a self-centered, entitled thing to do to a bunch of strangers. Narcissistic and grandiose sounds about right.
posted by sciatrix at 11:20 AM on January 20, 2015 [22 favorites]


I skimmed the print version, and could really only come up with "man, that's a really shitty thing to do to anyone, especially a stranger" ..
posted by k5.user at 11:24 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


No. I don't mean the suicide. I mean the inflicting the knowledge of his suicide, and attempting to inflict some of the responsibility of that suicide, onto the reporters he contacted. If your life was meaningless and empty enough that you saw no reason to continue it, that is one thing--and I have compassion for that. But to tell a bunch of strangers that no one gave me enough attention, no one liked my writing enough, and now I'm committing suicide and it's your responsibility to preserve that writing? THAT is the bit that makes me angry.
posted by sciatrix at 11:26 AM on January 20, 2015 [15 favorites]


I think we'd all be a lot better off if we could just remember that we can't control what other people do, we can only control ourselves. It's advice that's constantly given on Metafilter.
posted by Melismata at 11:29 AM on January 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


It reads like a baroque and self-centered marketing ploy, except for that part where he in fact successfully committed suicide.
posted by chavenet at 11:33 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Seems like it got him the attention he wanted. I imagine there will be copycats, but it unfortunately won't get them the same attention.
posted by grouse at 11:37 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Suicide is a hard subject; please make an effort not to contribute to any sort of escalation of this thread into a heated argument about it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:42 AM on January 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


Sad story. I don't think he merits condemnation.
posted by jayder at 11:43 AM on January 20, 2015 [13 favorites]


It sounds like the suicidal man had the fairly common psychological problem of being unable to acknowledge that he was ordinary. Everything he did was for the great line it would make in his book jacket bio, or for a good anecdote to tell in his inevitable (to him) write-up in a famous magazine. "The author, a professor of English, is also a cross-country hiker and noted philosopher. He lives in Japan with his family." His writing didn't bring him any pleasure in and of itself. It's a sad way to live.

There are also some people who are lonely, unsuccessful, or disappointed in their lives whose pain is genuinely moving but who turn out, upon closer inspection, to be genuinely unlikable, not always for the same reason that they're suffering from what ever they are suffering from. That is a pretty sad way to live as well. I felt a little of shudder of loneliness at just reading about the many Facebook photos this gentleman posted of himself sightseeing alone.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 11:50 AM on January 20, 2015 [18 favorites]


It reads like a baroque and self-centered marketing ploy, except for that part where he in fact successfully committed suicide.

Chris Morris: The Suicide Journalist
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:59 AM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


He needed a blog.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:01 PM on January 20, 2015


Yeah, it is a shitty thing to do, but even people who do shitty things should have their lives saved if possible. Am I crazy to think that the thing to do was call 911?

Also, I have on two occasions pointed these people to online postings that have concerned me.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:07 PM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


It sounds like the suicidal man had the fairly common psychological problem of being unable to acknowledge that he was ordinary.

Sad story, but even sadder that anyone could describe someone in such a miserable state of mind as "ordinary." Truth is, the only difference between a self-important idiot and a successful idiot is the degree of public buy-in. "Important People" are actually just ordinary people too. If everyone knew and felt that in daily life, maybe there'd be fewer of these sorts of pointless tragedies, and maybe people would assign their relationships with all the "ordinary" people they know in life a little more social value.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:07 PM on January 20, 2015 [31 favorites]


He needed a blog.

As noted in TFA, he had a blog. Just not readers.
posted by Shmuel510 at 12:09 PM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


Am I crazy to think that the thing to do was call 911?

It's very unlikely that calling local emergency services in the U.S. to report that someone you know nothing about may be committing suicide in Japan will accomplish any good. Calling the U.S. embassy and police in Japan was probably the best idea. One of the recipients did this but it appears not to have prevented the suicide.
posted by grouse at 12:13 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Truth is, the only difference between a self-important idiot and a successful idiot is the degree of public buy-in.

I kind of want to make a cross-stitch sampler that says this.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 12:14 PM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


It's very unlikely that calling local emergency services in the U.S.

I would have been calling 911 in Canada. My assumption would be that when they contacted people actually located in Japan they would be taken more seriously and would be more likely to ultimately reach the right person. If I call an embassy in Japan, how long will it be before I get taken off hold (or worse, until they hear my voicemail or read my email)?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:15 PM on January 20, 2015


.
posted by What'sAPedantWalter? at 12:17 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


When I receive personal messages from strangers, they go to spam. If a personal message portended a family worry, I would get in touch with family (my own.)
posted by Oyéah at 12:20 PM on January 20, 2015


I kind of want to make a cross-stitch sampler that says this.

Don't waste the stitches. I've got healthy self-esteem tempered by years of surviving horrible shit and a healthy social life (for a 41 year old with two kids anyway). Make the cross-stitch sampler for your old classmate still living in his alcoholic father's house at 40.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:23 PM on January 20, 2015


Perhaps that is what you would have done, and it seems like an okay choice, but not the only okay choice.

I think my wording in the original post "the thing to do is..." didn't quite convey my meaning. I didn't mean to imply that it was the only correct choice, I though I see in re-reading that it could be read that way. I more meant that I thought it odd not to know what to do. At least one what-to-do seemed pretty obvious.

But Oyeah makes an interesting point. I might not even have ended up reading this message. I suppose the recipients were in jobs where they frequently get email from strangers. I do, too, but usually within a fairly restricted boundary of subject lines. A stranger with a subject line not work-related would likely end up unopened in the trash.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:28 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I kind of want to make a cross-stitch sampler that says this.

Oops. Sorry about the non-sequitur response. misread your original comment as "want to make you a cross-stitch..." I think it'd make a great Etsy offering and would definitely buy for a couple of friends who could use it.

posted by saulgoodman at 12:36 PM on January 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


But the way he inflicted pain onto those who weren't even around him merits condemnation.

I can't conceive of any value in condemning the last acts of a dying man. He won't learn from them, and, having known people suffering at the last moments before their life, it's not as though there is any clear road map. There's just one thing you might do that might cause yourself or others pain, or another thing that might do the same, and, for the profoundly depressed, it all seems very abstract, as Hyperbole and a Half illustrated especially well.

These are the moments when our compassion is tested, and there's always someone in a rush to condemn a suicide, who can neither learn from it nor benefit from it.
posted by maxsparber at 12:38 PM on January 20, 2015 [16 favorites]


There is more than one decent, ethical response to something like this. What the author did was fine, I think.

Yes, I think this is true. You can't take care of everyone and it's not your job to do so; sometimes you need to take care of yourself and realizing that, tragic though this situation is, it's not your responsibility, can be really important.

I am mostly pretty okay now, but I have suffered from really, really bad depression, and thinking about suicide is a general feature of my life because I don't really have many other great coping mechanisms so I will seriously think "God it's messy in here, and even if I clean it will just get messy again, a whole lifetime of cleaning messy rooms stretches out ahead of me, I would literally rather kill myself than clean up this fucking room day in and day out for decades." Then having decided to kill myself, the thought of cleaning the room is less daunting so, hey, might as well clean it now and go out with a nice tidy living room! And so the living room gets cleaned and life is less daunting because now I am facing it with a clean living room. And so, for now, I don't kill myself. This happens in lots of ways every day. Taking a shower? Exhausting. Doing laundry? Completely impossible. Living with the memories of times I've hurt people? Remembering my inadvertent rudeness? Considering the hopeless mess I've made of my life? Going to work? Would literally rather be dead.

I'm not saying this because I think I'm so effing special with my intense depression all the time, I'm saying it because I think/hope that most people in my life don't realize that this is how I live and that, at any moment, odds are super, SUPER good that I am actively considering suicide and meaning it, and I know I'm far from the only person who feels this way. You can't be responsible for everyone; many of us struggle even to be responsible for themselves. I am very sorry for this man and I know that he was having a hard time. Many, many of us are having a hard time constantly. I wish he had reached out and asked for help instead of weighing down others with the responsibility of saving his life. It is not okay; he doesn't know what's happening with them. I know that he was not in a good place, but the people to whom he is writing might be in significant pain as well, and tragic and horrible as this whole situation is, I think "I closed my laptop and went back to sleep" could be what you need to do. Try as you might (and I have tried), you can't take on everyone else's pain.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:38 PM on January 20, 2015 [56 favorites]


Incidentally, I re-read that and I hope no one's worried I am in any danger because I really am fine; I've got a great support network of friends and family, a fantastic doctor, and a solid regime of medicine. I am definitely not going to kill myself for any number of reasons, it's just that I've turned the idea of suicide into a coping mechanism because I didn't develop healthy ones when I was younger. Definitely okay now.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:45 PM on January 20, 2015 [27 favorites]


Everything he did was for the great line it would make in his book jacket bio, or for a good anecdote to tell in his inevitable (to him) write-up in a famous magazine.

I think this comment is really unfair to the guy, and painting him as a sadder sack than he was. He traveled widely. Sounds like he had some great adventures. He took chances many of us wouldn't. He found friends, he found people who loved him, his students praised him. He did some great things with his life and probably made the world slightly better than he found it.

I'm sorry he got caught up with despair towards the end. He never realized his life's ambition, but other than that, his life didn't seem bad at all. I wish he could have recognized this and been happy with what he had, and taken comfort in the people who did care for him.

But, I completely understand how he didn't. There are days when the despair consumes everything. The personal failures and losses magnified to the point where they block out all light.
posted by honestcoyote at 12:48 PM on January 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


As noted in TFA, he had a blog. Just not readers.

I missed that part. I was also making a joke. Though I doubt readers would have saved him any more than having a blog would have.

I admittedly skimmed the article because I didn't relate to either of the reactions to the email. Hers was astonishment and worry, his was a casual boredom and assumption of a hoax. If I'd gotten such an email I would have assumed I'd read it way too late to matter. I would have maybe remembered to google the name (weeks or months later) to find out if he was successful, but I'd allow none of that responsibility to be taken on. I'm not trying to be cold, but I have enough people in my life I am unable to keep up with. Allowing demands on my time and emotions by a stranger would be irresponsible. I also understand compassion is not a zero-sum game, but I can have compassion without becoming a part of his illness.

Perhaps, as someone who can't imagine doing such a things to others I have a distaste for the idea that he did this, but I guess I also have a fear of being a hypocrite. I wouldn't expect others (strangers) to care, so I would resent someone attempting to put me in that position.

If he'd have made this an askme it would have been removed.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:48 PM on January 20, 2015


I admittedly skimmed the article because I didn't relate to either of the reactions to the email.

I skipped the rest of your comment since it's about an article you didn't read.

The article, which says up-front that the message went to a number of recipients, follows up with most if not all of them. So there's actually a wide gamut of reactions in it and it's worth the time to actually read it.
posted by phearlez at 12:54 PM on January 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


Hap
By Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:03 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have struggled with articulating why I am so put off and disheartened by the response from some of you that his sending the email was "a shitty thing to do."

One, I think it is flip, simplistic moralizing.

Two, I think it treats this man as the wrongdoer when in fact he is a victim of a contemporary world that is alienating and leaves many people.hungry for affirmation that their lives have meaning.

Three, I think the condemnation ignores how hard it can be to grow old with.your hopes disappointed, without rich human connections, after some of your choices didn't.work out.

He doesn't sound like a shitty, selfish person. He walked across the United states to deliver a message to Richard Nixon. He wrote books setting forth his ideas. He.was productive and busy.

It shows such a deep cynicism to reduce this man's life to stuff he did just so.it would sound good on a dust jacket.

I feel that condemng his final messages as shitty is really, well, shitty.
posted by jayder at 1:21 PM on January 20, 2015 [24 favorites]


Mod note: Comment removed, please do not turn this into a callback to previous threads or a referendum on what you think other people would think about counterfactual suicide scenarios.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:25 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Reading it provoked in me a wide array feelings and reactions, most of which have brought up in the article and here.

There is another possibility, that I either I missed or hasn't been said yet, that there is another reason Williams may have considered as a reason for sending out those emails. It may seem like a desperate grasp for something that is somewhat optimistic as I try and make sense of the situation, but it's worth perhaps considering.

If Williams really had considered the decision to both take his own life and announce it in that manner for as long as he did - weigh the options, implications, reactions, and considered the effect it may have on people he didn't even know - perhaps the decision to announce it wasn't really about getting his previous work noticed.

Perhaps it was to create something more than just his death by doing this. It's possible that he knew full well what he would be putting these random writers through with this email and that maybe one of them might choose to write about it in an effort to deal with it. If we knew he only had thought only as far ahead as this, then yes, I could see people taking it as an last grab at the attention he was never able to achieve. However, if he thought that far, why not assume he would also consider the effect the article would have on readers? Sure, there would be a small fraction of those who would seek out his writing, but they would probably come to the same conclusions others (like the article's author) had already come to. Most would see a sad tale, shake their heads, and move on, but maybe - just maybe - there would be some reader here and there who knows someone who, like Williams, may also be in their own, different dark place. Maybe the writer's story of what they went through causes the reader to make a connection between Williams and that person they know that's in a dark place and provokes them into action to do something to help them. Maybe it ends up saving a life - it's a small chance, but if somehow it did, then maybe he saw putting a handful of people he doesn't even know through a stressful, emotional wringer of a time would be worth it.

I'm grasping at straws, I know, but after I read that article, in my head I was running through all the people I know, seeing if somewhere along the line I had completely missed some little sign that one of them was heading towards, or sliding even deeper into, one of those dark places. That got me thinking about the possibility I stated above.
posted by chambers at 1:39 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Two, I think it treats this man as the wrongdoer when in fact he is a victim of a contemporary world that is alienating and leaves many people.hungry for affirmation that their lives have meaning...It shows such a deep cynicism to reduce this man's life to stuff he did just so.it would sound good on a dust jacket.

To me that is what makes his life so sad. He did a lot of interesting and meaningful things but didn't seem to find any meaning in them. He wasn't satisfied by the ordinary but good life he had led. That he had introduced people to a new language or completed a grueling hike or traveled widely didn't seem to affirm him. It wasn't enough to just write a book; he had to hike across the country and give it to Nixon. Like, even if you don't end up changing the president's mind about whatever, that's a pretty cool and gutsy thing to do and was probably memorable and exciting. But forty years later, it nags at him enough that he mentions it in his suicide note because- why? He wants to show that he had promise that was never fulfilled? He wants to prove that he is important and news-worthy? Honestly, I don't know why.

I think the article pushes at this but doesn't fully understand it, that it really is a struggle to accept that you may be ordinary or unexceptional. This man wrote to writers he admired because he wanted to be their peer, and I don't think they can fully grasp how disappointing it was for him to not be published in the Washington Post as they were, that it was a real burden that he couldn't bear. Dara Horn wrote an article about how we write and communicate too much and found this man tiresome- but people listen when she talks.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 1:47 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Narcissists exist because people respond to them. I get that some of them experience real pain, I get that some of them are extremely productive and talented. But narcissism is a profoundly maladaptive way to deal with the world, and they can be incredibly destructive to those around them, and my life is better off affording them as little of my attention as possible.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:57 PM on January 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


So sad. At least his blog has been archived.
posted by Darwina at 2:12 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


“The myth is that people tend to think if someone is bent on doing it, there’s just no stopping them,” Moutier said. “But it’s incorrect on a number of fronts. You wouldn’t say that about another health condition that has a deadly consequence. And No. 2, it totally discounts the evidence that if people can live through the strongest urge [to die], they often times feel very different on the other side of it.”


The "myth" does have some merit, at least in my life. My husband put on a good show before he killed himself. He fooled his best friend--who was trained in suicide intervention--into thinking he was fine. He was ready to die and didn't want to be stopped.
posted by luckynerd at 2:54 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Two, I think it treats this man as the wrongdoer when in fact he is a victim of a contemporary world that is alienating and leaves many people.hungry for affirmation that their lives have meaning.

This is nonsense. The world's always been cold and alienating, and people who hunger for affirmation will often starve.

Putting the pain of your suicide at the door of a complete stranger is a horrible, cruel thing to do. His actions deserve condemnation lest people come to think it an appropriate thing to do.

Dick move. Dick move of dick moves.
posted by xmutex at 3:03 PM on January 20, 2015 [11 favorites]


My cousin was the same way. She was not fooling around; she decided to end her life and she did it. I don't know if anyone knows how much time elapsed between her decision and action, but she had brought all her projects at work to a stopping point, left detailed instructions on their status to her co-workers, and things like that.

I am sorry for your loss, luckynerd. It's a hell of a thing to live through.
posted by thelonius at 3:04 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Criticizing him for actions taken in what is by definition a disordered state of mind smacks of victim-blaming, to me.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:36 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Just not readers

He has some now. I would read anybody's Love Letter To Japan -- the Washington Post chose not to link at the first mention, but did at the second. Unfortunately, the first five chapters are only in Japanese, but persevere -- he shifted to English beginning with Chapter 6.
posted by Rash at 3:37 PM on January 20, 2015


I think the article pushes at this but doesn't fully understand it, that it really is a struggle to accept that you may be ordinary or unexceptional.

I agree, and it looks like a relentless need for approval probably plagued him. I could speculate that even if he had one of his books published, he would be upset that not all were published. And if all were published, he would be wondering why none had one an award. And even if all won awards, he would be angry that he wasn't on Charlie Rose. And even if he was on Charlie Rose, he would be angry that he didn't get the Kennedy Center Honors. And so on. Many people with such a crying need for approval can never satisfy that need, no matter how well they do at whatever it is they do.

I don't say this to be flip, but it sounds like need for external approval drowned out his adventurous life and love of nature. It seems as though the one thing that makes most people feel okay about our lives, meaningful relationships that put our accomplishments or lack thereof into perspetive, eluded his grasp.
posted by Miko at 3:48 PM on January 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


I would argue that narcissism is innate, and empathy is learned. He constantly pined for attention from other people, when there are so many interesting aspects to other people that he could have learned. If he had learned them, I hope he wouldn't have chosen the same line of action.

I'm sad both that he felt the need to take his own life, and also that he never developed a reason for living beyond making a name for himself, which may or may not be somewhat common amongst philosophers. Condolences to those he chose to carry the weight of knowing about a potential suicide before it happens.

.
posted by halifix at 3:52 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


In every creative field there are lots of people who put in the work but they don't have a clear enough view of their own work's merits or how things work in their chosen field, they don't network or make connections in their field ... and so they view their obscurity and neglect as a cosmic affront. In some sense this is the literary version of the."nice guy syndrome" in dating, and perhaps this is some of what was going on with him.
posted by jayder at 4:06 PM on January 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


Wanting people's approval is not Narcissism, though. Narcissists don't want approval; they want others to see them a particular way that isn't actually consistent with who they are--they want people to believe in the social mask they wear above everything else. It's also not very likely a narcissist would kill themselves. Narcissists really love themselves. That's the whole pathology in a nutshell. The amateur psychologists in the thread need to brush up on their reading.
cite
posted by saulgoodman at 4:14 PM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


I work haphazardly in the arts. Every now and again I have to reassess why I do anything I do. If I did art so I might become the next great thing, if praise, connecting and notariety were why I do art, I would either do a lot better, change careers or commit suicide if I were needy enough. I read the article, he was busy but disappointed in outcomes. He had a lot of successes, and I hope he had the opportunity to laugh over his choice.

I had a close friend commit suicide, his question to me was, "Can't I just be done.?" I helped with the necessary arrangements for him to go on living. He chose not to. His loss was painful to everyone who knew him. I guess this stranger chose to die figuratively, among those he considered peers. Still it seemed an unwanted embrace from a stranger.
posted by Oyéah at 4:25 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


For the curious, Dennis William's / Katry Rain's blog can be found here.
posted by Schadenfreude at 4:55 PM on January 20, 2015


FTA: “I don’t think he was depressed in the end,” she said. “He wanted to finish his work. He felt like he had accomplished what he really wanted to do in his life even though his writing wasn’t acknowledged. He finished.”
---------
Now all the other children living in or near her building
Ran around like tyrants, soaking up the open fire hydrants
They would say
"Hey little Lucy, wanna come jump double dutch?"
Lucy would pause, look, grin and say
"I'm busy, thank you much"

Well, well, one year passed
And believe it or not
She covered every last inch of the entire sidewalk,
And she stopped-
"Lucy, after all this, you're just giving in today??"
She said:
"I'm not giving in, I'm finished," and walked away
...
"Look, I've never had a dream in my life
Because a dream is what you wanna do, but still haven't pursued
I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done
So I've been the dream that I wanted to be since day one!"
No Regrets -- Aesop Rock
posted by symbioid at 5:22 PM on January 20, 2015


Wanting people's approval is not Narcissism, though.

I'm not sure if this was directed at me, but I'm aware of that, which is why I didn't call it narcissism.

In every creative field there are lots of people who put in the work but they don't have a clear enough view of their own work's merits or how things work in their chosen field, they don't network or make connections in their field ... and so they view their obscurity and neglect as a cosmic affront.

It's so true. It puts me in mind of The Gap, Ira Glass's discussion of self-perception and artistic production, and also of a TAL episide about a guy who was convinced he had made a discovery about physics that would disprove the theory of relativity, and could not be swayed from it even in a sit-down, face-to-face conversation with a physicist trying to show him where he went wrong.

I'm reading his descriptions of his books now. His ego was definitely out of proportion. It seems as though in his nonfiction work, he aimed to be another Robert Pirsig or Alan Watts, but the market for those books peaked long ago. The fiction work sounds like personal fantasy ("Mindee seems the perfect “child with a woman’s body” and he tries to lose himself in her charms to escape the alienation he’s feeling...Here they spend much time naked in natural hot pools and a home-made Indian sweat lodge, talking about what love really is and whether sex and love can ever really go together") with some Tom Robbins-esque characters. Personal fantasy is rarely interesting to other readers, as it doesn't scratch their own itches. Another thing that makes the difference between a successful writer and an unsuccessful writer isn't a conviction that one is a genius, but a sensibility for the market.

Things like that are the stuff of early writer training.
Having said all that, let’s get back to the subject at hand—having a mentor. The truth is, I never had one—a live one, anyway—and I sometimes regret that. Why? I had no guide but my own internal compass, and because that took years to develop, I went down endless byways and dead-ends, making scads of mistakes in the process—with the writing and personally as well.
He needed feedback, and he needed to listen to feedback. It is interesting to read an entry like My Method of Writing and note that nowhere is the work read by anyone else, or read in workshop, or sent to anyone for comment. Writers are rarely successful if they are uneditable, that is, if they can't or won't seek the advice of editors willing to stand up to the writer and help him or her prune out the things that don't work. But that's a painful process, and you have to bring some humility into it. You have to be willing to let someone say "This isn't as good as you think it is, so let me take a step back and show you some ways it might improved." And you have to work at improving it in the ways suggested. It's a pity, because his style is clean and readable. His prose moves along. It seems to be his topic choices, perhaps overreaching intellectual ambitions in the philosophy department, and fictional overplotting that might have worked against him in seeking publication.

Having spent a lot of my life around writers and writing, I feel like I kind of know this type of person, though no one who took his seriousness about their work to quite this extreme. Certainly many adolescent and college-level writers write and plot and sound like this and feel their "self-belief" trumps critical advice. Some outgrow it. Some stop writing because they can't develop a functional approach that is consultative and gets them closer to publication, if that's what they want. Professional writers allow their work to be seen, discussed, critiqued, and shaped. For every published writer there are four or five who scribble away their whole lifetimes and don't make much progress. If writing is important to who you are, the trick is to find ways to achieve a stable and relatively content life without getting the notice.

It's sad that he says:
My fondest dream throughout: to have family and friends around; to work at the type of place (college or university?) where I could be of some influence on the leaders of tomorrow; to be published and have enough of a following that I’d be invited to speak at least monthly around the country; to have the name to be able to establish a summer institute in a natural setting where I could teach, gather a dynamic staff, hold seminars, invite guest speakers, integrate art, music and sport into the daily schedule—maybe like the mythical community I created in my Three Days at Albemarle! I never wanted to be a wanderer; I was always looking for the opportunity to stay in one place and build. Having a mentor may have steered me more in that direction, or at least that’s how I sometimes see it. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking... Few people know me, so it’s been almost entirely up to me to know who I am....the scales have fallen from my eyes and I pretty much realize (though accept only begrudgingly) that wandering is and will continue to be my lot in life. And it’s far too late to find a mentor now—I became my own, years ago!
Parts of his dream were achievable - family and friends, the university job maybe. The speaking monthly around the country? That's a tiny elite of writers. The seminars and discussion groups? I wonder why he didn't pursue that idea - if you love convening people to talk about writing and philosophy, you don't need publications under your belt. There are small ways to do that and derive many of the same satisfactions. I do feel that he could never allow himself to need other people - only to "observe" them. I'm sorry he didn't get help for that. The sense that no one can teach you anything is toxic, as is the sense that unless you achieve the pinnacle of a professional you are a failure. I find his a cautionary tale. But who knows, maybe his works will make him the next John Kennedy Toole

Here's the one book he did publish and the story of its publication.
posted by Miko at 5:58 PM on January 20, 2015 [15 favorites]


I really don't know what to say... but I do wish that there are indeed help for people who are having suicidal thoughts, that one can reach out and get help... no matter what's the motivation for reaching out... that if this burdens me just a little bit more, I am willing to take on that burden.
posted by applesurf at 6:05 PM on January 20, 2015


Miko: I was responding to the comments upthread that diagnosed the guy as a narcissist. Obviously, you have a personal take on all this that is important and meaningful to you, but I didn't really mean to engage with your comment, so sorry if my response gave you that mistaken impression.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:41 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I do wish that there [is] indeed help for people who are having suicidal thoughts, that one can reach out and get help
without any further remark: There is Help
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 6:44 PM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wanting people's approval is not Narcissism, though. Narcissists don't want approval; they want others to see them a particular way that isn't actually consistent with who they are--they want people to believe in the social mask they wear above everything else. It's also not very likely a narcissist would kill themselves. Narcissists really love themselves. That's the whole pathology in a nutshell. The amateur psychologists in the thread need to brush up on their reading.

This is not exactly true and I am not an amateur if this is what you are referring to. The hallmark of narcissism isn't getting others to believe in how they portray themselves, although this is true to some degree of all personality disorders. To those who have developed these maladaptive patterns, there is no mask. The narcissist truly believes they know better and when facts contradict this, it's because the facts are wrong, other people are wrong and if there is any acknowledgment of failure on their part, it is the failure to convince others of their point of view. I agree that it is unlikely for people with narcissistic personalities to kill themselves, but it is also thought to be very underreported, and when it happens, as in this case, it's done not as an exit to unending pain, it is often well premeditated, with intent to demonstrate something to others, and it is highly likely to succeed.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:10 PM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


we were both registering two of the possible reactions to such an e-mail: horror and skepticism.

how about indifference?
posted by telstar at 8:12 PM on January 20, 2015


Also, here's my . for a poor misguided lost soul. There is no clear line between mood disorder and personality disorder and I do think there was really pain and sadness behind this man's actions. That's what makes treating these people so heart wrenching and difficult.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:17 PM on January 20, 2015


I think making someone witness to your suicide is doing a kind of very real violence to them. It should be spoken about as with any act of violence.
posted by xmutex at 8:36 PM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


"Emotional mugging" was an apt turn of phrase.
posted by Miko at 9:05 PM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


It is very hard to express the sense of helplessness that overwhelms the people that try to help self destructive people. Family, friends, social services, and bystanders. And in this case, helpless bystanders. Helpless by distance, information, and time.

He died in the HOURS after the emails were sent. Nothing could actually be done by the recipients. In my opinion, any reaction that a person had who received his message could be valid. Anything that could be expressed as an emotion or action. And I wouldn't be able to pass judgement on any one of the people contacted in this case.

Being human, I have questioned the point of continuing to live, but have been lucky to find a need to go on.

As a nurse I have experienced most every emotional and rational reaction to caring for suicidal patients.

As family, there is no way to express the helplessness and despair that comes with seeing a loved one suffer.

As a bystander, I have had some rather unsettling reactions that make me question my own humanity.

The crux for me is everyone has worth. Balancing what you want verses what you need. With the little we know about the bio-chemical causes of depression it doesn't all come down to being able to deal with what their experiences and struggles have been. But I do find myself being judgmental.

That e-mail was one hell of an emotional hand grenade. I don't see it as a cry for help.
posted by moonlily at 10:40 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Man, there have been numerous times throughout the years in which the slightest human kindness, often from strangers!, has altered my plans for serious self-harm. It's one of the reasons I became a librarian, it's what makes me an empathetic teacher and a good mama, and I am real grateful that the people I touched when I was such a loaded weapon were generous and deft enough to disarm me. It doesn't make my behavior right but it is the rawest part of me, that part where I am like a bird with a broken wing, hopping frantically in circles. I am healthy and safe now but it does sometimes take a village.

Peace, fellow confused human being. That's what I hope you've found.
posted by Pardon Our Dust at 11:03 PM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I am mostly pretty okay now, but I have suffered from really, really bad depression, and thinking about suicide is a general feature of my life because I don't really have many other great coping mechanisms so I will seriously think "God it's messy in here, and even if I clean it will just get messy again, a whole lifetime of cleaning messy rooms stretches out ahead of me, I would literally rather kill myself than clean up this fucking room day in and day out for decades."

I totally get this. My own experiences like this always remind me of the moment in Girl, Interrupted when the main character talks about how she sometimes thinks about killing herself because she missed the bus.

Something that I don't think a lot of people understand is the many different levels of "being suicidal" there are. Like, it used to be, most of the time I at least vaguely wanted to die... And that would sometimes be more intense but even when it was intense, there's a lot of room between yes, I have some desire to die and the point where I'm actually worried for myself.

Luckily, I feel all of that a lot less these days.
posted by overglow at 5:34 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


There's a lot less stigma on suicide in Japanese culture than in cultures whose morality is fundamentally influenced by Christianity (or for that matter Judaism), and therefore there's typically a lot less guilt and self-recrimination among survivors of people who kill themselves. I think it's possible that this guy, who had really steeped himself in Japanese culture and philosophical traditions, sort of lost sight of what a terrible burden he was placing on the recipients of his email.

It's clear that he was in despair about his lack of a legacy, but I wonder how much of the impulse to commit suicide came from the fact that he was getting older, had cancer, and didn't have anyone to take care of him when the time would come that he would need it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:45 AM on January 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


Good point, ArbitraryAndCapricious. His self-reporting isn't necessarily accurate.
posted by Miko at 6:25 AM on January 21, 2015


Williams committed suicide to draw attention to his writings. Unfortunately killing yourself does nothing to make your writing more accessible.

The first thing his suicide does is bring attention to his self-destructive end - the majority of people who ever hear about him will have a vague anecdote about a guy who committed suicide to blackmail journalists into publishing his work. Secondarily it brings some attention to the life of the man himself - A few people will remember that the guy who committed suicide was this writer who lived in Japan and once tried to deliver a book he wrote to the White House. The thing his immolation entirely fails to do is cause people to read his work. Glance at his writing, maybe. No doubt a decent number of people will follow the links, click on his blog, read an entry and... make the same decision that the other five thousand people who have previously clicked on his blog have made, that their back button is the best way out.

Williams is a lot like Henry Darger. He spent his life lovingly crafting an opus of outsider art. Darger, apparently never tried to show his work to anyone else. Williams appears to have spent his whole life trying to get other people to look at his work. But in both cases their work is so personal that any random person asked to wade through the long, detailed and thoughtful pages of writing is going to demand why they should go to the effort. There is no good answer. If the work doesn't stand on its own merits a suicide cannot change it.

I suppose that everyone has an internal life that is intensely important to them: brilliant insights as to how they will get from Brooklyn to Staten Island on Thursday morning, the deeper meaning of God's absolute love, the best way to peel carrots, how to fake a Hawaiian long form birth certificate, and who probably stole Wendy's felt pens from her desk back in Grade Five.* Most of us don't write this down, but not a few of us monologue it at any hapless person in earshot.

I think our internal lives are absolutely essential, critical and relevant, rendered all the more important by the fact that they are ephemera and will vanish like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I don't think Darger or Williams should have learned to edit and painstakingly re-written their personal worlds so that they were accessible to everyone or anyone else. Most likely they couldn't. If they had tried it would have destroyed what made their worlds so important to them.

What Williams didn't grasp is that his internal life was no more unique than anyone else's, just as his suicide instantly disappears among the other forty million people across the centuries who have committed suicide. Those 3,999,999 suicides didn't inspire him to awe, anguish, action and a burning desire to make the world a better place, so why should he think that his suicide would light a flame?

Williams was seriously missing a piece of the puzzle. It was the same piece that made him think his work was important to other people as made him fail to recognize that his grand gesture would be hurtful and ineffective.

*If you are reading this after all these years, Wendy. I am sorry. It was me and I would give them back if I could.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:04 AM on January 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


I read a bit of the blog. It has, sadly, the tone that one would expect having read about his demise. I don't know quite the right words to describe the writing ... it's grammatically correct but has that sort of odd, slightly chatty but at the same time overly forced and formal manner that seems endemic to the writings of reasonably intelligent but isolated people. The tone seems off; sadly eager to please. It seems like the writer envisions an audience while at the same time knowing there is no audience. There's too much throat-clearing, too much forced cheerfulness, too much effort to describe the enterprise ... I don't know, it's just sad and bad in really subtle but at the same time glaring ways.

This kind of thing makes me really reflect on the importance of finding a creative community. Oddly ... much ROUGHER writings could be paradoxically more inviting if the writer were more "connected," if that makes sense? I read zines that transfix me because they exist in.a network of give and take, a community, and it shows ... whereas, the painfully correct, awkward throat-clearings, rambling reflections, and perorations of an isolated crank just have no life and zest. I really don't know how you can tell when someone's writings emanate from a place of loneliness and isolation, but you can. It's an unmistakable quality.
posted by jayder at 8:13 AM on January 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


Well, either way, if they guy couldn't disengage from his work enough to see it from a critical distance, it probably wasn't going to appeal to many readers anyway. I don't think, though, that there's enough evidence here to affirmatively diagnose the guy's particular flavor of personality/social disorder. If he was steeped in the high modernism that was all the rage in academic circles a couple of decades ago, there's a decent chance he viewed himself as a tragic hero along the lines of Plath. I've been arguing against that perverse ethos/aesthetic among my own friends in the creative community for years after having seen way too many good people complicate/screw up their own and other people's lives trying to live up to that awful self-destructive ideal.

This kind of thing makes me really reflect on the importance of finding a creative community.

It is really important to be a part of a creative community. I've really been missing having more contact and engagement with other artists and musicians myself lately. Finding that is much tougher when free time comes at a high premium, as it does when you're settled in and have family and other career obligations. But without a doubt, my most happily productive times as an artist/musician have been when I was part of a larger community of artists trying to build something together. The lone wolf, tragic-hero archetype needs to die.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:43 AM on January 21, 2015




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