The Suicide Note as Literary Genre
April 30, 2016 11:38 AM   Subscribe

 
For anyone who is feeling suicidal, check out There is Help on the MeFi Wiki, it includes numbers for suicide hotlines in a number of countries.


I'm not too keen on this article. I get the impression the writer hasn't really considered suicide as an actual thing but just sees it as some abstract concept; I don't know how else you would call the suicide of a 17 year old boy after being romantically rejected "eerily beautiful". Or writing "There is, of course, a great pain here but it is made abstract by way of a poetry in which individual suffering is absorbed into a universal condition, subsumed into a larger poetic tradition." I don't think anything is being "made abstract", I think this shows the author choosing not to look at the suffering of those who have committed suicide and of those who are left behind, and in a few of the examples outright romanticizing the suicides.

How not to commit suicide by Art Kleiner (previously) used to have a page with suicide notes, but that page seems to be gone. Here's the Internet Archive's version. Most of them are heartbreaking, but especially this one (also mentioned in the previously thread):
Cathy -- don't come in.
Call your mother, she will know what to do.

Love
Daddy

Cathy don't go in the bedroom.
There's no poetry there to hide how brutal this act is, or the suffering involved.
posted by bjrn at 1:09 PM on April 30, 2016 [23 favorites]


Calling the note beautiful is not the same as calling the subsequent act of suicide beautiful, even if the act precipitates the note. Further, he's pretty clear about focusing on a specific subset of suicide notes, those left behind by writers specifically, as a "final work" of sorts. I don't think he is making the claim that all suicide notes are beautiful or that they are all literature worthy of study; he's making a much narrower claim, that some can be read as literature when composed by those who have devoted their lives to that practice.
posted by Errant at 1:17 PM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


One of the first Tweets I ever read was Sarah Silverman lauding what appears to be a fascinating book.
posted by rhizome at 1:22 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Errant, I think it's hard to separate the two. And I think including Misao Fujimura shows this is not just about writers extending their craft to the very last moments of their lives, but about notes which have a poetic ring to them. I think the contents of suicide notes can be beautiful, but I don't think the writer of the article really gives the context their are written in the weight he should.

For anyone interested in suicide notes, there's also a book by Udo Grasshof called Let Me Finish which is a collection of 40-50 suicide notes with a paragraph or so of context for each one.
posted by bjrn at 1:29 PM on April 30, 2016


And on re-read I guess you can read it as "eerily beautiful" referring only to the act of writing a note and not the combination of making of arrangements, writing the note and the act of suicide (which was what I did).
posted by bjrn at 1:32 PM on April 30, 2016


This is not at all a good thing for anyone, usually a young person, who thinks suicide is romantic to read. None of the notes are "beautiful" to the heartbroken family and friends left behind.
posted by mermayd at 2:22 PM on April 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


And on re-read I guess you can read it as "eerily beautiful" referring only to the act of writing a note and not the combination of making of arrangements, writing the note and the act of suicide (which was what I did).

I think Illingworth is referring here specifically to the act of carving the note into a tree: "There is something remarkably deliberate (and eerily beautiful) about this decision, particularly in one so young as Fujimura, who was only 17. If we think of the suicide note as something paradoxically living, a set of words echoing into futurity, here we have a quite literally vascular document: youthful despair preserved in the flesh of a cedar."

I'm not saying anyone has to agree with him, of course; I'm not sure I do.
posted by Errant at 2:29 PM on April 30, 2016


The "weight" our culture gives to suicide is pretty particularly Western and is not culturally universal, and as with the self proclaimed pro-life movement has less to do with a reverance for life than with an attitude that your life is not your own to take, being the actual property of either God or the State depending on who you're being harangued by.

Suicide notes are affecting precisely because they portend something momentous, but not all cultures have seen that thing as inevitably bad. After all, is there anything stupider than the idea of making suicide illegal? Exactly what help does that do, and what penalty does the law impose on someone who has decided to do what our society already thinks is the worst possible thing you can do to someone, to themselves?

The notes form a compendium of things that are literally, in the eyes of people who took this observation very seriously, worse than death. Health issues, relationships turned to poison, unbearable sadness and stress. Yes it's distressing to read about these things and contemplate what the writers did shortly afterward, but it's also a thing that contemplating the one-way door of the West Gate can make you appreciate the joy of being on this side of it. Maybe my pain isn't that bad, maybe my relationship isn't that awful, maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. Because the person who wrote this note obviously had it bad.

I think both the notes and some of the reactions to them reflect our society's very schizophrenic and unhealthy attitude toward death. We are all, after all, going to die. If we didn't the world would quickly become a very strange and unpleasant place in numerous ways. So to say that death is such an evil thing that it should be postponed at all costs regardless of the suffering involved doesn't really make any sense. But that's actually coded into our laws, and so people feel the need to explain why their last act of will is also lawless.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:44 PM on April 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


Or this is just an incredibly upsetting topic for some people, especially people whose lives have been spent in proximity to suicide or in their own cycles of suicidal ideation. Celebrating suicide notes isn't necessarily tacit approval of suicide, but it certainly seems to exist at a distance from what the reality of suicide is to a lot of people.
posted by teponaztli at 2:55 PM on April 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


"The "weight" our culture gives to suicide is pretty particularly Western [...] After all, is there anything stupider than the idea of making suicide illegal? [...] But that's actually coded into our laws, and so people feel the need to explain why their last act of will is also lawless."

As far as I can tell, few (if any) Western countries still rule suicide illegal -- virtually all of those laws have been repealed. However, it remains illegal in many Asian countries and much of Africa. So I'm not sure I understand your point.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:41 PM on April 30, 2016


I am reminded of a recent article discussing auto-pedestrian accidents in China, where the driver makes sure the victim is dead, because if the victim lives, the law states the driver must pay for the victim's medical, rehab, or disability, because there is no insurance of this type. The laws regarding death might be quite different in Asia, or Africa and the illegality of suicide, might leave rights to property, to pay state debt, or other things I can't imagine right off the top of my head. I am not much into emotional self stimulation, such as getting feels off of suicide notes, but I am into literature and beauty. The complicated lives of complicated and brilliant people make for great reading, especially if they have a bent for writing. Early death is a high price to pay for stoking the creative fires.

I did like the Japanese poem, carved into the tree. Sublime.
posted by Oyéah at 4:08 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Thanks Eyebrows McGee, I looked it up and realize that most of those laws have (apparently quietly) fallen during my adulthood. As it's not a primary interest of mine I was not aware so much had changed.

We still view suicide through a particular frame, though, that it is bad and to be discouraged at all costs rather than, say, an ultimate expression of personal freedom. And I'm not saying the latter is better, just that it's different and is the prevailing way of looking at things in some other places, and that suicide notes tend to reflect this difference.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:21 PM on April 30, 2016


it's different and is the prevailing way of looking at things in some other places

Is it?
posted by atoxyl at 4:50 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Several years ago, my ex called me up and asked if she could spend the night at my place. She was working as a professional submissive at a BDSM club at the time, and she was performing at a private party on my side of town, and she said that by the time it was over she was likely to be exhausted from both the late hour and the fairly heavy beating that she was going to take that night. We were still friendly at the time, so I said yes.

The next day I had work, so I let her sleep in while I went to the office. It was also her 30th birthday, so at around noon I called to tell her that if she stuck around I'd take her to dinner to celebrate. She was not entirely coherent when we spoke, but that wasn't completely unusual for her; she was on a lot of medications for mental health problems and sleep disorders, and if she was still under the effects of an Ambien it was normal for conversations to get weird. But the last thing that she said before she hung up was, "If I'm still alive, we'll go to dinner."

I called her therapist (whose number I had memorized, which I guess says something about how our relationship had gone). He told me to immediately call 911, as she'd had suicidal thoughts recently (he said that he hadn't committed her because she'd promised that she wouldn't kill herself before her next session; I know that that sounds irresponsible, but sometime that sort of week-to-week assurance was the best that people could get from her).

I called 911. The fire department broke into my apartment. She lived, which was a miracle, because I later learned that after I'd left the apartment she'd taken 150 Flurazepam, gotten back in bed, and pulled the covers over her head.

She left a note. It was a brief apology, followed by a list of people that she wanted me to contact, followed by instructions for cremation and scattering her ashes. There was a spelling error ("creamate"), which is I know is petty of me to mention, but it's the main thing that I remember about the note.

The cops had some very uncomfortable questions for me about why there had been a woman dying in my bed, covered in cuts and bruises (they were from the party that she'd worked the night before).

Later, I asked her why she'd chosen my bed to die in. She said that, of all of her friends, I was the only one who she thought wouldn't exploit her corpse. I couldn't think of a possible answer that she could give that wouldn't be horrifying, so I never asked her to clarify what she meant by that.

We don't talk anymore. I put some boundaries in place ("You can't be alone in my home anymore!") that she didn't like. I know that she's alive, and married now, because the internet is a thing. I hope that she's doing ok; the internet isn't great as a source for that kind of information.

I still have the note. It's in my work bag. I carry it to and from the office with me every day. I'm not generally superstitious, but I can't shake the feeling that she'll do something terrible if I ever stop carrying it. It's stupid, and I know that it's stupid, but maybe I need the feeling that I have some sort of control over a situation that is entirely outside of my power.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:54 PM on April 30, 2016 [26 favorites]


I am reminded of a recent article discussing auto-pedestrian accidents in China, where the driver makes sure the victim is dead, because if the victim lives, the law states the driver must pay for the victim's medical, rehab, or disability, because there is no insurance of this type.
Sorry to derail but that is likely an urban myth. At a minimum, it's extremely uncommon and not representative of Chinese culture.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 5:00 PM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


If I ever have the desire to write a suicide note I guess I better workshop it in a writers group to make sure it pleases critics and gets good notices in the press. I mean, I wouldn't want to be guilty of banality in my final writing, or to shirk my apparent responsibility to make my words a living entity that echoes into the future.

Maybe I'll just leave an animated gif instead.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 5:02 PM on April 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think this shows the author choosing not to look at the suffering of those who have committed suicide and of those who are left behind, and in a few of the examples outright romanticizing the suicides.

I was pretty sure people were going to react this way to this article, mostly because he calls suicide notes "a literary genre." Or where he says "while I understand these concerns, I don’t share them" - why would you bother to say that then? I dunno though, the article could be better but I don't think there's anything wrong with appreciating a poignant suicide note - I see it similarly to appreciating farewell writings from a person with a terminal illness. If anything it seems a little unfair to the departed not to recognize what they were trying to convey with their final acts. Sometimes that message is not meant for the world as a whole but here we're mostly talking about people long dead or people who did write their note in public.
posted by atoxyl at 5:14 PM on April 30, 2016


"I looked it up and realize that most of those laws have (apparently quietly) fallen during my adulthood."

In Europe, while the public rationale given for these laws was typically churchy prohibitions on suicide, the REASON they stick around and are so widespread is that felons (typically) forfeit their property to the crown in European legal regimes of various sorts. So a suicide's family doesn't inherit his estate; the crown does. So it's easy to see why many monarchs were pleased to keep the admittedly-illogical laws (our forebearers were not stupid!) punishing a dead man as a felon on the books. Later, as churchiness became less important, they were also claimed to provide some deterrent, because even if you felt your own life was not worth living you probably didn't want to condemn your family to penury. (Later still, as life insurance became a thing, life insurers were REALLY REALLY KEEN on keeping it a felony, especially in the US.)

Anyway, constitutional monarchies and nascent democracies start to end the practice of confiscating a suicide's property for the crown, and felony suicide laws gradually stop being enforced, but then we have the issue that you've got elected officials making the laws and none of them wants to be seen as CONDONING suicide by making it NOT a crime, especially since the law isn't really enforced anymore and isn't really an issue and why give your political opponents ammunition? Eventually the ridiculousness and uselessness of the laws does get them repealed, but there's quite a bit of inertia about it.

If you read casebooks, historical prosecutions for felony suicide are almost always in relation to an estate of some value that someone wants. So it's always seemed to me that the laws were way less about expressing a moral value, and way more about expropriating property to the ruling class. And really, that's the only reason to worry about whether a dead man is a felon -- to punish his survivors or take his stuff.

Which is a little ways off the main topic here, but I'm not sure legal prohibitions on suicide particularly reflect underlying social attitudes towards suicide that would appear in suicide notes, but rather reflect practical and mercenary property considerations. (Indeed, countries where the laws survive typically have either large fines placed on the estate or the survivors, or confiscate the estate.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:37 PM on April 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


This feels a little like enthusing about the beautiful tears of the brokenhearted. Yes, a tear can sparkle in the sunlight, but concentrating on the aesthetics of the situation seems shallow verging on sociopathic.
posted by hungrytiger at 7:31 PM on April 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


Later still, as life insurance became a thing, life insurers were REALLY REALLY KEEN on keeping it a felony, especially in the US

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Whether or not suicide is a felony has nothing to do with whether it's excluded from coverage.
posted by praemunire at 7:54 PM on April 30, 2016


"Whether or not suicide is a felony has nothing to do with whether it's excluded from coverage."

Took a while after the invention of life insurance for the case law to get to that point. (Also note the early for-profit versions were pretty scammy to start with.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:44 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I read these notes, I hear my own distorted, depressive thoughts echoed in them. When I was close to taking my own life, I felt like I was useless, used up, a broken burdensome thing. On this side of that madness I realize how utterly wrong my perceptions were. How cruel and selfish my act would have been. I never would have guessed at all the happiness that would be mine, just for waiting, and enduring a little longer.

I can't find these beautiful. They are sad. What beauty is in them is our last glimpse of the beauty and potential of a whole human being. It is being swallowed by despair.

I don't condemn this author for their morbid preoccupation. But those for whom suicide and its aftermath have been a constant presence, it is very hard to share.
posted by pattern juggler at 12:18 AM on May 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Later still, as life insurance became a thing, life insurers were REALLY REALLY KEEN on keeping it a felony, especially in the US

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Whether or not suicide is a felony has nothing to do with whether it's excluded from coverage.


FWIW, at least in the US, it's a very rare life insurance policy that excludes coverage for suicide these days. Ever term policies pay in full for suicide after a relatively short initial exclusionary period (usually a few months). The idea that insurance doesn't pay for a suicide is a trope kept alive by every damned police procedural ever made.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:34 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd written a few notes the several times I had thought about it. I was never satisfied in the finality of the note, more things left unsaid. Probably part of why I've never gone through with it. I want everyone I care about to know how much I care about them.

I don't think I could ever communicate that in a note.
posted by blackmage at 1:58 PM on May 5, 2016


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