| Author | Message | ||
     Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I only just read the sad news. He was a superb and highly intelligent writer, and I thought he was charming in person. His live journal is still there, with some pretty clear indications of how he was feeling - even there he's enviably precise. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
That's a great shame - obviously a very troubled guy. Very sad and a real loss. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.198.240 |
Sad news indeed. I haven't read nearly enough of his fiction, but judging by what I have read, I thought he was a splendid writer. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
Was it lack of money that did him in? He mentions high food prices . . . | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
I'm really saddened to hear of this. A phenomenally good writer. I urge you all to go out and seek copies of The Genocides. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
You see me, wih my Albie brain, thinks I've caused this by having bought the Brave Little Toaster dvd last week and becoming interested in his work for the first time. It is shocking to see a man writing in such a lively, fresh manner a couple of days ago suddenly being gone. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Ellen gives some details here. http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com/93886.html | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Tragic. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Yes, tragic. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I'm getting a real sense lately that more and more people are reaching the end of their tether. Reasons to go on are thin on the ground; the fight is being drained from a lot of folk. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.184.76 |
I think it's always been this way, really. It just gets to a point eventually where a very depressed person can't bear to go on. When the pain of one's circumstances exceeds one's ability to cope, there's a real danger of it reaching the point of no return. Certainly depression is far more widely recognised and accepted these days, so it seems more common in this age than in previous ones. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
You're probably right. It's just that I seem to hear of someone commiting suicide on a weekly basis lately. I recently heard that an old schoolfriend of mine hung himself and nobody found him for 3 weeks. Everyone I speak to seems...drained these days. Nobody is really happy. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>Certainly depression is far more widely recognised and accepted these days, so it seems more common in this age than in previous ones. Oliver James talks about this a lot, and concludes that the difference between rates of depression now and, say, in the 50s is not simply about acknowledgement of the 'condition'. There genuinely *is* more misery nowadays. He ascribes it to our alienating latter-day culture with its inequalities, etc. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
From an online review: "Selfish capitalism sounds like a populist way of describing neo-liberalism. It’s characterised, says James, by privatisation, insecure working conditions, the redistribution of taxes from poor to rich and the conviction that the market can meet almost every conceivable human need. So far, so depressingly familiar. But what James adds is the assertion that wherever this system spreads, mental anguish follows. Stagnating real wages, the growth of short-term, service industry jobs, a workaholic culture, combine with intensified status competition for consumer goods (frequently new and more expensive versions of existing items) and the exaltation of the consumption habits of the rich, to create a toxic cocktail of limited economic means and unrealisable desire. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse and low impulse control ensue." | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
This is desperately sad news. Zed, I think depressives often come to an arrangement with their condition whereby they make room for it and even make friends with it – people with bipolar disorder are more at risk because of the abrupt mood swings, which make any such accomodation more difficult. But often, what happens is that when a person who lives with depression suffers a major setback in their external circumstances, such as serious physical illness or the loss of a partner, home or job, they just don't have the internal resources to absorb the blow. Often, people look at suicide purely in terms of psychological factors, but usually there are other things going on. For example, both of the recent films about Ian Curtis (the dramatisation and the documentary) have served to correct the misconception that he killed himself because he had a despairing worldview. He killed himself because he had a serious illness and would have had to give up playing live. As Marcuse said back on the 1970s, there is nothing unhealthy about being angry and sad about the world. That's what the world is like. But one has to be able to live with those feelings and make positive use of them. If your own life is damaged in some objective way, it's much harder. A while back, I was leafletting with an activist friend in Birmingham city centre. Looking out over a crowded New Street, he said to me: "There's so much anger and frustration here. And people take it out on each other." He could have added: "...and themselves." The worst instigators of suicide in the depressed, and in anyone else with any degree of sensitivity, are the fixed-grin morning DJ/office manager "CHEER UP, IT MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN" types. Their bullying positivity masks an utter lack of confidence in human nature. Internment of all such people would lead to a dramatic fall in the suicide rate – though, deprived of an audience and forced to look at themselves in a solitary mirror, some of these CHEER UP stormtroopers might realise that it has already happened. And how will they cope then? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Joel, your activist friend has it right. I've been saying lately that everyone is so angry and frustrated. People are like walking timebombs, tick-tick-ticking away...the explosio0n, when it comes, is either a "taking out" of these feelings on themselves or someone else. You can feel it, like a physical weight pressing in on you. My own experience with depression is that some days you can fight it and keep it in a cage, but other days you simply don't feel up to the fight, and it gets out. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
The architects of misery are invisible. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
So are the buildings, sometimes. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.163.170.232 |
the explosio0n I note the inner-consuming zero, Zed. yes, very sad news about Tom Disch. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
I find it odd when people say "it has always been like this." That's worse, surely.  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
"a toxic cocktail of limited economic means and unrealisable desire" The maddening and depressing element is the realization that this situation is kept intact by artificial means. There IS more than enough food for everyone, but huge amounts of it are being destroyed solely to maintain a certain measure of profitability. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
It would be awful if people killed themselves because they could not fulfill the desire of having a sandwich. I understand such desire. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Yes, but for most people 'having a sandwich' just means eating a sandwich. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.36.208 |
Sad to hear the news indeed. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.16.76.182 |
Very sad. Disch was a giant, and I've always loved his writings. I named my Master's collected-fiction thesis "Fun With Your New Head," after his collection of short-stories. I'm sure he would have forgiven me, regardless.... (There was a time when suicide was less about depression, and all about honor, it's so hard to believe now (e.g., ancient Rome). One of the modern philosopher's who I've always greatly admired, Walter Kaufmann, nevertheless praised suicide, as a viable, healthy life-option. He died quite suddenly too, at a fairly early age... and I've always wondered....) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
It's been pointed out to me that he celebrated Algys Budris' death on his blog. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>Yes, but for most people 'having a sandwich' just means eating a sandwich. I fear those people. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.236.164.76 |
Terrible news, indeed. "The Businessman" was one of my favorite books ever. It actually kept me up three nights in a row. |