Writing
is a very risky business. You have to expose your soul to the world, then look
at yourself in the mirror when the world fails to embrace your thoughts.
Ernest
Hemingway, American Author (1899 - 1961) -- Committed suicide, shooting himself
with his favorite shotgun.
Edgar
Allen Poe, American Author (1809 - 1849) -- A drug-addicted drunkard, he was
found lying unconscious on a street in Baltimore, wearing someone else's
tattered clothes, and died a couple of days later in a hospital where he had
remained incoherent as to what had happened to him.
Virginia
Woolf, British Author (1882 - 1941) -- Was depressed, filled the pockets of her
overcoat with stones and walked into the River Ouse where her body was
discovered several days later.
Tennessee
Williams, American Playwright (1911 - 1983) -- Choked to death on a bottle cap
in a hotel room in New York. Barbiturates were found nearby in the room.
Jerzy
Kosinski, Polish-American Author (1933 - 1991) -- Committed suicide by placing
a plastic bag over his head and suffocating to death. His suicide note read,
"I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call
it Eternity."
John
O'Brien, American Author (1960 - 1994) -- Committed suicide by gunshot two
weeks after the movie rights to his novel, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, were sold.
Anne
Sexton, American Poet (1928 - 1974) -- A Pulitzer Prize winning poet who
committed suicide after returning home from a luncheon engagement by donning
her mother's old fur coat, removing all her rings, drinking a glass of vodka,
locking herself in her garage and starting the engine of her car. Death by
carbon monoxide poisoning.
John
Berryman, American Poet (1914 - 1972) -- Having been hospitalized many times
for depression and alcohol detox, he committed suicide by jumping from the
Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River.
Seth
Morgan, American Author (1949 - 1990) -- The heir to the Ivory Soap fortune
whose fiance at the time of his death was singer Janis Joplin, was arrested for
DUI in New Orleans. The next day, he rode his motorcycle into a cement
embankment below a New Orleans Bridge, with a high blood-alcohol level and
cocaine in his system.
Leo
Tolstoy, Russian Author (1828 - 1910) -- Gave away his wealth and abandoned his
family to become a spiritual hermit whereupon he soon became ill at a railroad
station and died shortly thereafter.
Vachel
Lindsay, American Poet (1879 - 1931) -- Depressed by failing health and
financial woes, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye. His last
words were, "They tried to get me -- I got them first."
Maxwell
Bodenheim, American Author (1893 - 1954) -- Known as the King of the Greenwich
Village Bohemians, he and his wife were murdered by an insane dishwasher in a
room they were sharing a few blocks from the Bowery. Maxwell was shot twice in
the chest, while his wife was beaten and stabbed four times in the back. The
dishwasher later confessed, "I ought to get a medal. I killed two
Communists."
Sergei
Yesenin, Russian Poet (1895 - 1925) -- An alcoholic who suffered a mental
breakdown and was hospitalized for two months. Two days after his release, he
slit his wrist, wrote a farewell poem in his own blood, then hanged himself in
his hotel room in Leningrad. The title of his final poem was DO SVIDANIA DRUG
MOI which translates to "Goodbye my friend."
Hart
Crane, American Poet (1899 - 1932) -- A heavy drinker suffering bouts of
depression, he was en route from Mexico to New York on a steamship where he had
been beaten after making sexual advances toward a male crew member. He had been
drinking heavily and jumped overboard, shouting, "Good-bye everybody"
as he fell into the Gulf of Mexico.
Richard
Brautigan, American Author (1835 - 1984) -- While living alone in a large house
overlooking the Pacific Ocean, he died from a self-inflicted .44 Magnum gunshot
wound to the head. He body was not discovered until several weeks later. The
suicide note simply read, "Messy, isn't it?"
For
some, writing is therapy.
For
others, writing is a long good-bye.
___________
Quote for the Day -- "Writing a novel is like making love,
but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and Pain." Dean Koontz
___________
Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books, including THE REALITY OF
THE ILLUSION OF REALITY and 11:11 EARTH TIME (available on Amazon). He lives in
the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where the true Art of
Writing is creating something that will be read twice.
___________
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