Subject: RE: suicide notes (was RE: Kurt Cobain)
From: Sean Draine (seandr@Exchange.Microsoft.com)
Date: Tue Jan 04 2000 - 19:07:32 EST
By 'uninteresting', I meant from a literary or philosophical perspective.
One might expect inspired, insightful prose from a person about to end his
or her life, but it usually doesn't turn out that way. Obviously, the notes
can be interesting for other reasons.
Most of the notes are written with the knowledge that, at the very least,
the police will read them. Many aren't intended for anyone in particular,
or, as in Kurt Cobain's case, are written for a general audience. The
saddest ones, I suppose, are those written by isolated people who know that
they will be discovered by a stranger. I suspect that the authors of notes
that blame the suicide on someone or something else might relish the idea
that their testimony might be read by a broad audience.
In any case, if you've got anything private to say, a suicide note probably
isn't the best medium to say it.
-Sean
-----Original Message-----
From: depressed@collegemail.com [mailto:depressed@collegemail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 8:35 AM
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
Subject: suicide notes (was RE: Kurt Cobain)
> Sean:
> There was a great New Yorker article on suicide notes several months back.
> As I dimly recall, the author had analyzed thousands of notes and observed
> that suicide notes are almost never profound, well-written, or even
> interesting to read.
well, they're probably interesting for the relatives of the people that kill
themselves. I think it's kind of creepy reading suicide notes that aren't
meant
for you. I think that if someone kills himself and leaves a note for his
family, the note shouldn't be 'analyzed' by complete strangers.
-grant-
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