Notable death: some famous last words

By Steve Weiss

In his new book ...Or Not to Be, Marc Etkind combines pop sociology with the last words of such noteworthies as Vince Foster, Adolf Hitler, Vincent Van Gogh, and Virginia Woolf. And, he introduces a macabre new genre: the suicide note.

Still, the placement of the suicide notes within their social, historical, and literary contexts allows us to view these intimate documents guilt-free, as voyeurs from the respectable distance of cultural criticism. What scholar's bookshelf is possibly complete without a copy of the definitive cultural artifact of our generation, Kurt Cobain's death letter?

In the moments before removing his head with a shotgun, Cobain was thoughtful enough to leave the following words for his adoring fans: "Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach...I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away." The message was mockingly recorded for the public by Courtney Love, two days after Cobain's body was found.

Some suicides blame themselves, but more blame others. The poet John Berryman left a curt note to his wife before plunging into the Mississippi: "I am a nuisance." Vince Foster placed the onus of blame on the Wall Street Journal and the Republican Party: "Here ruining people is considered sport."

Along with actual suicide notes, Etkind includes an unfulfilled suicide note from O.J. Simpson ("I can't go on. No matter what the outcome, people will look and point. I can't take that"). and a fake suicide note left in Ken Kesey's van as the author went underground to escape capture by the police.

Etkind also stretches the parameters of the suicide note to include the pre-suicide speeches of cult leader Jim Jones and prolific Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, as well as the suicide poems of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. The poems are a bit of a cheap trick, but Etkind ties them together with the traditional suicide notes by pointing out the similarites between the two.

In a brief introduction on the history of the suicide note, Etkind writes that increasing literacy and the advent of mass media in the 18th century spawned the suicide note as the common farewell of those who would take their lives. As a popular forum for expressing final thoughts, newspapers allowed suicides a venue of self-expression and publicity by publishing the notes post mortem. The basic motives of the suicide note have remained constant throughout the years: elicit sympathy, wreak vengange, plead innocence, or gain fame.

Though the celebrity suicide notes are the most enticing pieces in the book, Etkind includes an equal number of notes by ordinary people, such as the explanation by John Thomas D. for a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge: "Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache." Alex C., who took his life so that the insurance payment would provide his wife with the capital to settle a dispute with the IRS, wrote the following: "I have taken my life in order to provide capital for you...I have made the only decision I can. It's purely a business decision."

The suicide notes of the non-celebrities make universal the tales of spurned love, failing health, financial ruin, mental disorder, and rotten moods. In the end, little separates the famous actors or musicians from the unknown dentists and high school students who strive to provide meaning for their deaths through the crafting of the proper suicide note.

For the most part, the book succeeds in eliciting sympathy for the plight of the individuals. While some notes are glib and some are gloomy, all are a testament to our own morbid curiosity.

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