Has anyone noticed that nothing sane ever comes from people who use the word “hypothesis” when they are not writing a scientific paper?
I agree it’s not about learning the skills. It’s about the desire to use them. And it’s about self-identity and the idea that getting along with others through common – maybe “rituals” is a term a guy like this night use – might seem as some kind of betrayal of self.
On the other side of the coin no one gave two shits in hell about “The Cho Manifesto” from the shooter/suicide student at VA Tech. Perhaps there is some sort of silent dignity in offing ‘only yourself’ after spilling out all your intellectual conflicts? If ‘The Old Man’ had shot his head off after his first failed manuscript he never would have cranked out so much literary treasure. I suppose some folks may feel the only way to get their name is in lights is to get it engraved in stone first.
“Nobody understands that I am one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, I feel so alone, if only someone with a like mind could see I wouldn’t have to finalize it this way, but alas it must be so, now prophets and scientists around the globe will rejoice in unison at my superior insights” (not quoted from the work just obnoxious sarcasm)
Sad but true, they will talk about it on the internet though, at least for a few weeks, days, hours.
I propose to read ‘Suicide Note’ in it’s entirety. Geez what if ‘Mein Kuntzf’ had ended this way? I guess we will never know.
Thanks for the background on ‘Confederacy of Dunces’, I had no idea, and I have always wanted to read that as well. I also have the ‘Cho Manifesto’ and dloaded it from the web immediately after the VA Tech tragedy, and STILL have not read it. This work seems to offer a bit more substance from the headers as it were. I look forward to a full review from someone not inspired to commit suicide immediately after reading it. Maybe he got to Harvard too early and nobody was there? Or was that a “I spit in your eye pseudo intellectuals! so there! clean up this mess you have made haha!”
None the less, a needless tragedy in this day and age of global communication, there must have been other forces at work there. It is sad to see the smart ones die.:smack:
A person who kills only his or her self hasn’t done anything wrong. A person who shoots up a school certainly has.
In afterthought wouldn’t that be the real tragedy, if everyone that read it commited suicide immediately after they finished. It would never get a fair review! Perhaps bypassing this read may well be as life prolonging as staying away from the ‘Necronomicon’ in paperback bathroom reader edition format. Perhaps reading ‘Suicide Note’ is the truth path to enlightenment and not doing so will result in existential ignorance for eternity.
:smack:
I concur, I suppose I was aiming for catagory "TEXTS ATTACHED TO PUBLICITY SUICIDES’ but couldn’t help wondering if maybe that may have well been in the original plan.
mood elevators:rolleyes:
There’s something to that. I never wanted pretend friends myself, but I gotta say, life’s kinda lonely without them.
Pretend friends are more loyal and trustworthy than so-called “real” friends.
So does that mean succeeding at suicide is yet another thing men are better at?
ducks & runs REALLY fast!
So really, when men kill women, they are simply assisting women who would probably try and fail to kill themselves later. It’s practically charity.
Well the guy did make a point of killing himself in public, in front of a tour group (not sure but they may have been teenagers). That’s not looking for meaning, that’s being a self-absorbed asshole.
Even if half of what he wrote is brilliant, it’s hard to believe someone with the guts to continuing living hasn’t said the same. As it is it’s interesting to see how print media (at least in my neck of the woods) ignores the case or keeps it in the back page, to prevent copycats, but new media has run away with the story.
That’s right, murder is only an extroverted suicide
:smack:
Catfight
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Well the guy did make a point of killing himself in public, in front of a tour group (not sure but they may have been teenagers). That’s not looking for meaning, that’s being a self-absorbed asshole.
Even if half of what he wrote is brilliant, it’s hard to believe someone with the guts to continuing living hasn’t said the same. As it is it’s interesting to see how print media (at least in my neck of the woods) ignores the case or keeps it in the back page, to prevent copycats, but new media has run away with the story.
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I see, well at least he didn’t open fire on the tour group. “and to your right you may see the Showing Today Only Harvard suicide event”
Is it true that you are right behind me? 
The guts to continue living? Can you even comprehend the amount of courage he likely had to work up to take his own life?
While I agree that A Confederacy Of Dunces is absolutely brilliant (one of the best comic novels of all time; a masterwork of absurdist fiction and a stunningly insightful portrait of New Orleans) I don’t actually think that John Kennedy Toole’s suicide was largely influenced by his failure at getting ACOD published.
Friends of Toole’s say he was prone to depression since childhood and he had family issues that were also troubling him—Of course at this point it’s impossible to say, but John Kennedy Toole, as gifted as he obviously was, had a lot of emotional burdens that he felt encumbered by, more than just frustration at not getting published.
Either way, as hysterical as A Confederacy Of Dunces is, as you said, there is indeed an underlying element of tragedy about it; each time I revisit it, it leaves me a bit unsettled.