What famous writers have killed themselves in New York City?
A six pack of beer is riding on this. Your help is much appreciated.
That’s a tough one. Offhand, I can only think of one: Holocaust survivor Primo Levi who flung himself into the stairwell of his mother’s building.
Paris, on the other hand, has a really impressive itinerary: from Gerard de Nerval, who in 1855, hung himself from a street lamp,
to philosopher Gilles Deleuze who in 1998 jumped out his window
It’s kind of intrirguing that there’ve been so few author suicides in NYC compared to Paris…I wonder why…
Dorothy Parker?
Dotty botched it twice, only to die of a heart attack later on.
I guess she was speaking from experience when she wrote that famous little poem of hers. 
“It’s kind of intrirguing that there’ve been so few author suicides in NYC compared to Paris…I wonder why…”
Have you been there? Spend a month in any arrondissement and you can’t help but empathize…
Didn’t Jerzy Kozinski do himself in the big apple?
Reinaldo Arenas the Cuban author, subject of Before Night Falls, overdosed on pills and alcohol December 7, 1990 in New York City.
If I remember correctly, Dylan Thomas died in NYC back in the early 50s – don’t remember which hotel, though.
And, of course, there’s the alleged Sid Vicious/Nancy Spungen double suicide in the Chelsea Hotel, circa mid 70s…but Sid was a punk rock star, not a writer, so scratch that.
Dylan Thomas, OTOH, was a poet…
Dylan Thomas died of natural causes (brought on by his alcoholism), not of suicide. He collapsed at the Chelsea Hotel, but was brought to a hospital where he died. See this URL:
Hart Crane committed suicide while en route to New York. Does that count?
German-born poet, playwright, and political writer Ernst Toller committed suicide in New York in 1939.
Hart Crane jumped off a ship near the gulf of mexico. Long way form NY. I can’t believe I forgot the Before Night Falls author.
Also, thanks to the above poster for the Kozinksi reminder.
Beat poet Gregory Corso might be one…but I have to go look it up.
As far as Dylan Thomas goes…He certainly didn’t commit suicide per se. But, if you were to stretch the definition of suicide to include self-destructive behavior leading to premature death (which is, after all, just a very time-consuming form of suicide), you’d have a nice little thread…Dylan Thomas, Frank O’Hara (just how is it that he was run over by a dune buggy on a totally empty beach?), etc, etc. Then again, that could go on forever. For example: would victims of AIDS, like Harold Brodkey, be an example of this?
To the poster who asked me about Paris: yeah, I’ve been there.
I didn’t have the urge to commit suicide…but those insane Parisian taxi drivers, who make 45 degree turns at 80 mph, are clearly suicidal. Maybe it’s in the water…
Well, I’ll get the ball rolling if ya want. Anyone got some laudenum?
Forget Corso. Natural causes and not even in NYC.
So, I think the following list is basically complete:
–Toller: Never heard of him but I’ll take your word for it.
–Kozinski: Holocaust survivor. Suffocated himself with a plastic bag
–Levi: Holocaust survivor. Jumped from stairwell.
–Arenas: Plastic bag.
I’m getting kind of obssessed with this topic: I’m shocked that so few writers have commited suicide here as compared to Paris or London. There’s got to be more. I have this notion that Djuna Barnes did herself in.
I would also point out an interesting fact that people looking at this list have probably already noticed: everyone on the list is foreign-born and came to NYC fleeing a persecutorial govt. in their homeland.
You can cross Primo Levi off your list—he died in Turin, and it’s highly debatable whether or not his death was a suicide.
Probably not for Djuna Barnes either:
According to this site:
Damn. Thanks for pointing that out.
But Primo Levi most likely commited suicide. People have an irrational need to belive that anyone who survived a concentration camp wouldn’t allow himself to commit suicide. In their eyes this would be, in effect, like being killed by the Nazis 40 years after WWII. There have even been conspiracy theories: everyone from neo-nazis to Israeli extremists (Levi’s most famous quote is, after all, the following: “Everyone is somebody’s Jew. Today, the Palestinians are the Israeli’s Jews.”)
–Doubters point out that no note was left. Only a small fraction of suicides leave notes.
–He’d made plans that day. There is a little known fact about suicides: many are spontaneous. Every year some commuter on the Golden Gate Bridge decides to park their car at the divide and jump to their death rather than go to work that day.
–He didn’t seem depressed. Another little known fact: suicides are often extremely happy before they kill themselves. After a long period of depression, they feel that they finally have a way out.
–Levi might have been leaning over the guard-rail–which only reached his waist–calling for the maid and accidentally fell. Maybe. But he’d done this a thousand times. And the maid wasn’t even there.
Sorry for the lengthy post. But it’s always bothered me that people have seen Levi’s death as Hitler’s posthumous triumph over one of the Holocaust’s most famous surviviors. It was a sad death, but not atypical amongst gulit-ridden Holocaust survivors.
I don’t really know or care whether he killed himself or was eaten by bears, personally. I’d just happened to read a lengthy review of a new bio of him, which discussed this subject. I always got the names “Primo Levi” and “Phil Spitalny” confused, which led to no end of wacky mixups.
There’s gotta be a lot of now-forgotten 19th-century writers who did themselves in in New York . . . How to Goggle this?
The deaths of Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen were not a double suicide. Vicious (bad name for a murder defendant) was under indictment for second degree murder in Spungen’s October 1978 death when he died in February 1979 from a heroin overdose.
Spungen’s death occurred in their room at the Chelsea Hotel, but Vicious died elsewhere. (You usually get thrown out of a hotel when you’ve killed someone in your room.)
The Smoking Gun has the relevant documents:
Adam P. writes:
> For example: would victims of AIDS, like Harold Brodkey, be an
> example of this?
I recall reading an article about Brodkey in which he said that his last homosexual contact had been more than 10 years before and that there had only been a short period when he’d been experimenting as a homosexual. He was pretty sure that it was during that period that he’d become HIV-positive. So, no, in his case it was not true that he’d engaged in huge amounts of sex or drugs that caused him to get AIDS. Calling his death suicide strikes me as pretty silly. Even calling Thomas’s death suicide because he was an alcoholic is stretching it. Where do you draw the line? If a moderate drinker has too many drinks one night and is killed in an auto accident because he drives too fast, is that suicide? If someone runs across the street without looking both ways and is killed by being struck by a truck, is that suicide? If someone who’s fair-skinned spends too much time in the sun and dies of skin cancer, is that suicide? No, I think it’s best to not stretch the definition of suicide.