Thomas M. Disch, d. 7/4/08
Jul. 15th, 2008 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerHe shot himself in his Union Square apartment on July 4th. It's always a noisy day in NYC, with firecrackers going off day and night. Maybe he thought no one would notice one more bang.
Read Liz Hand's wonderful memorial piece on Salon, which includes memorable quote: His best work builds on Eugene Ionesco's dictum: "We are made to be immortal, and yet we die....."
I met Tom back when I was a junior editor working at Pocket/S&S, as a protegee of David Hartwell, who always made sure I got to meet the greats. He took me to a party in Disch's Union Square apartment. I don't remember any details, just being a bit overwhelmed and getting through it. It was full of grownups and literary types.
There is such a difference between being the one who writes the books, and being the one who reads them. I often tell interviewers that the reason I wanted to become a writer was that as a child reading books made me happier than anything, and so I assumed that people who wrote them were happy all the time - I imagined a sort of Celestial Choir of Creativity that writers eternally sang in. Now I know that writing is just one of the things we do in life. And that, while the work itself is immortal, immutable and ominipresent - in that anyone can pick it up any time and be transported by it - the time in which you were writing it is finite. You've had it, and it's done. (This is not the place to point out that only a few things are fun and easy to write from start to finish. But there is a joy in writing, or we wouldn't start.)
My grandmother always said, "What's most important is that you have your health." It seemed a quaint, Old World sentiment. But when you're a kid, not having your health usually means a flu or a head cold, or something worse that a shot of penicillin will soon cure you of. Being chronically physically miserable wears you down. It changes you in ways you don't even notice. You can ignore pain only when it's on the page.
Read Liz Hand's wonderful memorial piece on Salon, which includes memorable quote: His best work builds on Eugene Ionesco's dictum: "We are made to be immortal, and yet we die....."
I met Tom back when I was a junior editor working at Pocket/S&S, as a protegee of David Hartwell, who always made sure I got to meet the greats. He took me to a party in Disch's Union Square apartment. I don't remember any details, just being a bit overwhelmed and getting through it. It was full of grownups and literary types.
There is such a difference between being the one who writes the books, and being the one who reads them. I often tell interviewers that the reason I wanted to become a writer was that as a child reading books made me happier than anything, and so I assumed that people who wrote them were happy all the time - I imagined a sort of Celestial Choir of Creativity that writers eternally sang in. Now I know that writing is just one of the things we do in life. And that, while the work itself is immortal, immutable and ominipresent - in that anyone can pick it up any time and be transported by it - the time in which you were writing it is finite. You've had it, and it's done. (This is not the place to point out that only a few things are fun and easy to write from start to finish. But there is a joy in writing, or we wouldn't start.)
My grandmother always said, "What's most important is that you have your health." It seemed a quaint, Old World sentiment. But when you're a kid, not having your health usually means a flu or a head cold, or something worse that a shot of penicillin will soon cure you of. Being chronically physically miserable wears you down. It changes you in ways you don't even notice. You can ignore pain only when it's on the page.
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Date: 2008-07-15 03:12 pm (UTC)Writers are prone to misery in part, I think, because the feedback from their work takes so long. The joy of creation must come from within; the external validation can take a lifetime if it comes at all. Not everyone handles this with the same equanimity.
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Date: 2008-07-16 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 03:18 pm (UTC)But it is sad that someone so talented should be so unhappy. Technically, I suppose, it's sad that anyone should be so unhappy.
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Date: 2008-07-16 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 03:33 pm (UTC)for all that I had a bit better perspective on the truth of that statement in my childhood -- my mum broke her neck when I was nine, and the recovery was literally a matter of over a decade, -- I still never quite understood it until I met people with fibro, candidiasis, and celiac disease to really grasp what a drain on physical, financial, mental, and spiritual resources being ill could really represent.
It's daunting, really. And all the more so in today's medical industry, which likes to believe if they can't cure it with a profitable drug regimen, the disease doesn't actually exist...
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Date: 2008-07-16 02:18 am (UTC)Thomas Disch
Date: 2008-07-15 03:56 pm (UTC)Mary Beth Bass
Re: Thomas Disch
Date: 2008-07-16 02:18 am (UTC)