A reason for suicide

by Oren Long

From an article in the September 2007 issue of Harpers Magazine; a conversation between two famous authors, Norman Mailer and Andrew O’Hagan. The first question O’Hagan asks Mailer: “Do you remember where you were when you heard Hemingway had killed himself?”

This question is as troubling for most writers as is a similar question to most Americans, “Do you remember where you were when you heard President Kennedy had been shot”?

Mailer describes his reaction to Hemingway’s suicide: “I remember it very well....I was truly aghast. A certain part of me has never really gotten over it”.

Such events leave the mind troubled. They undermine our need for security and certainty. What citizen can feel secure when their leader is slain? What writer is not shaken by doubt when a peer of such renown and respect can find no reason to continue life?

Mailer explains what he believes Hemingway’s death is telling every writer of fiction: “Listen, all you novelists out there, get it straight: when you’re a novelist you’re entering on an extremely dangerous psychological journey, and it can blow up in your face”.

O’Hagan then asks Mailer, “Might it be said, in any event, that writing is a sort of self-annihilation?” Mailer: “It uses you profoundly. There’s simply less of you after you finish a book.”

These famous writers are expressing a most unsettling belief: the pursuit of TRUTH is perhaps mans most dangerous undertaking; for what you learn can blow up in your face and destroy your most cherished beliefs.

Hemingway killed himself in 1961. In 1952 he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. The old man is a fisherman. He is poor. The only way he knows how to make a lot of money is to catch a great fish, and to do that he needs to go far out to sea where both the rewards and risks are great.

He hooks a great marlin. The struggle between the old man and this great fish covers two days. It leaves him exhausted, but victorious. He ties the fish to his row boat, and begins the long journey back to shore.

But there are many sharks in the sea. During the night a final struggle begins. When the old man reaches the shore, those on the dock are amazed at the size of the skeleton tied alongside his small boat.

Humans have always used religion to survive life’s many defeats. As science continues to replace theology in explaining natural phenomenon, scholars wonder if human nature will be altered in the process. Will we place our faith in science? Will we become rational beings?

To write about human nature a novelist must be an astute observer of human conduct, and Hemingway was clearly a master observer. What he saw told him man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. They are more noble. They have greater dignity.

The realization that he was a member of an inferior species may have left him little reason to continue participation in what he saw as a pointless exercise, his reason for suicide.

Oren Long is a Valley Falls farmer and a regular contributor to these columns.