There's a new, interesting and sensitive biography of John Kennedy Toole out. It's called Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Short, Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces. Or coming out. Not sure if it's out yet. Toole wrote the great comic novel in the Sixties, while stationed at an Army base in Puerto Rico. It was never published in his lifetime. Cory MacLauchlin's book traces the labyrinthine path the manuscript took to publication and fame. Walker Percy enters the story late, but figures as a hero, along with the Toole's mother, for their roles in the novel's publication. Toole killed himself, and the author of the bio considers very realistically, with insight and compassion, the possible causes of his suicide. Here he summarizes the conclusions of Edwin Schneidman, who studied suicide and those who commit it. It's an accurate elucidation of the conundrum of living with pain but no visible wound.
Foremost suicidologist Edwin Shneidman described suicide as an incredibly complex event. He coined the term "psychache" to express the intricate and complicated condition leading up to suicide. After years of studying suicides and interviewing people with suicidal tendencies, some of whom ultimately carried out the act despite his efforts to help then, Shneidman determined that suicide is not reactive, but rather "purposive." In his definition, it is a "concatenated, complicated, multi-dimensional, conscious, and unconscious 'choice' of the best possible practical solution to a perceived problem, dilemma, impasse, crisis or desperation." And before arriving at the decision to kill oneself, Shneidman argues, the person is in excruciating pain; the pain may have no physical manifestation but still relentlessly tortures the subject. To the person suffering from this "psychache," the pain is just as potent and troubling as the ghost pain riddling the body of an amputee. They cannot point to the wound they feel, but they feel it intensely. In this context, suicide is not a moment of weakness, but rather a final attempt to take control of the pain, regardless of its origin.
- Cory MacLauchlin
Butterfly in the Typewriter
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