I just heard that someone from my high school class committed suicide. I tend to take the death of anyone who is around my age (or younger) hard. It all just tends to bother me. Maybe it has to do with the shattering of the expectation that I myself will wake up tomorrow morning. Then again, to quote Catcher in the Rye, I know that “they’re in heaven and all that crap,” and that we are the only ones negatively affected, but anyway, I don’t like it.

Suicide is especially baffling to me. On the surface it seems like I’ve had this easy, blessed ride but then I’ve had a LOT of trying experiences. As well, some of my friends have had experiences that make even mine seem like not so much. So, it makes me think, well if none of these people (including me) who’ve experienced some of the “endless nights” alluded to in William Blake chose to do themselves in, what would compel someone else to do it?

Another guy I knew who committed suicide recently was David Foster Wallace. He was, if you listen to the critics, one of the finest writers of this entire century. I consider myself a writer and am working on my own non-fiction novel, and here this guy who had achieved towering success off and kills himself. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Hemingway, with whom Wallace was compared, lived a slightly longer life, but I'm not sure Hemingway ever came up with anything better than In Our Time. I think Hemingway realized this and got more and more depressed as he realized that he had been going steadily downhill.

I had this one professor when I was taking a grad course in literature with whom I discussed Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald. I pointed out how in Hemingway everyone drank and was merry, while in Fitzgerald the drinkers often lost control and exhibited alcoholism. Fitzgerald himself struggled with alcoholism while Hemingway seemed comfortable with his drinking, was part of my point.

"Yes," he said. "But Fitzgerald didn't blow his brains out with a shotgun."