The Dark Hour
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
JANUARY 28, 2010 TAGS:
When it comes to topics that transfix, death and celebrities are pretty high on the list. Deaths of celebrities has to rate even higher. And deaths of celebrities by their own celebrity hands? A whole other stratosphere. We feel we know these souls so well and, upon hearing of a celebrity suicide, wonder as a collective pop culture-fixated nation what brought them to such a dire final choice.
Some answers can be found in the newly released Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious (Harper Paperbacks, $14.99), the latest book by Alix Strauss. Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, Dorothy Dandridge and Adolf Hitler are among the lives explored to their very ends in this mix of biography, psychological study and social commentary.
That last aspect is no new turf for the Manhattan-based 41-year-old writer who chronicles lifestyle and trends in publications including the New York Times, Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, and in appearances on national morning shows, including Today. Another section of Strauss’ career and brain is devoted to book projects, which to date have resulted in editing Have I Got a Guy for You (Adams Media), an anthology of dating horror stories; the award-winning short story collection The Joy of Funerals (St. Martin's Press); and the forthcoming novel Based Upon Availability (Harper Collins). Not bad for a former actor who fell into writing at 23, when she penned her first play and realized she was better at writing the words than delivering them.
Based Upon Availability is set at a famous Manhattan hotel. A collection of linked stories, each dealing with a death, Joy of Funerals features another kind of resting place.
“As a child I didn’t get to see my family very often,” Strauss says, “and when I did, it was at a funeral. I equated them with family reunions. There was always one less relative, but Aunt Edna was 82, had a wonderful life. As a kid it was a wonderful time to see my relatives, I loved hearing stories. It was a defining moment. Getting to see them was a connection. In most of my work I was finding somebody was always dying. Death is extremely universal.… I love playing with the way we’re all connected.”
More than play was involved in her latest book, which took eight months of fact-finding and writing.
“There was so much to amass, all the research, huge biographies, autobiographies, articles and documentaries, so much information about these amazing luminaries and icons,” she says.
Though Strauss did contact mental health professionals and experts on suicide, she decided not to approach her subjects’ relatives, saying she then would have written another type of book. She has no personal connection to suicide, and no single figure inspired the collection she assembled with the assistance of five part-time researchers. Her prompt, Strauss says, was “the methodology and pathology of what led up to the last days of these icons.
“To know that Anne Sexton was in and out of mental institutions 22 times and tried nine times to kill herself -- the stories behind these geniuses and artists had to be interesting. Freud killed himself at 83. I was desperate to know what had happened, what drove them to this place.… There’s an enormous amount of questions -- who these people were, what could put them in such a lonely, horrible place that they needed to end their lives. That they really needed to. I don’t think anybody really wants to. I think it’s the last option.”
The suicides of 300 well-knowns are mentioned. Strauss says determining the highlighted 20 wasn’t difficult.
“Surprisingly, it took maybe an hour. As important as Socrates was, there wasn’t the same amount of information on him. Some of it was just in terms of what we could amass and some of it was also what people would be able to connect to. So we talk about Socrates, and give much more information on Hemingway.”
Mixed with the names from history are some of lesser-known people, including Welsh-born actress Peg Entwistle, the first and only person to die by leaping from the H of the famous Hollywood sign. But the bulk of Strauss’ focus is on the people everyone knows. Public interest in the private lives of the famous – “familiar strangers,” to use Strauss’ term – has zoomed since Entwistle’s 1930s era.
Death Becomes Them employs a close lens to include the reader, who feels present at the moment of a terrible decision.
“You’re there with Anne Sexton with the stones in her pocket, with Spaulding Gray on the ferry, with Sylvia with her head in the oven,” Strauss says. “We let the reader experience what the people were into and what led up to it.”
Her favorite subject in the book is poet and asphyxiation victim Sexton. “She was so incredibly brilliant and so masochistic and so unhappy and really struggled through so much,” Strauss says. “They all did, but to go in and out of mental institutions 22 times…”
That number sticks in Strauss’ head just as others – the time it takes to die in a plastic bag (four minutes, and you don’t need to tie it) -- remain in readers’. Of the book he calls “Dark, grisly, and completely fascinating,” A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, says, “I almost felt guilty for so thoroughly enjoying this look at history’s most tormented souls."
“People have been incredibly supportive and interested and respectful,” Strauss says, “and very often I will get a reader who writes and says they appreciate the book, they knew someone who was suicidal and found the book shed light on areas they didn’t know. It makes you feel like you did your job.”
Death Becomes Them also underlines the connection between mental illness and addiction and suicide, and Strauss would love to have the book incorporated in classes and suicide prevention efforts. “I can only hope this is a way to open the conversation. When you’re dealing with celebrity, people already feel attached to them. We are a celebrity nation. We can’t get enough information about them. Then they’re gone.”
Suzanne Strempek Shea, the author of eight books, including the recent Sundays in America, contributes regularly to Obit.
Some answers can be found in the newly released Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious (Harper Paperbacks, $14.99), the latest book by Alix Strauss. Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, Dorothy Dandridge and Adolf Hitler are among the lives explored to their very ends in this mix of biography, psychological study and social commentary. That last aspect is no new turf for the Manhattan-based 41-year-old writer who chronicles lifestyle and trends in publications including the New York Times, Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, and in appearances on national morning shows, including Today. Another section of Strauss’ career and brain is devoted to book projects, which to date have resulted in editing Have I Got a Guy for You (Adams Media), an anthology of dating horror stories; the award-winning short story collection The Joy of Funerals (St. Martin's Press); and the forthcoming novel Based Upon Availability (Harper Collins). Not bad for a former actor who fell into writing at 23, when she penned her first play and realized she was better at writing the words than delivering them.
Based Upon Availability is set at a famous Manhattan hotel. A collection of linked stories, each dealing with a death, Joy of Funerals features another kind of resting place.
“As a child I didn’t get to see my family very often,” Strauss says, “and when I did, it was at a funeral. I equated them with family reunions. There was always one less relative, but Aunt Edna was 82, had a wonderful life. As a kid it was a wonderful time to see my relatives, I loved hearing stories. It was a defining moment. Getting to see them was a connection. In most of my work I was finding somebody was always dying. Death is extremely universal.… I love playing with the way we’re all connected.”
More than play was involved in her latest book, which took eight months of fact-finding and writing.
“There was so much to amass, all the research, huge biographies, autobiographies, articles and documentaries, so much information about these amazing luminaries and icons,” she says.
Though Strauss did contact mental health professionals and experts on suicide, she decided not to approach her subjects’ relatives, saying she then would have written another type of book. She has no personal connection to suicide, and no single figure inspired the collection she assembled with the assistance of five part-time researchers. Her prompt, Strauss says, was “the methodology and pathology of what led up to the last days of these icons.
“To know that Anne Sexton was in and out of mental institutions 22 times and tried nine times to kill herself -- the stories behind these geniuses and artists had to be interesting. Freud killed himself at 83. I was desperate to know what had happened, what drove them to this place.… There’s an enormous amount of questions -- who these people were, what could put them in such a lonely, horrible place that they needed to end their lives. That they really needed to. I don’t think anybody really wants to. I think it’s the last option.”
The suicides of 300 well-knowns are mentioned. Strauss says determining the highlighted 20 wasn’t difficult.
“Surprisingly, it took maybe an hour. As important as Socrates was, there wasn’t the same amount of information on him. Some of it was just in terms of what we could amass and some of it was also what people would be able to connect to. So we talk about Socrates, and give much more information on Hemingway.”
Mixed with the names from history are some of lesser-known people, including Welsh-born actress Peg Entwistle, the first and only person to die by leaping from the H of the famous Hollywood sign. But the bulk of Strauss’ focus is on the people everyone knows. Public interest in the private lives of the famous – “familiar strangers,” to use Strauss’ term – has zoomed since Entwistle’s 1930s era. Death Becomes Them employs a close lens to include the reader, who feels present at the moment of a terrible decision.
“You’re there with Anne Sexton with the stones in her pocket, with Spaulding Gray on the ferry, with Sylvia with her head in the oven,” Strauss says. “We let the reader experience what the people were into and what led up to it.”
Her favorite subject in the book is poet and asphyxiation victim Sexton. “She was so incredibly brilliant and so masochistic and so unhappy and really struggled through so much,” Strauss says. “They all did, but to go in and out of mental institutions 22 times…”
That number sticks in Strauss’ head just as others – the time it takes to die in a plastic bag (four minutes, and you don’t need to tie it) -- remain in readers’. Of the book he calls “Dark, grisly, and completely fascinating,” A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, says, “I almost felt guilty for so thoroughly enjoying this look at history’s most tormented souls."
“People have been incredibly supportive and interested and respectful,” Strauss says, “and very often I will get a reader who writes and says they appreciate the book, they knew someone who was suicidal and found the book shed light on areas they didn’t know. It makes you feel like you did your job.”
Death Becomes Them also underlines the connection between mental illness and addiction and suicide, and Strauss would love to have the book incorporated in classes and suicide prevention efforts. “I can only hope this is a way to open the conversation. When you’re dealing with celebrity, people already feel attached to them. We are a celebrity nation. We can’t get enough information about them. Then they’re gone.”
Suzanne Strempek Shea, the author of eight books, including the recent Sundays in America, contributes regularly to Obit.
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