or not to be?
So I was clicking around through lists on Amazon when I stumble across this book called "...Or Not to Be : A Collection of Suicide Notes" and it struck me as very peculiar. Apparently the author makes some claim about suicide notes being a literary form of its own that deserves special consideration as such.
For some reason, probably twisted in some way, I imagine the situation of a person sitting at some desk meticulously crafting an amazingly well written suicide note to be funny. Why invest so much effort for some note that will be almost certainly overshadowed by the attempt itself. Invest is a poor choice of words I think as it probably entails the expectation of later reward, which is pretty silly when you're dead. I don't know, would I try to write it well, or even at all? It's a weird thing to think about, so I won't sit here and speculate about what kinds of things I'd want to include were I composing a note of my own.
For some reason, probably twisted in some way, I imagine the situation of a person sitting at some desk meticulously crafting an amazingly well written suicide note to be funny. Why invest so much effort for some note that will be almost certainly overshadowed by the attempt itself. Invest is a poor choice of words I think as it probably entails the expectation of later reward, which is pretty silly when you're dead. I don't know, would I try to write it well, or even at all? It's a weird thing to think about, so I won't sit here and speculate about what kinds of things I'd want to include were I composing a note of my own.
2 Comments:
To be fair, you don't even bother to polish letters that aren't suicide notes.
Well, be that as it may, I think something like a suicide note would be a special case, and thus merits special consideration. In the case of normal written correspondence, I haphazardly write whatever poorly constructed and inane sentences happen to make their way into my train of thought. I don't really worry about my words being scrutinized, because I figure I can always make up excuses and rationalizations after the fact, or, whatever.
In the case of a suicide note though, there is no rebuttal. Moreover, one would expect that the note truly be the final word. I mean, otherwise, nobody will much care about a poorly written note, because they'll be too concerned with the failed attempt.
Carrying on, in the event of success, the last thing communicated by the recently dead will be the note, and so will probably be subject to an atypically large amount of analysis. Given that one would be writing a suicide note with this in mind, it would probably be worthwhile to spend the extra time making it more presentable. Of course, if you're writing such a note in the first place, perhaps you have other things on your mind, so it's kind of hard to speculate how one might act in the context of planning their own death.
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