Etkind's hobby has afforded him a peek at the inside of an array of minds that, though focused and even calm, are hardly rational. Only one in five suicides, we learn, even leaves a note. And of those who do, not many of them seem to understand that the act is irrevocable. The future tends to stand up and stroll around in the imaginations of the suicidal, and then refuses to sit back down, as we see in the note left by Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor to her treacherous lover.
Many last lines are in all likelihood intended to be public documents.
There are suicides of shame and anger, of artistic temperament, of protest and altruism. In America, people tend to off themselves not during the hideous holidays, as is often thought, but in the ensuing spring, and usually in the afternoon. The historic notes here more than justify securing this morbid morsel for your shelf. Here are Hitler's last words, and Goering's, as well as O.J. Simpson's putative goodbye, all bearing the protestations of innocence common to suicides in disgrace. For a lasting impression, though, the Jim Jones story stands alone.