Final Drafts
Subtitle: Suicides of World-Famous Authors
Contributors: Paul West (Foreword)
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: December 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 456
ISBN-13: 9781573927413
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography; Literature: History & Criticism; Suicide; General; Special Subjects In Literature; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Suicidal behavior; Biography/Autobiography; Literary; Biography; Suicide victims; Authors; Death
First sentence: IF OUR SWEETEST SONGS ARE THOSE THAT TELL OF SADDEST THOUGHTS, then perhaps our saddest songs are those that tell of sweetest.
Description: "In Final Drafts Suicides of World-Famous Authors writer Mark Seinfelt examines in depth the lives and deaths of twenty-five authors who killed themselves between 1894 and 1991."--BOOK JACKET.

"The list is long. Each of the artists who took his or her life did so for unique reasons. But distinct patterns do emerge: several questioned their own abilities as writers; some felt guilt at being gay or lesbian; others suffered debilitating illnesses or believed they were going mad; still others succumbed to manic depression. But all faced the agonies considered peculiar to artists: the constant struggle to create and an overwhelming sense of alienation from a hostile or indifferent public.

Final Drafts is both a biographical treatment and a psychological examination of the authors of the past century who left this world on their own terms. It is also a devoted examination of references to suicide in literature, both in the authors' own communications and in the stories of writers who contemplated suicide but decided to live."--BOOK JACKET.