A study discussed in a Forbes article suggests we don’t a study examined in The Atlantic, says authors do it twice as often as the general public. The first question is do author’s kill themselves more than the rest of the population? We don’t know. Life is painful for most everyone, but to dedicate your life to writing into the problem requires an unusually deep need. People who experienced trauma or childhood abuse or neglect come to literature to think about pain and meaning. Most of all I think pain comes first and draws people into writing (which actually helps them live longer and happier than they would have). Jennifer Michael Hecht: I don’t think they are, exactly. Why do you think poets are so given to take particular social contagion? Derick Varn: Stay was prompted by the lost of two friends, both poets. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won Phi Beta Kappa’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “For scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.”Ĭ. Her new book is Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, out from Yale University Press. Her The Happiness Myth brings a historical eye to modern wisdom about how to lead a good life. She is the author of the bestseller Doubt: A History, a history of religious and philosophical doubt all over the world. Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, philosopher, historian and commentator.
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