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Harvard suicide guy left a note
By adamg on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 7:32pm
1,905 pages long. And this being the 21st century, he left a copy on the Web. With a Creative Commons license so all can share.
Via Stephanie.
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Comments
Sad
That kind of long-winded, grandiose, not-quite-coherent writing is very characteristic of psychotic disorders. So sad that he apparently didn't get the help he needed. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
true
his writing style somehow reminds me of Unabomber's manifesto...
I was about to agree with a
I was about to agree with a flip comment about a suicide note of greater than 100 pages being the one-criteria qualification for a diagnosis of mania, but I've been reading the thing. I'm up to page 35, and while he's long-winded and a bit repetitive, he's no less coherent than your average philosopher, and rather better spoken than some. His associations are direct, and despite the repetitiveness, he doesn't perseverate but gets on with his argument. So far, no ideas of reference, and his grandiosity is... not outsized for someone writing about philosophy. It may just be that he was a very, very smart guy who didn't understand why his rationality wasn't cutting through the misery of his depression/dysthymia. The psycheache bleeds up through the page.
There are things about this document which sound excruciatingly familiar, from my days keeping MIT students from throwing themselves off buildings. It also in some ways reminds me of the Unibomber Manifesto, but more self-conscious.
Here's the gist
I skimmed the intro, and apparently the point is that Vikings defeated the Nazis. So that's pretty cool.
Then he WAS crazy
Because Brett Favre couldn't beat a Pop Warner team these days.
Curious but not ready to delve in?
at the blog: University Diaries
A professor of English
describes university life.
Aim: To change things.
The writer asks the question:
What does it mean
when you kill yourself
on a busy morning
in the middle of Harvard Yard?
What happens when a newspaper runs wallpaper ads
You get things like this GateHouse page, as captured by Spatch.