Saturday, December 23, 2006

 

mercy street

According to wikepedia, after discussion on the publication of her poem collection The Awful Rowing toward God and having lunch with maxine kumin her writer friend, the poet anne sexton went into the garage, put a hose into the car , started the engine and asphyxiated herself with carbon monoxide.

We all know that writing can be a very dangerous profession especially for those with manic depressive bent (and many poor writers are) and some did go to the extreme . suicide for art sake is not uncommon. And these heroics are beyond my comprehension. Why would people want to kill themselves for art? jerzy kosinski did it in 1991 hunter h Thompson in 2005.

I don’t know anything about anne sexton or about poetry and am very glad for it (not knowing about poetry i mean). this is a particularly dangerous sector of writing world. Stay away from it! And if not for the great Peter Gabriel and his fabulous but melancholic song ‘mercy street’ I would never have heard or read anything about anne sexton. (presumably this song was influenced by Anne Sexton’s posthumous collection of poems 45 mercy street (1976) – which I don’t know anything about. )

I was lucky to accidentally stumbled upon a hardback of “searching for mercy street” by Linda Gray Sexton , a memoir of “my journey Back to my mother anne sexton” - as the subtitle of the book described - in the recent payless sales and probably will get into it some times - time permitting. And that’s the good thing about these sales. You go with an open mind and you may find all kind of treasures and surprises. And I found “Passing by” Selected essays 1960 – 1991 of Jerzy kosinski. The blurb described it as ...A collection of writings , never before published in book form , that answers many questions about kosinski and his work...

And I know a bit about mr kosinski, as at least several of his earlier books were some of my favorites in my younger days. I liked his writings which if my memory doesn’t deceive me were characterized by somewhat questionable ethics and moral outlook and perhaps much colored by his own very interesting life story.

But now , a few days back I was listening to old songs which i downloaded during napster heydays (bless you shawn fanning for giving us this , and fuck you metallica...you motherfuckers were some of the people responsible for the demise of this first ever free download program) with my old computer (the spanking new one with 250 gigabytes hard disc and the latest intel chip , I am kind enough to let my 85 yr old chimpanzee use it to play games and down load all sorts of things) –in my library and just grabbed a book at random and it turned out to be rohinton mistry’s “a fine balance” and now I’m deep into the world of parsi lives and had to put a few others on hold again…a real problem this...so many books and so little time …but I’m always happy to have this kind of problem anytime…

Comments:
hunter s. killed himself out of boredom, not art ... it was along time to the next football season

"a fine balance' is an amzing book. one of my all time favourites
 
actually both kosinski and hunter s thompson killed themselves because, to put it bluntly ,they can't "perform" anymore.

i'm a bit slow , don't actually get it where football come into this madam sharon?
 
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