Monday, September 22, 2008

Rest in peace... or something like it

Not much time tonight. Want to do some other-stuff writing, which I didn't get a chance to do earlier this evening when the laptop was BSODing up a storm. But I wanted to point out this reminiscence on the recently deceased Thomas M. Disch.

Disch could be a depressing writer, no doubt. To be frank, it may be a surprise that it took him so long to kill himself. He was also a sharp wit. In the novels I've read by him, the balance is a little unbalanced. After a while he runs out of things to do with his characters, besides kill them off in horrible ways. But he did some unnervingly good short stories (e.g. "Come to Venus Melancholy", "The Asian Shore") and was a gifted poet. He made more of a mark than he may have known.

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