“A coroner’s pronouncement of suicide (felo da se) resulted in forfeiture of the deceased’s goods and property to the state, often leaving any surviving relatives destitute. So the increasingly common verdict of temporary insanity (non compos mentis) may suggest a change in how people understood the act of self-destruction: no longer construed as a demonic temptation, it came instead to be viewed as a symptom of lunacy.” On the prevalence of suicide in eighteenth-century English literature.
La Grande Mort
“First you take a drink … then the drink takes you.”
At The Daily Beast, Jimmy So writes about F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s penchant for alcohol. This article is best paired with On Booze, a new collection of previously unpublished Fitzgerald snippets.
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Recovering Iris Murdoch
With many of her books no longer in print, Iris Murdoch's posthumous reputation leaves much to be desired, and her ardent fans seek to rectify this.
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From the Department of Prehistory
This week in palaeontology: “…how did 30-ton animals larger than four-story buildings have sex?”
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The Perils of Being a Hermit
It might not be a good idea to tell this to bookish readers, but it looks like loneliness can kill you.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Malcolm, Percy, Drury, Barrett, Kertész
New! This! Week! Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm, Red Moon by Benjamin Percy, Pacific by Tom Drury, Love Is Power, or Something Like That by A. Igoni Barrett (read his piece at The Millions), and Dossier K, a memoir from Novel winner Imre Kertész.
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