Repost of one of my articles from May 2006  Image: Suicide by Scandinavian artist Joakim Back. Caveat: Some possible book ‘spoilers’ here. But not really, unless you’re already part way through the book. Nick Hornby’s newest book A Long Way Down is, on the surface, about suicide. Its four protagonists, who take turns throughout the book speaking in the first person, telling their personal and collective story sequentially (not redundantly) meet atop a tower famous for suicides, each with the intention of jumping off, and become a sort of goofy self-help group. Here, as a teaser (and testament to Hornby’s extraordinary writing) is a glimpse of each of the characters in their ‘own’ words: Martin (middle-aged, has-been, self-destructive morning talk-show host): I’d spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests on the Internet, just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time, th coroner says the same thing: “He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed”. And then you read the story about the poor bastard. His wife was sleeping with his best friend, he’d lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some months before…Hello, Mr. Coroner? Anyone at home? I’m sorry, but there’s no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I’d say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing until you can’t take any more, and then off to the nearest multistory car park in the family hatchback with a length of rubber tubing. Surely that’s fair enough? Surely the coroner’s report should read: “He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.”
JJ (young, failed rock-star): The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re fucking geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something. It’s our inalienable right, as citizens of the 21st century. If Christina Aguilera or Britney or some American Idol jerk can be something, then why can’t I? Where’s mine, huh? OK, so my band, we put on the best live shows you could ever see in a bar, and we made two albums, which a lot of critics and not enough real people liked. But having talent is never enough to make us happy, is it? I mean, it should be, because a talent is a gift, and you should thank God for it, but I didn’t. It just pissed me off because I wasn’t being paid for it, and it didn’t get me on the cover of Rolling Stone. Jess (young, impetuous, troubled daughter of a wealthy, dysfunctional family): I’d be lost if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers — small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafes. I’m happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I’m like, Der. That’s the point. Maureen (middle-aged, single mother trapped with a severely handicapped teenaged son: I wanted to tell Jess that I hadn’t even seen an English beach since Matty [her son] left school; they used to take them to Brighton every year, and I went with them once or twice. I didn’t say anything, though. I may not know the weight of many things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it all to myself. You know that things aren’t going well for you when you can’t even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they’ll presume you’re asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it’s why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible. The novel has the typical Hornby sense of impending doom running throughout it, and the typical Hornby lame ending (it’s as if the author doesn’t want the novel to end, so it doesn’t, really), but it is still wonderful, utterly engaging, and thought-provoking. Perhaps this is why the movies made from his books don’t quite work — there just isn’t enough time in a two hour film for all the action plus all the reflection that the ideas in his novels warrant. Because of Hornby’s cleverness and his wry, delightful sense of humour, his novels cry out for cinematic treatment (since most movies today are so utterly lacking in both). Jess’ critique of Virginia Woolf is the most hilarious piece of writing I’ve read in a decade, and is alone worth the price of the book, but I suspect in the movie it will be just too much too fast to work — the audience will be laughing so hard they’ll drown out half the funny bits. But it is the ideas in the book that had me shivering as I read, putting the book down and wandering around and thinking. I suspect his novels are Hornby’s cathartic way of getting these profound and troubling ideas out of his head where they can be examined more objectively (Hornby has an autistic child). There are three in particular that resonated with me, and they are all somewhat related, and a book about suicide is the perfect vehicle to illustrate them. The first idea is that in life, as Jess puts it, we have no choice. We are who we are and we will do what we will do. This is the concept of ‘free will’, but reduced to immediate, personal terms. Despite all the New Years’ resolutions (A Long Way Down begins on New Years’ Eve), despite all the plans and self-help books and Getting Things Done tools we employ, we will ultimately do what were going to do anyway, and, more importantly, not do what we were not going to do anyway. Those who go up the tower with the intention of killing themselves consist of those who will go through with the plan, no matter what happens, sooner or later, and those who will not, no matter what happens. Hornby is saying that suicide prevention hotlines will only prevent those who would be prevented somehow or other anyway. The city of Toronto has spent a small fortune building walls and fences around its ‘popular’ suicide sites (mostly buildings and bridges) and is considering similar infrastructure in subway stations. They understate the creativity of those who will do what they will do. And those who lack imagination or knowledge or opportunity will find other, metaphorical ways to kill themselves: alcohol or other drugs, or just shutting down, disengaging. We are surrounded by the living dead, but not of the type you see in the movies. The second idea, and the one that I think his title most refers to, is what is holding you back? Not just from committing suicide, but from doing other things you think you should be doing or wish you were doing. Here’s how Jess puts it: Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. You don’t know how long, though. It’s not your choice. Maureen’s rope ties her to Matty and is about six inches long and it’s killing her. Martin’s rope ties him to his daughters and, like a stupid dog, he thinks it isn’t there. He goes running off somewhere…and then suddenly it brings him up short and chokes him and he acts surprised, and then he does the same thing again the next day. I think JJ is tied to this bloke Eddie he keeps talking about, the one he used to be in the band with. And I’m learning that I’m tied to [Jess’ older, accomplished, inexplicably missing sister] Jen, and not to my mum and dad — not to home, which is where the rope should be.
The distance from the top of the tower to the bottom, from intent to realization, seems short, but is, in fact, a long way. While we are who we are and will do what we will do, it is not quite that simple. We are social creatures, and as we go through life we find ourselves limited by people, and held back, not so much by who they are as by what they stand for, the role we, or they, or fate, has chosen for us. Are these ropes, these people and things and circumstances that hold us back, imposed on us, or are they our own self-imposed lifelines? If we have no choice, is that to some extent because of the restrictions we have somehow chosen to impose on ourselves? When I met my wife, I was pretty messed up, and she has kept me on a pretty short lead ever since. I owe her everything for that, I think. In recent years, though, now that our* amazing children no longer need our support, she has loosened the lead somewhat. Or maybe I tugged the lead out of her hand. Or perhaps it wasn’t ever there at all, just a figment of my imagination, self-imposed. (It’s a good thing she doesn’t read my blog; I wonder if that is deliberate, too?) You can perhaps guess at the third idea in this book, since it follows somewhat from the other two: What happens when we suddenly lose our lifeline? Martin says: A long time ago, I worked with an alcoholic. And he told me that the first time he failed on an attempt to quit the booze was the most terrifying day of his life. He always thought he could stop drinking if he ever got round to it, so he had a choice stashed away in a sock drawer somewhere at the back of his head. But when he found out that he had to drink, that the choice had never really been there, Well, he wanted to do away with himself, if I may temporarily confuse our issues. I didn’t properly understand what he meant until I saw that guy jump off the roof. Up until then, jumping had always been an option, a way out, money in the bank for a rainy day. And then suddenly the money was gone — or rather, it had never been there in the first place. It belonged to the guy who jumped, and people like him, because dangling your feet over the precipice is nothing unless you’re prepared to go that extra two inches.
We cling to our presumed choices, our dreams, our distant plans and hopes, as if they were lifelines keeping us from careening off into space, and perhaps they are. I imagine myself an activist, a much-published and influential author, a founder of intentional communities, an incubator of natural enterprises, a change agent revolutionizing the way we teach, the way we treat animals, the way we produce energy, the way our economic and political systems work, the way we think about the world. All of these valiant roles I picture myself filling, yet I inch towards them so slowly that progress can barely be measured. Are these my lifelines, my tower ledge, and do I know in my heart that none of these heady roles is my destiny? Is that why I grabbed onto the non-philosophy of John Gray, giving me permission to fail at all of these because, as he says, it is not in human nature that any of these changes can occur on any meaningful scale? Is his infuriating belief that the best we can do, all we can do, is to be a good model for those in our immediate communities and to be open to and aware of and fully participating in life’s astonishing joys — is this my new lifeline, thin and frayed and shabby as it may be in comparison with the awesome, grandiose ones I clinged to before? And what would become of me if I were to lose this lifeline too? The questions in the two paragraphs above are rhetorical, but these three are not — the great take-away from Hornby’s book is how we, each for ourselves, decide to answer these questions when we close the book’s cover:
Nothing simple here. Beneath the brilliant raucous humour of Hornby’s writing lie some very dark issues, matters of life and death, like a black hole twinned with a star going nova. (*hers biologically, though I am honoured and humbled that they call me their father, considering the deliberately small role I played in their upbringing) |
Thank you very much Dave that’s an extremely vibrant, and fascinating article!!Here are my 2 cents about “trying to begin to answer” your final 3 questions:Reading about
You write: all we can do, is to be a good model for those in our immediate communities and to be open to and aware of and fully participating in life’s astonishing joys — is this my new lifeline, thin and frayed and shabby as it may be in comparison with the awesome, grandiose ones I clinged to before?”If you can actually be this good model you have accomplished much more than all the pie in the sky ideas. It’s not a “thin and frayed and shabby” life line. Its real. Life is full of earth and manure, life and death, and messy feelings. These are what grow our gardens, teach us love. The “awesome, grandiose” lifelines are alienating and non-productive.