Several sources are reporting that SF author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre appears to have committed suicide last week by setting his apartment on fire. Fortunately no one else seems to have been seriously hurt, though a neighbor was treated for smoke inhalation.
This is the flip side of the romanticized ideal of the brilliantly insane or dramatically miserable writer. In reality, depression isn’t glamorous and suicide isn’t glorious. They plague our community and steal our friends and colleagues. I have known many writers who are truly and genuinely afraid that treating their mental illness will destroy their creativity. Since they would rather be dead than unable to write, they take the risk and suffer the sorrows, and tragedies like this one play out over and over again.
I also know many writers who have gotten treatment for depression and found that they become more creative because the illness isn’t sapping their energy and willpower. It can take a long time to find the right treatment, and no treatment is guaranteed to work, but success is very possible, and so is a long productive creative happy life.
If you’re worried about yourself or someone else being a suicide risk, call a suicide hotline and talk to someone who can help you get the support you need. Take a chance on kicking that stereotype of the gloomy, isolated, hard-drinking (self-medicating) writer and finding something better. If not for yourself, do it for your friends and colleagues… and your neighbors.
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I hope “They plague our community and steal our friends and colleagues,” is a case of pronoun trouble. “They” refers to depression and suicide, right? I’d hate to think you were saying that “depressed writers plague our community.”
“They” does indeed refer to depression and suicide, not to those who suffer from them!
He was a very fascinating man. I had the immense pleasure of corresponding with F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre right up until his unfortunate demise. Here is a cut and paste of the first message he ever sent me:
Greetings to Tyler Philip from Fergus (F. Gwynplaine) MacIntyre, responding to your query about my IMDb review of the movie “Black Oxen”. I find both your name and your email address quite intriguing. I assume that “thisgunforhire” is a reference to Graham Greene; if it were a reference to Bruce Springsteen you would have made it “this gunsforhire”.
You have cited the title incorrectly: the Gertrude Atherton novel and its subsequent film version are both titled “Black Oxen”, not “THE Black Oxen”. The title is a reference to time’s passage … explained by an epigraph at the beginning, a quote from Yeats: “The years like great black oxen tread the world.”
I have read Gertrude Atherton’s science-fiction novel “Black Oxen” twice, and I own an excellent copy from 1923, the year of its original publication. “Black Oxen” remains the ONLY science-fiction novel ever to be the #1 best-selling book in its year of publication.
There is also another science-fiction novel, completely unrelated but with the same title from the same source: “Black Oxen” by British author Elizabeth Knox, published in 2001 and set in the year 2022.
I have viewed the film “Black Oxen” (starring Corinne Griffith) only once. A private collector who possesses a print of this film asked me to inspect it (and several other films in his collector) for nitrate decomposition, and to advise him on restoration. So as not to damage the print in a motorised projector, I viewed the movie through a hand-held Steenbeck viewer. The collector does not wish to be publicly identified, and I am no longer in direct contact with him; we communicate only through his attorney.
I am quite certain that, about three years ago, I saw a reference to the film “Black Oxen” being released on home video or DVD. I didn’t pay much attention because I’d already viewed the film and didn’t want to see it again, so I didn’t make a note of what company was issuing the film. But I’m quite certain that it is (or at least WAS, just a couple of years ago) available on video or DVD. Have you checked for those formats?
Good luck with your viewing!
– Fergus (F. Gwynplaine) MacIntyre