The Glebe 1913/11 (Vol. 1, No. 2): Diary of a SuicideBaker, Wallace E.
General
The Glebe 1913/11 (Vol. 1, No. 2): Diary of a Suicide
Baker, Wallace E.
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Suicide
I could not write the greater part of this even now, because I have
realized since that it is altogether foreign to the spirit prevailing
among the Anglo-Saxon, so-called, at least, and I myself am sufficiently
contaminated with their spirit to feel cynical about it.
If these writings do come to print I can imagine cynical and damn
foolish newspapermen writing about weaklings and degenerates in line
with silly editorial in New York _Times_ recently about suicide and
another in the _World_ on occasion of suicide of a girl who was
tired of 20 cent dinners, to say nothing about those arch idiots and
hypocrites, the Hearst hirelings with their talks about the idle rich
and the good thing it is most of us have to work for little.
Of course, I do not compare myself to the average man. If I had no
sense of humor I would have persisted and made myself a genius in spite
of the hell life has been. Nietzsche could never have been if he was
born in England or the States.
But I only feel at home when I read men of genius. Always without a
friend, the average man is a stranger to me. Women have killed me,
because with all my temperament and passion I have been too shy to
ever have any love or outlet to my passion.
It is hard to say that if things had been different that such and such
would be the case. Sometimes I have thought absolutely sincerely that
if I had had enough money to be able to dispense with the daily grind,
which, with its necessity of strong excitement as a reaction, has so
impaired my will-power as to bring me from supreme egoism of imagining
and believing myself to be a genius to a miserable death alone and away
from home by my own hand.
At other times I have said that if I question myself honestly that with
money I would have simply degenerated into a good for nothing vicious
idler of the Thaw class.
Now, when about to die, I will be honest and say that the latter would
have probably been the outcome, but it is by no means certain. After
all I have been outraged and disgusted in the past after every fall
from a certain standard and my love of books does die while I live.
Who knows but that I might have got down to study and work and done
something? Undoubtedly, I would have had affairs with women (had time
and money permitted) under any circumstances, but drink and drug has
never appealed to me, even in imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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