Review by Choice Review
As society debates the right to die, Lieberman (history, Dickinson College) examines the influence of literature on individual self-destruction throughout history and argues that suicide is a meaningful act of protest and defiance. Liberty, free will, and self-determination depend on a concept of autonomy that is anathema to conventional psychiatric views of suicide. Using text analysis, the author restores autonomy to those who commit suicide by showing how the act functions to construct one's identity. From Socrates, Seneca, and Rousseau to Goethe's Werther, Derek Humphry's Final Exit (1991), and French suicide manuals, literature reflects the cultural and philosophical meaning of suicide. In the Romantic perspective, suicide (noble insanity of the soul) symbolized "cultural refinement and the privilege of great lovers and fragile, gifted souls." The literary tapestry highlights the question, "Was suicide a final act of a victim trapped in intolerable circumstances or the act of liberty and defiance?" Lieberman offers a thought-provoking contrast to George Rosen's classic work on the history of suicide. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All collections. S. M. Valente University of Southern California
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Society sees suicide as a symptom of insanity and helplessness, the last desperate resort of the mentally or terminally ill. This intellectually rich meditation seeks to reclaim suicide as a "meaningful gesture," both an expression of personal autonomy and a "subversive" critique of society. Cultural historian Lieberman develops this theme in five essays on the shifting meaning of suicide, focusing on 18th- and 19th-century Europe. She explores how older moralistic conceptions of suicide as either an assertion of personal integrity or a sinful privileging of self over God and community gave way to the modern medical and sociological view of suicides as victims of psychiatric illness or social anomie. She also shows how suicide figured as an irresponsible and impulsive affront to liberal democracy in the works of Rousseau and Tocqueville; examines the patriarchal fear of women's "power to disrupt the established order" evident in the literary suicides of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina; and follows the Romantic cult of suicide as it spread from Goethe's novels into real-life suicide notes. These engaging, erudite but somewhat detached and critical essays are capped by a final, more personal piece on the suicides of artists like Diane Arbus and Sylvia Plath and Holocaust survivors like Jean Amery, whose defiant suicide ("I die," he wrote, "therefore I am") was a "heroic declaiming of dignity" and a bleakly fitting commentary on the irrecoverable loss of his humanity in the camps. Lieberman seems to be searching for a truly justifiable excuse for suicide, and if she cannot quite find it, her provocative and sometimes heartfelt arguments will make readers reexamine the issue. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this collection of five contemplative essays, Lieberman takes literary, political, and artistic perspectives on suicide. She expresses her discomfort with contemporary society's approach to suicide, which robs the act of meaning by defining those who kill themselves as victims of mental illness, no matter the circumstances. Her attempt to understand Holocaust survivor Jean Amry's suicide and her final essay, "Tragic Artists," are particularly provocative. Lieberman, who teaches modern European cultural and intellectual history at Dickinson College, briefly describes the way that suicide has been viewed and treated through history, from Socrates through Augustine and the contemporary Western world, touching upon political martyrdom and sainthood along the way. She reserves most of her attention, however, for literary representations of suicide and the reactions of the reading public, with particular focus on Flaubert, Goethe, and Rousseau. Her lucid discussion will appeal mostly to those curious about suicide's role in literature and those who are looking to go beyond a psychological approach to understanding suicide. She covers some of the same ground as Kay Redfield Jamison does in the more broadly appealing Night Falls Fast. For academic and large cultural studies collections.-Carolyn Kuebler, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
