I am so sorry about all this. His books made me think a lot and realize many things, and his brutal depiction of human nature is very accurate, but yet, written in a very beautiful way.

I wish we could stop this shit of people getting old and ruined happening. I really wish we could build a better society and support more people, with labor, solidarity and technology. But that seems to be more unlikely that Christian hell.

The suffering he faces now is much worse that anything he faced before.

Get hold of a good reference on theology and look up the sin of presumption.

…

While we’re remembering Disch’s work:

I don’t know whether you’ve ever run into a candied popcorn snack called Screaming Yellow Zonkers. When it first came out, my mother and I were both struck by the excellence of the copy on the box. Instead of the standard corporate wordwooze, it was clear, snappy, funny, and had a genuine voice. Many years later, I found out that it had been written by Tom Disch.

I am so sorry about all this. His books made me think a lot and realize many things, and his brutal depiction of human nature is very accurate, but yet, written in a very beautiful way.

I wish we could stop this shit of people getting old and ruined happening. I really wish we could build a better society and support more people, with labor, solidarity and technology. But that seems to be more unlikely that Christian hell.

Will Shetterly,
I am a Christian. I certainly don’t wish Tom to be suffering for how he ended things. And what I think will have no effect on where he went. In my first comment, I actually started to write that I hoped he rested in peace, but it seemed false. I regret that he decided as he did and I was trying to express that. There was no intention to say where I wanted him to go. Tom and I did talk about Christianity a bit. I don’t think he thought too much of it. I did not criticize him for that. At the time, I remember thinking that he seemed to think Christians were quaint and that this was a typical New York intellectual viewpoint. I wanted it to be a friendly conversation and not an attack. We talked about what he thought of as the government’s responsibility to fight AIDS and Christianity came into that discussion. I disagreed with much of what he thought about the matter, but in a friendly way(I think). When I revisit that conversation, I wonder if he would have liked it to be more confrontational. I am sure he would have been up to it intellectually. I like debating, but I have a hard time gaging other people. I played it safe with him. The other two people were from the Dallas SF community and I felt some obligation not to ruin it for them. He was entitled to his beliefs there and I enjoyed the conversation.

I was going to apologize for bringing this up, but I think Disch would appreciate a theological discussion when he’s being remembered. I can’t guess which side he would pick–maybe the one with the best lines. Certainly the one that recognized that metaphors are as complex as human nature.

And the idea that a land with empty homes has people in fear of homelessness should be obscene to anyone, even the most hatefilled sort of Christian.

How very magnanimous of you.

Put it this way, if Tom Disch is in some wretched Abu Ghraib afterworld (and what a dismally mean-spirited thing to suggest on a memorial posting…) he’d be in damned good company (pun intended). The number of gay people who killed themselves when they could no longer take society’s shit any more is substantial. So while eking out the millennia in god’s torture chamber he can talk literature with Yukio Mishima and have a laugh with Kenneth Williams. And those are only the names that occur to me just now as I restrain my language and temper.

I will hoist a pint or two to the old curmudgeon’s memory tonight.

(I loved his fiction. I loved the slightly cruel cynic I met through his livejournal a year ago somewhat less; but his misanthropy seemed to me to be the bitter fruit of a man who’d spent one round too many in the ring battling an indifferent and hateful world that had ground him down, rather than something born of malice. And I wish I’d thought to tell him how much I appreciated his work.)

So Disch has consistently written at a level which pleases himself, and has consistently been misunderstood by science fiction readers as a result. His novel 334, a gloomy vision of America in the future, was if anything less well-received by such readers than The Genocides, and was condemned as being even more depressing—even nihilistic.

“Well, nihilism is a pejorative that people throw out by way of dismissing an outlook,” he replies. “It was one of Agnew’s words. Agnew loved it because it means that someone believes in nothing and, of course, we know we don’t approve of people like that. But it also throws up the problem of what do you believe in. God? Is he a living god? Have you seen him? Do you talk to him? If someone calls me a nihilist I want the transcripts of his conversation with Jesus, till I’m convinced that we’re not brothers under the skin.”

“The Art of Dying”
Neruda died in Chile, Crane died returning form Mexico and jumping off a cruise ship. Perhaps the poem is metaphorical in a way i don’t understand.

Camp Concentration (Rank 56) and 334 (66) are listed in One Hundred Top Scifi Novels by David Pringle.

I did not know he had a blog until I saw the boingboing article. I see references to his own death there in his postings. Had he been writing that way for a while?

I always hoped to see some announcement of a change in his attitude. I would have loved to have heard someone say he had had some life changing experience and was now applying his talents to thoughtful works again. This is not just because I wanted more good books. I did want those, but I wanted him to live a happier life.

I am sorry to see that he could not face life, and regret the choice he made. The suffering he faces now is much worse that anything he faced before.
Alas

Thanks for the stories.

Which is not to say he wasn’t getting bitter before that happened. But who am I to speculate about why? I didn’t know him well enough.

I beg your pardon?

RIP.

What a shame.