Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of literature with gaping holes. Their reasons for killing themselves, when known, were varied and, quite often, unreasonable. Some were plagued by depression or self-doubt, and others by frustration and helplessness in a world they could neither change nor tolerate.
Profoundly moving and morbidly attractive, Final Drafts is a necessary historical record, biographical treatment, and psychological examination of the authors who left this "cruel world" by their own hands, either instantly or over long periods of relentless self-destructive behavior. It is also a devoted examination of references to suicide in literature, both by those who took their own lives and those who decided to live.