Dear S:

A quick, from the hip reply:

Many writers kill themselves without being a part of any oppressed minority. I give you Ernest Hemingway, for one.

I read Mrs. Heilbron's obituary in the Times and was impressed by her life. I don't know why she felt it necessary to kill herself. Was she sick, or was she afflicted by writer's block? Did she feel that she had written all she could write and that there were no more words left in her pen? Had someone left her alone after a long term relationship?

My Dad had a friend, Murray Getz, who was retired from the Searl Pharmaceutical Company where he had been Sales Manager. He was in good health, and married to a good looking woman with a very sensual deep voice. He was tall, handsome, and apparently very strong. Dad said his only failing was that he sometimes drew to make inside straights.

Perhaps the loss of his job, or his wife's very deep voice drove him to the edge of the subway platform. But it wasn't being a member of an oppressed minority, and it wasn't because the Dodgers moved to California.

He leaped in front of a Number 5 train at the Jay Street Station in Downtown Brooklyn.

Several years I read a book called "Suicide" by A. Alvarez, an English critic. Although the book was over 200 pages he came to no conclusions regarding motives for suicide.

I shall order Ms Heilbron's book, and am ready to enter into any discussion that you may lead.

Note to a group of friends from SS: My first response is above.

Three weeks ago Carolyn Heilbron a women I had met on a couple of informal
occasions killed herself. She was in her 70's not ill or obviously effected by
major depression. She was an academic and retired as a professor of Lit
at Columbia University. She wrote books on literary subjects with a feminist
view point as well as detective novels under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross

I picked up a copy of her book "Writing a Women's Life" and I have been struck
with the fact that even though I have tried to understand the oppression of
women in our world that I still need education and enlightenment. This I feel
is a need that you all share.
I suggest we read this short(140)page book and discuss among ourselves and
maybe others. Sylvia Plath, Virginia wolf?

ss