I recall a study which said that fiction writers are the most
prone to suicide - I wonder if that correlates with the number who write in
first person.
Poets, OTOH, came out as relatively well-adjusted individuals
:-)
I came across a precis of the same study, Roger.
After about a month I stopped laughing as my jaw was under siege.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 9:25
PM
Subject: Re: we/self and suicide
I recall a study which said that fiction writers are the
most prone to suicide - I wonder if that correlates with the number who write
in first person.
Poets, OTOH, came out as relatively well-adjusted
individuals :-)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001
12:26
Subject: Re: we/self and suicide
I can't get stop writing in
the second person - don't like to think what this says about my state of
mind. My second persons tend to
be a cross between 'you' the reader and the impersonal 'you' meaning 'one'.
I hate the fashion for writing to a *specific* second person and
telling them things they know already. You know the kind of
thing:
Grandmother, you were only 18
when you
married.
Once you
told me
how you
loved making jam
better
than making love...
Best wishes
Matthew
Use of "I" and 'we' appears to heve real life
effects. a study to be published in _Psychosomatic Medicine analyzed
the use of these terms in poetry written by poets who committed suicide
compared to poets who didn't. Thse who killed themselves used
significantly more first-person singular pronouns and fewer first-person
plurals. Doesn't seem related to the quality of the poetry though as
the matched non-suicidal poets were equals as poets in a ery loose
sense. One of the authors is a highly respected psychological
researcher and the article can be downloaded at http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/reprints/index.html
tom bell
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