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Aside from Toiletgate
I was saddened to hear of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tomdisch's suicide - ellendatlow. Tom was never more than a casual acquaintance, met in passing at the Clutes' flat, but I loved some of his work.
Camp Concentration is one of the best books about being clever and On Wings of Song an even better novel. Some of the short stories are extraordinary too - 'Getting into Death' is probably the best of the collection to which it gives its name. He was sarcastic, misanthropic and had a heart buried somewhere in the gruffness and occasional camp. The poems of the last year or so that he posted almost daily on LJ were not his best work - cynical, grumpy and sometimes gratuitously offensive - but there were some fine lyrics in there if you go quarrying, and some well-turned epigrams.
He died for the reasons that those of us that are ageing fear most. He was likely to become homeless; his work was neglected and unfashionable; the love of his life was dead.
I've been reading his last few entries - how did we miss how desperate he was? And yet, he had been so aggressive in his gloom for so long that how could we have known?
tomdisch's suicide - ellendatlow. Tom was never more than a casual acquaintance, met in passing at the Clutes' flat, but I loved some of his work.Camp Concentration is one of the best books about being clever and On Wings of Song an even better novel. Some of the short stories are extraordinary too - 'Getting into Death' is probably the best of the collection to which it gives its name. He was sarcastic, misanthropic and had a heart buried somewhere in the gruffness and occasional camp. The poems of the last year or so that he posted almost daily on LJ were not his best work - cynical, grumpy and sometimes gratuitously offensive - but there were some fine lyrics in there if you go quarrying, and some well-turned epigrams.
He died for the reasons that those of us that are ageing fear most. He was likely to become homeless; his work was neglected and unfashionable; the love of his life was dead.
I've been reading his last few entries - how did we miss how desperate he was? And yet, he had been so aggressive in his gloom for so long that how could we have known?