As reported by Cory Doctorow on on BoingBoing, author and poet Tom Disch committed suicide on July 4.
Disch achieved fame and notoriety for his fiction writing, particularly science fiction, and as a poet. You can find his Wikkipedia entry here. I gather from the various blog obits from friends and acquaintances that Disch was one of those enormously brilliant people who could be a real pain in the butt to deal with in person. I don’t know, I never met him.
For me, Disch’s name is synonymous with the character he created for his children’s book (and subsequent Disney movie adaptation), the The Brave Little Toaster. If I may make a secret confession, I totally love that story and that movie. Really. It is ridiculous and sappy (and I never particularly liked the sequels), but there was just something about this scrappy little toaster that defied all laws of logic and nature and found his master again against ridiculous odds. Maybe that’s why I went into public advocacy.
So I find it sad that the man who created the scrappy Little Toaster took his own life. A sad day for Brave Little Toasters everywhere.
Sic transit gloria mundae
Stay tuned . . . .
Harold,
Thanks for posting this. That odd film about the Brave Little Toaster has been a family favorite for years. I never realized that Tom Disch wrote it.
My dear pal Oliver told me on several occasions over the course of years that I would like the writing of Tom Disch and that I owed it to myself to make myself acquainted with him. I never did so, and now I feel culpable.
After you posted this story I did a little research and found some podcasts of Tom Disch interviews.
Several people who knew him have said that he was hard to take; that he wore out even the most supportive of friends. I have no reason to doubt that. But the Tom Disch who comes across in the interviews I’ve heard is certainly someone that I would have liked to have known.
A sad loss indeed.