Customer Reviews

The Savage God: A Study of Suicide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I used to read "The Savage God" whenever I was 'in the midst of a dark wood', which for me at least, seemed to occur once every three years. For some reason, the stories of other people's despair and suicide, including Alvarez's own attempted suicide always steadied me. His book is a very literate account of why suicide is such a waste of life and talent. I wouldn't call it a cheerful book, but for me at least, reading it is a very cathartic experience. Alvarez doesn't preach, he merely reports, but he has nevertheless written a very moving book. Read it especially if you are depressed. There is nothing like it on the bookshelves, except perhaps Styron's "Darkness Visible".

As someone who suffers from Major Depression and has been suicidal from time to time I've tried to read up on the subject of suicide. This book by A. Alvarez has to be the best study I've read to date. It might be because he himself attempted suicide at one point of his life and therefore has first-hand experience of the subject matter. It might also be because he writes with intelligence and has total control of the english language. This book is very easy to read, unlike a lot of similar studies, and contains invaluable background information on the history of suicide and the Christian church's stance on the subject.

For anyone interested in the subject of suicide, this book is a must.

Alvarez's classic book, "The Savage God," examines the religious, sociological, philosophical and literary aspects of suicide through the ages. In pagan Rome, suicide was habitual and considered an honorable way to die. In the Middle Ages, suicide was regarded with revulsion as a mortal sin. Dante, in his "Inferno," consigned suicides to the seventh circle of hell, below the burning heretics and murderers. Later on, the Romantics associated premature death with genius and they admired people who ended their lives while they were still at their artistic peak. Throughout history, mankind has viewed suicide as everything from an unforgivable crime of self-murder to the sad act of a person for whom living has become intolerable.

In a more personal vein, Alvarez discusses the fascinating poet Sylvia Plath, with whom he was acquainted, as well as his own depression and attempted suicide. The section on Plath is superb. Alvarez was fond of Plath and he admired her work greatly. He reveals in a clear-eyed manner how the forces tearing her apart were stronger than those holding her together.

"The Savage God" is an absorbing look at a subject often spoken of in whispers. Alvarez points out that people who lose parents at an early age are more likely to take their own lives. He also examines in depth the strong and mysterious link between creative genius and the impulse toward suicide. "The Savage God" is a work that sheds welcome light on the human condition in all of its complexity, yet Alvarez never presumes to provide easy answers to questions that are ultimately unanswerable.

In The Savage God A. Alvarez looks at suicide from the perspective of literature to see how and why "it colors the imaginative world of creative people." To this problem, Mr.Alvarez provides no single answer. Time itself presents a layer of complexity that prevents the satisfying simplicity of a single explantory theory. Yet, in the post-Romantic/Classic era, the contours of an answer can be found that accounts for the suicidal pull today. Art in the modern era enjoys a less restricted scope than that of the classical world; the result is art that is more confrontational. What we find today is that "the more directly an artist confronts the confusions of experience the greater the demands on his intelligence, control and watchfulness." Present always is the risk of being overwhelmed by what one knows, or thinks known. Suicide colors the world of creative people precisely because their confrontation with experience is today inherently risky business. This does not hold for the Surrealists, determined as they were to lighten our load by mocking it, but for the "Extremist Poets," as Alvarez calls them, committed to a "psychic exploration out along the friable eduge which divides the tolerable from the intolerable..." it remains a threatening cloud.

It has been over 30 years since the first appearance of The Savage God. Parts of the book show its age. A modern discussion would feature less Freud and more on neurotransmitters, and pharmacological findings. Moreover, it is very clear that Alvarez set the bar too high, attempting in the compass of a small book to survey the history of societal attitudes toward suicide while keeping individual artists, presumably representative of underlying attitudinal currents, in focus at all times. Yet, The Savage God still has its readers and has come to have the status of a standard reference on this dark subject. One reason for its continued appeal is that Alvarez brings to his discussion of actual suicides and suicidal tendencies an uncommonly rich level of thinking, understanding and compassion. His openining chapter on Sylvia Plath, his exposition on Chatterton, and his analysis of that movement toward negation, Dada, carry an insightfulness frequently missing from today's dry, case-history recitals. This is not a book that tries to duplicate the sterile language of a metropolitan hospital's clinical round.
Personally I found the chapter on Plath overwhelmingly sad. The cover of paperback edition of her unabridge Journals carries on its cover a picture of Ms. Plath -- a youthful, optimistic young woman, with a wonderfully wide smile and bright, magnetic eyes. Mr. Alavarez knew her personally. His account of her time in London hammers home the tragedy of an artist who lost her footing on that "friable edge." This is a book which, once read, stays with you.

I haven't read any other studies of suicide, but like many introspective people, the subject is familiar and even, ever present. Being also a huge student and aficionado of literature, A Savage God made for a pretty soothingly delightful read.

To start off, Alvarez presents one with a mildly interesting account of the author's relationship (or acquaintanceship, rather) with Sylvia Plath and some musings on her suicide. This gives way to a somewhat terribly constructed historical analysis of suicide that more or less falls flat. The psychological angle is dealt with contemptuously -- as it should be -- and the most interesting part of the book, the literary analyses, takes over in the second half.

The book was interesting in fits and starts, but never so boring in any one sustained part that I was moved to stop reading. One was carried from one stage to the next pretty seamlessly. It is conversational in style, even if the style is rather stiff and British - never personal, yet personal all along, the way some people can strip down to bare skin and their every thought is on their lips, and yet you don't get the sense of anything "personal" emerging. It's pleasant nevertheless because it's direct and honest.

Even if a lot of light wasn't shed on what is, after all, a tremendously obscure subject, the book makes for good reading because there is a lot in it that I found myself thinking I would like to know. Just know. It doesn't matter how it connects with suicide, it doesn't matter how it illuminates the problems of the human condition: there are bits of knowledge that it is simply pleasant to be in possession of, and Alvarez provides plenty of those throughout the book. Also, I would be suspicious of any psychological or existential theory that would try to wrap suicide up in a package of overarching explanation -- it can't be done, as suicide is as varied as the experience of human suffering. Alvarez's method is more freewheeling, letting a picture of suicide emerge through a few case studies, a few historical tidbits, all resulting in giving one a clearer sense of suicide than one had to begin with. It's the same sense you would get if you were to sit down and do your research to write the first book on suicide ever written. In other words, it doesn't make suicide suddenly clear to you -- but you are left knowing more and seeing it with deeper understanding.

If it goes to recommending it, it's a pretty quick read, and well enough written so that even a person not particularly interested in either literature or suicide would find it not wholly unreadable. I notice I use the word 'pleasant' in connection with the book, despite its morbid subject: That is, strangely enough, the effect one is left with - nostalgic, wise, calm, looking at the world and at people with wide understanding eyes that see across centuries to the pain that persists contra all essential instinct.

The Savage God is scholarly, aesthetically aware, and an important contribution to a relatively narrow collection of work on suicide and suicidology.

It begins with a nice little biography of Sylvia Plath and proceeds to pull from history, language, philosophy, religion, culture and the author's own bouts with depression and suicide to describe and question a very controversial act/phenomenon.

The book explores the history of suicide's socially-ascribed taboo, considers its artufulness, incorporates modern psychological opinion and ultimately leaves readers both satisfied and emotionally touched.

Can be read for research, but casual readers will enjoy most of this book as well. My rating is 4.5. Nearly a flawless achievment.

A book considered a classic text on the subject,it incorporates personal experience with some good looks at just how societal views have changed over time.A long examination of the Sylvia Plath suicide and how she spiraled to her demise as well as the authors own flight into hell and attempt are looked at with a fine tooth comb.Interesting side looks at the literary side as well as the religious and stoic views which were enlightening to learn.Not clinical at all but more of a historical and philosophical look at a topic which is not too popular to talk about or to read about.A little draggy toward the end but was nonetheless interspersed with some interesting thoughts and observations which I found novel.Alvarez wrote a good book here and its' main theme and thesis can still be incorporated into practice.It should be read by those in the field for its' place in the pantheon of early 70's psychological growth.Profoundly relavent,maybe,maybe not, but it will give you a more well rounded look at the suicidal person and how the world around him changed not only its' attitude toward him, but how the suicidal persons attitude toward the world as well as himself changed as well.Just read about the Werther syndrome and you'll know what I mean.

I was just out of college, working in a bookstore in the Seventies, when I read this book - about a year, as Life would have it, before my first personal encounter with its subject. It stayed with me even then, and has since. Other reviews here have reminded me of the details, but what gave it its lingering weight was the evocative mix of memoir of a known figure (Plath), an overview of the subject's history and the author's personal experience. I recall the book as wonderfully readable, though I can't say if it slowed down here and there. What makes it so special and why I think it is still selling decades after I read it and after innumerable other books have since appeared is that the blend of approaches here means that a reader who wants a general overview will then be drawn into Plath and the author's story, whereas a lover of literature may start with Plath and end up learning the history. This structure also echoes the reality that this subject, so intensely personal to those who are drawn into it, is a general social problem as well, with a broad and deep history across the centuries. Many readers may have more specific interests, more precisely addressed by other works. But for many others, this mix of a personal and a broader approach is exactly what they will need to approach a subject which one would so willingly, and with reason, avoid.

THE SAVAGE GOD is a masterpiece despite the fact that it reeks of the english department. And despite the fact that Clive James was right when he accused Alvarez of being guilty of "full frontal solemnity". And like James also said, Alvarez was ludicrously portentious to claim that modern life is far more suicide-provoking than ancient life. The world has *always* been a hellhole.

One of my favorite quotes concerns Alvarez's reaction after waking up from an attempted barbiturate overdose: "My weakened body, my thin breath, the slightest flicker of emotion filled me with distaste. I wanted only to be left to myself. Then, as the months passed, I began gradually to stir into another style of life, less theoretical, less optimistic, less vulnerable. I was ready for an insentient middle age."

A lot of people are ready to be insentient from day one. And I really can't blame them. Here's my favorite quote: "The cult of the Inconnue seemed to attract young people between the two world wars in much the same way as drugs call them now: to opt out before they start, to give up a struggle that frightens them in a world they find distasteful, and to slide away into a deep inner dream."

For those of us who suffer from the dark despair of depression, suicide often feels like the only alternative in a bleak and stifling atmosphere. It is said that the suicide wills life, he abhors its conditions. I first read this book years ago, and parts of it have stuck with me. The quote, "And to us the savage god," is a pertinant statement on the subject.
There are no quick cures, no easy fixes for this problem, if it is indeed one. To the sanguine temperment, suicide seems like an irrational overeaction; a childish and perhaps desperate attempt to garner attention, like a petulant spoilt child. But for those who have indeed struggled vainly in its "dark wood," it is not the case; suicide seems like the only escape. In the words of Ceasare Pavase, "All suicides are logical."
The author goes into some detail regarding his relationship with Sylvia Plath and Ted Huges at what was considered their most creative period. He also gives some time to his own struggle with suicide. Further, he quotes classic authors, such as Dante, and others who have struggled through depression's dark wood.
A good and memorable study of a taboo subject, but has gained more recognition, as so many people now suffer from depression, and the possible outcome of suicide.