CANON OF SELF-SAVAGERY

Career suicides/neglect BC 1000-2007AD

Van Gogh was 35 when he stalked Gauguin with a razor and then cut off the lower part of his own left ear, which he wrapped in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel in the local brothel, asking her to "keep this object carefully". He had another ear. Mozart was 34 when he contracted syphilus from a girl he didn't even like. Jesus Christ was 33 when he allowed himself to be crucified. Jean Genet threw completed manuscripts in fires. Winston Churchill rose later and drank more than Adolf Hitler. Greta Garbo retired from public life at 44. Scott Walker, the loveliest voice of his generation, spent the seventies making tired country and the eighties doing little. Peter Cook lit up Supergirl. F Scott Fitzgerald would throw stones at Ernest Hemingway's window in Paris in order to get him to come out and drink. Fitzgerald hated sitting down to write. Hemingway would burn through four pencils a day.

Self-Savagery no 1002: Be warned. Sometimes the evasion of success can throw you right into the limelight. See above.