Parties: a literary survival guide.
When you go to a party, Francis Wyndham said, you take your life in your hands; sometimes quite literally. Norman Mailer, a compulsive party-goer, stabbed his wife, Adele, at a party in their house. More recently, the socialite and designer Isabella Blow ended her life by drinking weedkiller at her own party. This is not uncommon; in her Party Planners Book, Lady Elizabeth Anson has a section on coping with party suicides: ‘People who stage suicide attempts… will, unhappily, often choose a party for the gesture, as it ensures a huge audience and plenty of excitement. Always treat dramatic announcements at face value.’
Let’s hope my Christmas carol sing-along isn’t so exciting.
3 responses so far ↓
susan // December 16, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Suicide at a party? I hadn’t heard about this trend, but it has lots of potential for mystery writers, suspense writers and even, yes, romance writers.
I mean in their books.
prospectus // December 16, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Too much c&w, perhaps? Keep the Waylon Jennings CDs locked up over Christmas, Meg.
As for the “socialite and designer” - I’m tempted to say ‘get a job’!
The Husband // December 17, 2007 at 11:15 am
No suicides - well maybe a few carols died a slow death. But all in all we had a successful Christmas Sing-a-long at our house last night. It’s a yearly tradition that we started about 9 years ago- inviting other families over to enjoy food and song. We even had another writer friend of ours this year, Sharon Kendrick. If you don’t know her she’s a Harlequin writer and one of the funniest people we know. Check her out at http://www.harlequinpresents.com/authors/kendrick_bio.html
So even though we had two writers there we were still able to avoid suicides. But there’s always next year.
Merry Christmas
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