Examines suicide from the perspective of literature to see how and why it colors the imaginative world of creative people, beginning with a memoir of writer Sylvia Plath who killed herself by laying down in front of a gas oven, and discussing the author's own flirtation with self-inflicted death.
Provides a guide to understanding how writing, reading, listening, and living contributes to the writer's art and explores why all works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction begin and end with the writer's voice.
