In the comments section to the Poor Jews post, Randy* says
Immediately upon reading the headline, I recall this line from Steven Jesse Bernstein where he talks about being teased for being a Jew, and having his lunch money stolen, and one of the taunts was “Never heard of a poor Jew”. Man…that guy was off the fucking hook. Died a suicide, stabbed himself in the throat. Who fuck does THAT?
If you’re going to be a suicide, might as well do it in a dramatic manner and make a little show for yourself as your last act. Why not? You will dead soon enough anyway.
“The purpose of life is to die an interesting death.”-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
About Otto Weininger below, he certainly died one Hell of an interesting death. After producing a bizarre but seminal philosophical classic, Sex and Character, at age 21, two years later, at age 23, he rented a room in the home in Vienna where Beethoven died. He specifically requested and was rented the very room that Beethoven had died in. That night, he pulled out a pistol, but it to his chest, put a bullet through his aching heart, and it pained him no more. About Otto Weininger, Hitler supposedly once said, “Otto Weininger was the only good Jew that ever lived, and he killed himself rather than continue living as a Jew.” The implication was that Weininger realized that he was a member of a congenitally evil race, and even though he had converted out to Christianity and wrote one of the world’s greatest anti-Semitic masterpieces, Sex and Character . *Randy is actually a genius. As Otto Weininger says, genius is probably present in everyone to some degree or another. This seems shocking, but if you read Randy’s comments, you realize that this may be true.
References
- Pynchon, Thomas. 1973. Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: Viking Press.
