Tongues Wagged

“When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide,” averred the critic Cyril Connolly. “For what better grounds for suicide can there be than to go on making the same series of false moves which invariably lead to the same disaster and to repeat a pattern without knowing why it is false or wherein lies the flaw? And yet to perceive that in ourselves revolves a cycle of activity which is certain to end in paralysis of the will, desertion, panic and despair — always to go on loving those who have ceased to love us, and who have quite lost all resemblance to the selves who we loved! Suicide is infectious; what if the agonies which suicide endure before they are driven to take their own life, the emotion of ‘all is lost’ — are infectious too?” On the other hand, the pop singer Taylor Swift and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel are rumored to have totally made out, so who’s to say?