I read of the death of the author Norah Vincent last week.
It was unusual in that she actually died in early July of this year, but the news of her passing was released only a few weeks ago.
I enjoyed Norah’s work earlier in this century. She was a lesbian tending towards the libertarian with unconventional and interesting views, and as such I read her work with interest and pleasure. I appreciated the slant of Norah’s mind. I remember reading her best known book about passing for a male, “Self-Made Man,” listening to the audiobook on my way driving north through Santa Barbara on the 101 Freeway to an overnight work conference in Palo Alto sometime around 2007 or 2008. Particularly interesting passages of that book have stayed with me over time, which is always the mark of a book which leaves a lasting impression. I remembered Norah overall claiming that it was “really hard to be a man” because of suffocating gender roles and harsh expectations which supposedly make it difficult or impossible to be comfortable in your own male skin –
– I saw it otherwise and sort of chuckled to myself in disagreement. I also read her next non-fiction book “Voluntary Madness” about Norah committing herself to various lockdown psychiatric hospitals. Perhaps the subject should have been a warning that Norah’s story would not end well.
Then she disappeared.
I heard next to nothing about Norah for almost a decade and a half.
I had no idea what had happened to her.
Until I heard she had died.
Then things got even more confusing and unclear.
Norah died in Switzerland in a “clinic” in Basil.
Switzerland is (in)famous for “suicide tourism,” whereby the terminally ill travel abroad in search of legal euthanasia. But Norah was not in the last stages of a terminal illness, it seems. Switzerland also has euthanasia for the long-term disabled who earnestly desire to die, but Norah was not “disabled.”
After some research, I suspect Norah was a long-term depressive who simply wanted to die. And she found a clinic in Basil, Switzerland which gave her what she wanted: assistance in “shrugging off this mortal coil” for those who struggle long-term with depression. Norah killed herself: in her obituary they said it without saying it, or at least I am pretty sure.
Norah wrote two other minor novels since 2008 which I never even heard had been published, and that is it. One of those of course, was about Virginia Wolfe, another depressive and suicide. Norah’s mental health struggles seem to have taken over and she began to close herself off from the world. The last seven years have been silent, as far as I can tell.
Oh, Norah!
You were so wrapped up in the drama of your dark unhappiness that you could not give your audience what they wanted.
I mourn the books and columns you never wrote. I would have read them with attention and pleasure.
I mourn the fact that your family and friends could not enjoy sunnier days with you. The darkness became the predominant, and finally it took you entire.
It would appear you were immobilized for years by your mental health struggles before finally you succumbed to them and died – before you killed yourself.
You could have done that here in North America with so much less fuss and expense. Why travel to Basil, Switzerland?
But no matter. The deed is done.
The world is less varied and interesting without you in it, Norah, and more conventionally drab.
There was no other way than this?
Rest in peace, Norah Vincent!
May you find in death the peace which escaped you in life – a respite from the unremitting heavy and the dark. In my mind’s eye I bequeath to you a quiet veranda to sit and enjoy the gentle afternoon sun while you read, think, and write. Equanimity.
You deserve no less.
We all do.
