Thomas M. Disch, RIP

Jesse Walker | July 7, 2008

The critic, poet, and novelist Thomas M. Disch has died, a suicide on the Fourth of July. Jim Henley has written a worthy appreciation of his work at Unqualified Offerings; I'll just add that 334, Disch's 1972 novel of a near-future welfare state, is one of the great undersung works of dystopian fiction. Its final lines, disturbing enough in their original context, are even more haunting in light of their author's fate:

The way some people want sex, that's how I want death. I dream about it. And I think about it. And it's what I want.