Taking Offense (2): Dash Snow

Every once in a while there is a story about some tortured artist committing suicide that just makes me want to spit. There is a long example of that genre on offer in The New York Times today. You can find it here - a sketch of the life and death of Dash Snow. As The Times report makes clear, Snow met "a pathetic end." There are many striking things in The Times story ~ the resentfulness of friends (like the ass who complains that, unlike Snow, he has to go out and work for his heroin), the self absorption of family members who tormented Snow as a child, the indulgence of his grandmother who set up "expense accounts" to underwrite his bad behavior, the irresponsibility of those members of "a certain downtown scene" who enabled Snow's pathetic existence.

Ultimately, though, we cannot blame all the travails of life on the actions of others. I wrote the following in a post about the suicide of another tortured artist a while back:

"Simply put, while it is too bad he died as he did, Clarke's death was as self-indulgent as his life. In other words, it was plenty self-indulgent. And his work is not worth much more than a passing look."

This pretty much captures my view of Snow too. Although the "feral" existence he seemed to have created seems contemptible to me, I would not wish him dead. And I recognize that the experiences of rich kids trapped in the conflicts among rich narcissistic adults are hurtful. But Snow seems never to have really attempted to do anything other than act out his hurt ~ abetted, of course, by other self-indulgent rich folks in his life. It is difficult for me to summon much sympathy for a life squandered. Apparently Snow created some of his masterpieces by jerking off onto pages from newspapers and magazines. The reporters from The Times couldn't quite bring themselves to draw the clear analogy. Snow seems to have been a jerk-off in pretty much every domain of life. That life - and the death which ended it - are no more than a cliché.