Contemplating

Pre-Wikipedia, when I was age 6 and had time on my hands -- OK, I admit, when I’d go to the bathroom at my family’s house -- I’d read the World Book Encyclopedia, and went first to the very last page of the book “WXYZ”. I remember seeing a photo of Stephen Zweig, an Austrian writer, who sported a mustache similar to another Austrian who lived during his day and wreaked havoc on the world.  Zweig, a novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer, at the height of his career in the 1920s and 1930s, was one of the most prolific writers in the world. A Jew by birth who didn’t consider himself a practicing Jew, Zweig nevertheless fled Austria in 1934, following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. After stints in England and then United States, Zweig ended up in South America, where, in 1942, he and his second wife Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann took their own lives. “He and his wife committed suicide in Brazil because of their depression over world affairs” read perfunctorily one sentence of seven in the World Book Encyclopedia entry
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Stefan Zweig’s pessimism, for the first two decades of my life, resonated with me as being romantic and pathetic at once,  but fathomable. When I married and had kids, however, I no longer viewed life’s many confounding and deflating moments with dire pessimism; instead, I have viewed life as a book with thousands of pages, containing twists and turns, peaks and valleys, and even full of blank pages that need to be written on the spot.

On-the-spot television spearheaded by Art Linkletter long before reality TV blossomed via MTV’s The Real World and Keeping Up With The Kardashians entertained millions of Americans. From his early days as an announcer on local radio and a roving broadcaster at state fairs, Linkletter showed a talent for ingratiating himself with his subjects and getting them to open up, often with hilarious results. He was particularly adept at putting small children at ease, which he did regularly on a segment of “House Party”, an amusing question-and-answer session that provided the material for his best-selling book “Kids Say the Darndest Things!”

Linkletter was genuinely curious to know what was going on in the heads of the people he interviewed. “You have to listen,” he said. “A lot of guys can talk.”

Linkletter, until he died at age 97 in 2010, was an active optimist, even as he faced multiple tragedies during his life. He and his wife, Lois Foerster,  had five children: Jack, who followed his father into television and died of lymphoma in 2007; Dawn, of Sedona, Ariz.; Robert, who died in a car accident in 1980; Sharon, of Calabasas, Calif.; and Diane, who committed suicide in 1969, an event that spurred her father into becoming a crusader against drug use.

I’ve been thinking about Stephan Zweig and Art Linkletter lately, as several suicides of young people have been in the news in the area where I reside in Southern California.

• 17-year-old Agoura High School student, Dan Behar, sent his classmates a text message that said goodbye and where to find his body, then he drove his car down an embankment in Malibu State Park.
• A few days earlier, Joshua Feinberg, 21, also a former Agoura High student, was found at the bottom of Rindge Dam in Malibu.
• In mid-October, David Barseghian, a 17-year-old senior from Northridge Academy High, died when he jumped from an 18-story building at the Trillium Towers Center in Woodland Hills. The teen was clutching a rosary when he jumped, police said.
• Calabasas High School student Amelia Schiff, 17, took her life the evening of the first day of school.

Everyday life can often be challenging. There clearly is good and evil, and a lot in between. I’m sure there’s a lot of  thinking and emotion propelling one to decide to take their own life. Thinking and emotion I may never be able to fully comprehend. In the simplest terms, however, suicide is a choice of despair over optimism

Zweig ultimately was a pessimist; Linkletter, an optimist.

Who impresses you more: Zweig or Linkletter?