2005-02-22 - 2:37 p.m.

By Henry Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

"Or the paranoia got to him -- in paranoia you are your own worst enemy, and that's a tightening circle that nobody can escape, except, say, by suicide. Or it was pain and depression brought on by reported back surgery, a broken leg and a hip replacement. Or he was playing out the last moves of the Hemingway game -- the paranoid, shock-treated Hemingway who ended up with his doctor one day, crying because he said that he couldn't write anymore, he just couldn't write. Or America has finally become what he said it was, with lie-awake fears of suitcase nukes, jails full of secret uncharged prisoners with no legal recourse, and quiet applause for the recreational torture of Arabs in Iraq. Or people have stopped reading, and there are no more literary heroes. Or maybe he just killed himself, like a number of other people on any given day. He lived on his terms, he died on his own terms."

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