ABSTRACT
Are some creative people self-destructive because of their vitality? Does art contain the death drive or it is something within such brilliant minds as Cheever, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Yates that made them share a “disturbing vitality” and lead troubled lives? The author considers these questions by examining sublimation and the connection between life and death. Psychoanalysts and intellectuals alike can appreciate this chapter for its focus on literature and for the author’s signature use of citing examples from the arts to reconsider repetition compulsion, perhaps the strongest expression of the death drive. From Pasolini to David Foster Wallace to Woody Allen, she shows how life and death in Derrida’s terms drive many artists.
