Last week, I watched "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone," an episode of
The Ray Bradbury Theater. At the beginning of the episode, celebrated writer Dudley Stone is having a book signing, and he's approached by John Oatis Kendall, an aspiring author who feels hopelessly overshadowed by Stone. Kendall passes a note to Stone that reads, "Dudley Stone, I have come here to kill you!" and shows him a gun concealed in his pocket. Stone doesn't seem too perturbed by this and invites Kendall to his house the following day. There, he explains that there are many things he wants to do with his life besides writing: "All the books I promised myself to read but I've never read; all the symphonies yet to be heard; all the films as yet unseen; spices waiting to be snuffed; beef joints, ham hocks waiting to be devoured; tapestries yet to be woven; sculptures to be shaped; paintings waiting to be painted; sons and daughters to be advised; grandchildren to be raised; far countries to be flown over, to be walked through; hang gliding yet to be tried; tides yet unswum to be swum; all of it around me, free and vital, beckoning, waiting: my reasons for letting you kill me." He urges Kendall to kill him, but more metaphorically than literally. Stone shows Kendall a multitude of his unpublished manuscripts, and Kendall kills Stone's writing career by throwing the manuscripts into the sea:
Freed from the burden of writing, Stone can now do what he wants with his life.
I'm not sure which level to take this on (whether it's Stone's design, Bradbury's allusion, or just a coincidence), but the same sort of event is described near the end of Shakespeare's The Tempest. In Act Five, Prospero says,
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book. [V.i.51-57]
Prospero is a magician, not a writer, but for him, as for Stone, throwing his book into the sea marks a definitive end.
