Randall Jarrell and The Art of Losing

I have a smorgasbord of books around me in the morning, and today, because I like Jonathan Franzen's new book of essays Farther Away, in which he strongly praises Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, which  has an introduction by Randall Jarrell, I got acquainted with Randall Jarrell's writing and wanted to learn more.  He sounds a little bit like David Foster Wallace in his brilliance at a very young age, and he also suffered great depression around the time of President Kennedy's assassination, which he followed, sobbing, on television for days. He struggled with depression for the next two years and slit his wrists at one point,  but then seemed to be doing better and getting his depression under control. In 1965 just after a medical appointment, he was struck by a car and killed while returning home.   His death was ruled accidental, but those closest to him weren't convinced.  Here's something that shows how everything is connected:  In a letter to Elizabeth Bishop about a week after Jarrell's death, Robert Lowell wrote, "There's a small chance [that Jarrell's death] was an accident. . . [but] I think it was suicide, and so does everyone else, who knew him well." 


That may have been read in the Dear Elizabeth production that I missed...Ah, the art of losing!