Free Republic

28 Sep, 2010, 10.15AM IST,PTI Man leaves behind 1905-page suicide note shot himself at Harvard Yard on September 18. His family and about 400 friends received the 1,905-page suicide note in a posthumous e-mail. In the note Heisman wrote that he took his life as part of a philosophical exploration he called "an experiment in nihilism." The lengthy document included 1,433 footnotes, a 20-page bibliography, over 1,700 references to God and 200 references to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Heisman wrote, "Every word, every thought and every emotion come back to one core problem: life is meaningless... The experiment in...

The man who shot himself on the steps of Memorial Church Saturday morning had published online a 1,905-page document entitled “Suicide Note,” according to his mother. The death of Mitchell L. Heisman, a 35-year-old Somerville resident, on campus was met with shock, and University officials described the incident as “tragic.” “It’s really sad, it was horrible, and these kinds of incidents affect all of us really negatively,” Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds said in an interview yesterday. “This campus is situated in an urban context, and we can’t control these kinds of things.” Born in New York City...