Matt Haig

Well done on inhaling the smelling salts America

I am a bit crap. A bit November. A bit filled with grief and existential angst. A bit worried about the fate of the world. A bit depressed about all the sex criminal presidents and performers. A bit fucked off that AI billionaires are devaluing humanity to increase their market share. A bit triggered about news of stockpiling and nuclear weapons. But I am also writing this in a very privileged position, Andrea working in jewellery designs, with a golden retriever at my feet, and with a son watching a Marvel tv show, after eating a really good tofu curry, aware that although I cried in a park this morning from out of nowhere these fragile feelings will not last. So, a mixed bag. And feeling the need to hear from strangers or friends about how they are? Good, bad, trivial, serious. How are you?

My editor says they would like it by the end of the year. That is 61 days away. It is called The Midnight Letters. It is a proper sequel, not like the side piece known as The Midnight Train. Mrs Elm is the focus here. But Nora is there too. It is first person. It is in the afterlife. I believe in the afterlife. I think string theory explains it. I think my Nan is actually writing this novel from beyond the grave and using me as a vessel. Or maybe I am sleep deprived and a bit mentally fried. It is better than The Midnight Library I think. But 61 days is pushing it. Still I need the pressure because I am the scattiest man alive. Bye.

Nothing so stressful as having a literal mind in a world of lies

Experiment. Can we hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time? 1. It is wrong to weaponise suicide to force an injunction to stop an investigation that will shine light on terrible and criminal behaviour. Especially as DARVO is real. And 2. That there IS a relationship between suicide and feelings - accurate or not - of guilt. Not for this perpetrator but for the mentally ill watching this with distorted views. And so the thousands of responses suggesting or even joking that suicide is an acceptable price for bad behaviour is, I think, also a public health risk. Even if you genuinely think that people who have done terrible things should die at their own hands, the problem is that guilt is not always a reflection of actual crimes. Again I am talking about the people watching this. Not the person manipulating the courts. For instance, OCD people often feel terrible about themselves. They will think a sexual thought then imagine they are the equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein or a minor Royal even though they haven’t actually done anything but have a brain torment them with a guilty thought. These guilty feelings are part of the reason why people with OCD like symptoms face a TEN TIMES greater risk of suicide. I don’t know. It always just seems like suicide is treated as a joke, because people still like to see it as a decision rather than a symptom. In turn, this also trivialises the case of victims and turns it more into a dark sport. So my own view: the threat of suicide should NOT protect perpetrators of crimes, especially as such protection harms the mental health of THE VICTIMS. Yet also: the medieval pitchforkery in comment sections around such issues isn’t always as ethical or healthy as the commentators think. I would imagine, in the kind of warped and distorted mind of a person with severe depression - especially coupled with OCD or other anxieties - it could be quite triggering. And also, even if someone has done something wrong - not criminal, but an affair or a lesser betrayal or something they hate themselves for - I know from personal experience that too can push a vulnerable mind in the direction of a death they don’t deserve.

We are in an illiterate dumb ahistorical age full of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and shit jokes and AI and the antidote is good books and banned books and graphic novels and audiobooks and songs and deep conversations