Adventure in Suicide

About the Book

A disturbing, provocative novel about the search for meaning and purpose.

It follows one man’s attempt to find his “place” in the world and expands to provide a general perspective on the human condition.

Adventure in Suicide incorporates in one volume all the issues found in other first-person novels of the what-is-the-meaning-of-life school (chapter one), it provides a response both to these other novels and to the issues they raise about “outsiderism” and the “duality” of human nature (chapter two), and it offers one logical outcome of this resolution (chapter three).

Bellow’s Dangling Man, Golding’s Free Fall, Camus’s Stranger, Sartre’s Nausea—what are these books about? With what human predicament are they grappling? To answer these questions, Vivelo’s novel restates the problem in basic form and presents the resolution in simple, blunt terms by a character who has intimately experienced, and worked through, the issues.

The unnamed protagonist explores various avenues—physical adventure, sexual indulgence, intellectual and artistic pursuits—in his quest for significance and heightened consciousness. He comes finally to a startling conclusion. Steel yourself for its impact.

About the Author

Frank Robert Vivelo is an anthropologist and the author of six books. Adventure in Suicide, originally published in 1995, was his second novel. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he is currently president of a college in New Mexico.