What if Elliott Smith’s life and death was a work of fiction?
It would be beyond tragedy and into the realm of cruelty.
OK -so let’s look at it.
A sensitive boy’s parents divorce and his step-father is a tyrant who beats him.
The boy becomes introverted and ascends with music and descends with drug addiction.
Finally, he beats back his demons but is murdered by his girlfriend.
And in order to protect the stepfather from the murderess outing his abuse, his family does not pursue the case.
As a fiction this story is simply devastating -in death the victim is victimized again and again and around the man’s passing is a wall of silence built with police incompetence and a repulsive refusal to force the abusive older man to pay for his crimes against a helpless little boy.
Writing fiction is ALWAYS about a search for god; it is about placing order on the random nature of life. It is always Nabakov’s Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis and new Thesis. The eternal spiral.
Thesis: boy abused
Anthesis: boy becomes famous but wounds won’t heel.
Synthesis and new thesis: boy dies but receives justice after post-humously
That is the only way the Elliott Smith Story works. There is no other way to say it without it becoming the grimest, grimiest, murkiest and most diabolic of stories. Yet another reason to find out the truth.