Lit Suicides: Fourth of July

As I’ve mentioned, lately I’ve been pulling scattered emails by or about the late Dennis McMillan into a new folder. Need to find the snail mail, since it contains an early DMac sales catalog which I want to reference in an article on the subject of editing the six volumes of The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick. Glancing into one of the longer emails Dennis sent out, August 13, 2009, I noticed he mentioned “Janwillem shot himself a year ago July 4.” That would be crime writer Janwillem van der Vettering, one of the Posse McMillan crew. I met him when Dennis assembled several of his writers at an event — probably the Tucson Book Fair. I thought, how odd. Thomas M. Disch killed himself on July Fourth, too. Then the thought dug in, nagging: What year did Disch commit suicide??? Looked it up, really surprised to find that Janwillem shot himself July 4, 2008 — and Disch shot himself the same day. I used a non-fiction piece by Disch in the 1988 litcrit anthology Reign of Fear that I…