Obituary here. His later years, at least, seem to have been designed to prove the old bumper-sticker axiom that “life is hard and then you die.” I read The Genocides twenty-five years ago and it haunts me to this day — I think it may be the best parable of the consequences of unchecked capitalism ever imagined. And while I’ve never read The Brave Little Toaster, a certain rugrat of my acquaintance was obsessed with the movie version for awhile, and before I understood that it was based on something written by Disch, I described it to friends as “the sort of movie you might end up with if you locked some degenerate junkie screenwriters in a room and said, ‘write an uplifting, heartwarming children’s movie–or we will kill you.'” And I’m not entirely sure Disch, who apparently hated the movie, would have disagreed.
BY TOM TOMORROW