A Review of J. Michael Straczynski’s “Together We Will Go”
The Suicide Solution?
The initial “J.” in J. Michael Straczynski’s name might stand for “Jack of all trades.” He is probably best known for creating the science-fiction television series Babylon 5 during the 1990s, but he has also written everything from Hollywood screenplays (such as Changeling for Clint Eastwood) to comic books (such as a run during the 2000s of The Amazing Spider-Man). Together We Will Go, Straczynski’s first novel in some 20 years, is another feather in his cap, and it comes with its share of controversy. The subject of the novel is suicide and is about a group of 12 people planning on ending their lives. I can say that the book is entertaining and sometimes even philosophical, but some may think the author is trying to make the subject look cool. I don’t think that’s entirely the point as evidenced by the fact that, at one point early on in this read, Straczynski shoehorns a suicide hotline number into the text. You know, just in case you were having thoughts about ending your life while reading this work.
The book is centered around a thirty-something writer named Mark, who has suffered from receiving one rejection letter too many from a book or magazine publisher. He decides to end his life and to go out with a particularly big bang. He rents an old tour bus, hires an army vet to drive it, and then sends out an advertisement on the Internet looking to pick up people interested in ending their lives as well. Starting from Florida, the idea is to gather people interested in offing themselves from across the continental United States until the bus reaches San Francisco, at which put the bus will be driven off a cliff. Twelve people (and a cat!) answer the call to board the bus. One thing, though. The condition for being on the bus is that you must journal the proceedings to create a kind of long-form suicide note. Therefore, the novel is mostly an epistolary one, told in journal entries, emails, text messages, and text versions of audio recordings all uploaded to the bus’s server. (Yes, this is a high-tech bus.) The bus passengers are a practical cross-section of society, from a woman who experiences chronic pain, to a bi-polar drug-abusing neo-hippie, to a non-gender binary individual, to a man with a condition that makes his skin turn blue, to a young college student who treats suicide as a more intellectual than emotional decision, and so on.
The thing with Together We Will Go is that you must not think about it too hard and just go with the flow. For instance, it turns out that the 12 who board the bus are all seemingly budding novelists, as they journal with dialogue in it — meaning that you’ll never forget this is a story being told by a man who sits behind a curtain. And, again, you have to kind of go with the subject matter. Suicide is not a sexy subject to sell a novel on, but the point of this book — as it would turn out — is the journey and not the destination. Along the way, the participants come to realize that there is beauty in this world, and some things about life — for a few of the passengers — might be worth living for. The fun of the novel is watching these people having similar fun interacting with others positively for, in some cases, the first time in their lives. The book moves in fits and spurts but is compulsively readable. I devoured the book in mostly one sitting — it is that much of a page-turner and the characters are generally that likable (even when they aren’t). You want to find out what happens to them, and if the bus will ever wind up making it to its destination should the police get tipped off, which is one of Mark’s major worries as a character.
The book, while being a whirlwind of a read and fascinating, also takes time to ponder assisted suicide (which Together We Will Go argues these participants are engaging in) and the ethics and legalities of it. The novel raises other interesting questions, such as when a soldier throws him or herself on top of a live hand grenade, why is it considered heroism when it is just another form of killing oneself? That raises the volume above being simply a book whose purpose is to shock and awe the reader with the unsavoury subject matter. There are brains to Together We Will Go, but it’s also a book with an emotional core — a heart. As these passengers get closer and closer together as friends, some even become lovers. Will that change their position on killing themselves? Their decisions propel what makes the novel so engaging and addictive.
I enjoyed Together We Will Go as much as I had some reservations that death might be romanticized in this tome. It is a book that tries — and, granted, succeeds to a degree — to walk the line between not condoning the act of suicide by, again, running crisis hotline numbers by the reader in a couple of places, and also not condemning what is, in the end, a very personal act. I suppose I was entertained by Together We Will Go and felt a little guilty for it. While I don’t think the book trivializes the subject of suicide and is meticulously well researched on certain legalities that are central to the plot, the fact that the book is so pleasant and pleasurable to read might be a cause for some concern — particularly among younger readers who are easily swayed by this sort of thing.
In the end, this is a difficult book to pull off, but Straczynski’s goal is to primarily entertain (and entertain using a subject that is typically not very entertaining) and he does so handsomely. I was also impressed that the author understood his characters (really getting youth lingo down for the younger characters especially), so I must recommend the book for these reasons and others despite having some reservations about suicide as a plot device. J. Michael Straczynski might be a “Jack of all trades” in terms of writing for different media, but, with this novel, he shows that he’s a creative craftsman and it shouldn’t have taken him so long to write a follow-up book. Together We Will Go is a must-read, albeit one with caveats about whether or not you should be entertained by a novel about ending your life. Put bluntly, as Straczynski even advises at one point in the text, discretion is advised.
J. Michael Straczynski’s Together We Will Go will be published by Gallery / Scout Press and Simon & Schuster on July 6, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
