Adventure in Suicide: A Novel

by Frank Robert Vivelo

A disturbing, provocative novel about the search for meaning and purpose.It follows one mans 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).Bellows Dangling Man, Goldings Free Fall, Camuss Stranger, Sartres Nauseawhat are these books about? With what human predicament are they grappling? To answer these questions, Vivelos 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 avenuesphysical adventure, sexual indulgence, intellectual and artistic pursuitsin his quest for significance and heightened consciousness. He comes finally to a startling conclusion. Steel yourself for its impact.

Paperback

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Frank Robert Vivelo, an anthropologist, college president, and author, retired from academia in 2004 after over 30 years in higher education.

His major ethnographic research was conducted among the Herero cattle herders in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, Africa; and other significant anthropological research concerned the operations of the federal Work Incentive (WIN) program and the ethnography of WIN client populations in three major U.S. cities.

Since retiring, his major intellectual pursuits have included Hellenistic philosophy, ethics and morality, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution and its ideological foundations, and the continuing impact of our evolutionary past on current social arrangements.

Vivelo earned his B.A. from the University of Tennessee and two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Rutgers. In addition to higher education, Vivelo has worked in the banking, trucking, travel, and hospitality industries.

His publications include novels, as well as books and articles concerning anthropology, education, philosophy, neurobiology, sociology, and literature.

Vivelo was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He served in the intelligence branch of the U.S. Air Force as an airborne Russian linguist from 1961 to 1965, two years of which were spent in Japan. He was married for nearly 44 years to Jacqueline Jones Vivelo, an award-winning author of more than 15 books, who died in 2008. He currently resides in northern California.