If you describe someone's behaviour as maniacal, you mean that it is extreme, violent, or very determined, as if the person were insane. adj. (disapproval) He was almost maniacal in his pursuit of sporting records..., She is hunched forward over the wheel with a maniacal expression.
It was his way of telling his friend he knew he was dying. It was his way of saying good-bye to him. In May of this year Gary Cooper, 60, died of cancer. Hemingway was too ill to attend the funeral, although he was an honorary pallbearer. Less than two months later, 62-year-old Papa, despondent and depressed by Coop's death, shot and killed himself.
One of his good friends, Jimmy Stewart, knew of Cooper's medical state when he emotionally accepted a special lifetime Oscar in spring 1961, Cooper spending his final days in his and Ricky's home in L.A.'s Holm by Hills neighborhood, until his death on May 14, 1961.