# Reading > General Literature >  Which author's life most intrigues you?

## waryan

Curious if there was an author which led a particularly odd or interesting life. Feel free to post biographies as well which you recommend.  :Smile:  

For me, I've always been interested in Yukio Mishima's life- The industry of his body of work, as well as his lifestyle of imperial Japan, though correct me if I'm wrong, ending in his committing seppuku after a failed overthrow of a military station in Japan, to broadly summarize it. 

I've also been interested in the life of Robert E. Howard, who was working around the time of Lovecraft though committed suicide in 1936. Unfortunately I've not read any bios of the two. 

How about you guys?

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## kandaurov

Great thread, waryan! Off the top of my head I'd say that portuguese writers Camilo Castelo Branco and Fernando Pessoa are very interesting case studies.

I remember reading Camilo's biography in class and wondering at his eventful life: arrested twice, writing for the sake of money (he claimed that he wrote one of his best works in a fortnight in jail), 'kidnapping' his to-be wife, going blind and killing himself.

Pessoa was a genius. Probably result of a health condition, though this is higly disputable, he spawned four heteronyms (poet-personalities) completely different from one another, not only in big things like ideology but also in handwriting. As for the debate about his sexuality, I'm inclined to think that he was asexual.

These are my two cents. I'm very much looking forward to hearing the others' contributions.

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## novelsryou

I'm going to have to say Hemingway for all the obvious reasons.

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## Vincent Black

Perhaps Victor Hugo. I mean, he lived in France in the 19th century, need i say more? Although admittedly the ones who go insane/ commit suicide/ descend into alcoholism etc, tend to be more interesting...

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## johann cruyff

Some of the people whose lives I find to be very intriguing,not all of them being writers: Diogenes,Averroes,Schopenhauer,Hesse,Yesenin,José Raúl Capablanca,Harry Nelson Pillsbury,Rene Magritte,Van Gogh,Django Reinhardt,Wagner,Nietzsche...And a lot more,really,but I feel this is enough.

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## Pensive

Yes, Herman Hesse, H.P. Lovecraft and Altaf Fatima (though I doubt anybody here would have heard of her, wrote in my native tongue) too.

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## samah

dostoevsky, its interesting to know that he wrote most of his works just to be able to pay his gambling debts.

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## Inderjit Sanghe

Problably one of those crazy French poets/writers which France seems to produce in spades. Rimbaud, Verlaine, Genet, de Nerval. (he used to take his pet lobster on walks around Paris!  :FRlol: ) I loved Robb's biography of Rimbaud-it was a brilliant read.

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## andave_ya

Hmm...does anyone read the correspondence of authors? The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers is very interesting -- very witty and enjoyable.

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## kelby_lake

franz kafka.strange man

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## Kafka's Crow

Isidore Ducasse Comte de Lautreamont. Born in Montevideo, ended up in turbulent Paris of Zola's _l'Debacle_, died at the extremely tender age of 24 leaving nothing behind but one poem, one poem to destroy all poetry for all times to come for his one poem became the inspiration for those surrealists, Dadaists and other mad men of literature. I admire the French madmen and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky's beginning (release from the firing-squad at the last moment, when he was made to stand facing a freshly dug grave), this started his most fruitful period, Tolstoy's end when he gave away everything he had to poor people and serfs and died of cold on a station platform. Among the English writers, I think I would like to be Dr Johnson, for his wit and eventful life or John Donne for his eventful life as well, for his majestic wit and his most beautiful poetry. Among the Irish greats, I'd like to be my hero, my idol, good ol' Sam Beckett. How he hated life and how life just wouldn't stop clinging to him like his characters, all desperately trying to 'finish dying.' His good nature, his charity, his shyness, his dark, dry humor, his generosity, his athleticism, his bravery, his command of the languages, his understanding of the arts and music, his search for weakness. Keep your majestic Joyce, give me Sam Beckett any day, the god of my idolatry (as I write these lines, the bronze bust of good old Irishman sits on my bookshelf, is it the time for my daily worship yet?)

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## Julian Koller

Leo Tolstoy

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## waryan

> Hmm...does anyone read the correspondence of authors? The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers is very interesting -- very witty and enjoyable.


Indeed- as far as literature goes I really enjoy Kafka's Letters to Felice and R.L. Stevenson's letters seem to be found very cheap at many Half-Price Book stores, and also I especially enjoy the letters of several composers such as Chopin and Wagner; very interesting.

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## AdoreroDio

Definitely I would have to say Jane Austen- a very sad but intriguing story to be sure and I must say she lived a sad but inspiring life.

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## Sir Bartholomew

Virginia Woolf.

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## Joreads

George Orwell where did the man get his ideas.

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## LadyWentworth

Mark Twain is the number one person for me. No particular reason except that I like the man.  :Smile:  So, I always like to know more about him. Another one is Edgar Allan Poe. He is so fascinating to me.

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## Pecksie

Percy Bysshe Shelley's life was very interesting, as was that of those associated with him, e.g. Mary and Claire - I'd love to read a bio of Claire Clairmont, a fascinating case of early nineteenth century "self-invented woman".

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## samah

> Problably one of those crazy French poets/writers which France seems to produce in spades. Rimbaud, Verlaine, Genet, de Nerval. (he used to take his pet lobster on walks around Paris! ) I loved Robb's biography of Rimbaud-it was a brilliant read.


oh yes especially Rimbaud his biography was imazing ! :Biggrin:

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## dramasnot6

Mary Shelley.

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## Trystan

George Orwell - lived an interesting life: as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, as a tramp in 1920s London and as a starving British expatriate living in a dirty Parisian hostel full of interesting characters.

Also Charles Bukowski, because he lived a life that nobody wants to live; as a bum and alcoholic.

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## Nossa

There are so many, but something about Franz Fafka's works always amazed me.Though I have other favortie authors, I'd love to read Kafka's biography the most.

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## Statistic

Gary Gygax was an author of sorts, so I choose him. To be a main force in the evolution of roleplaying games, it must have been paradise.

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## Erichtho

When I thoroughly enjoy someone's works I also concern myself with his life. The next author I would like to get to know better is Heinrich Kleist.

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## Lioness_Heart

Sylvia Plath. I know a bit about her life, and what I know is depressing. But her poetry suggests such huge depth... knowing even just a little about her makes reading it so much more moving.

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## Silvia

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist.Very charming lifestyle..

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## Pyrrho

Simone de Beauvoir. Read some volumes of her autobiography and just relished it. Most of all I like to read the bit in the first volume where she meets Sartre. It seems so fateful: two young people meeting, none of them famous yet and some years later both would be two of the most influential intellectuals in Europe. Love that!

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## amalia1985

Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Marlowe, and Tennessee Williams.

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## Woland

> Gary Gygax was an author of sorts, so I choose him. To be a main force in the evolution of roleplaying games, it must have been paradise.


Perhaps, but I doubt his life was very interesting. He lived in Wisconsin.

Christopher Marlowe was purported to be an interesting guy.

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## ex ponto

Nathaniel Hawthorne led an unusual life. After university, he lived so secludedly. His solitary walks in woods.
Speaking of a solitary walker - it has reminded me of Wordsworth and Cumbria.
August Strindberg - look at his autobiographical novels "_Son of Servant_" and "_Inferno_".
As for Dostoevsky, I recommend his wife's Ana Dostoevsky "_Memories_"[/I]

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## hellsapoppin

I mentioned the "Great Rascal" Ned Buntline {real name: Edward Zane Carroll Judson} on another thread. Trust me: no one (and I mean absolutely no one) in American literary history matches this trouble maker in so far as having an interesting life.

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## Virgil

Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Stephan Crane, D.H. Lawrence, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy.

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## JBI

How About Lord Byron? Too cliché?

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## Janine

D.H. Lawrence, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Mary Shelly, The Brontes (all the sisters), Edith Wharton...geez....and so many more really....

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## jikan myshkin

but what is it that inspires us to query? my favorite writer- mr edgar allen poe-'s private life holds very little interest to me whereas i read all i canabout the beats and dylan. sometimes i am just reading the same things again in a different book. why is it that it is so selective?

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## Pecksie

> Definitely I would have to say Jane Austen- a very sad but intriguing story to be sure and I must say she lived a sad but inspiring life.


I don't know about "sad" - yes, she didn't marry or have kids, which was the conventional "happy ending" for women at that time, but, unlike many women of her time, she had a loving and supportive family who didn't think it out of place that a woman should read and write - Jane was granted full access to her father's library, and the plays and novels she wrote as a girl were performed/read before her whole family. She enjoyed a close, warm relationship with her sister as well. I recommend Claire Tomalin's biography of her, it's a real page-turner (at least for bio buffs like me).

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## ThousandthIsle

> Perhaps, but I doubt his life was very interesting. He lived in Wisconsin.
> 
> Christopher Marlowe was purported to be an interesting guy.



Oh, Woland! I live in Wisconsin and am never bored!  :FRlol:  From what I hear, WI isn't the most exciting place in the world, but I suppose being interesting (or not) is largely dependent on a person's frame of mind...

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## jikan myshkin

> George Orwell where did the man get his ideas.


um history? out of his window?

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## LadyWentworth

> Oh, Woland! I live in Wisconsin and am never bored!  From what I hear, WI isn't the most exciting place in the world, but I suppose being interesting (or not) is largely dependent on a person's frame of mind...


I agree with your last statement here. But I never understood the _need_ to call Wisconsin boring. I like it here.  :Smile:  I really don't see what is so bad about this place.  :Smile:  I could name *worse* places, but I will remain silent on that topic.  :Wink:  I don't care to make any enemies.  :Tongue:  There are authors that I am interested in that happen to be from places that I don't think are too appealing (no, they are not my two main interests of Poe and Twain), but I still find the lives of these writers interesting.  :Smile:

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## LadyWentworth

> I know exactly what you mean. People say to me, "Oh, Ohio! Such an awful, boring place! What's in Ohio?" Plenty, really. And I'm a little southeast, so it's hilly, with lots of beautiful woods and farmland. It's really quite lovely. And in the city we have the touring cast of all the Broadway shows, the art gallery, the symphony, restaurants galore, the largest college campus in the US, the second largest Barnes and Noble in the world, etc., etc.
> 
> I've traveled so much, to every continent but Antarctica (and I don't want to go there). I can tell you, if someone dropped me down in the middle of Sacramento, California, I'd swear I was in Ohio. Even the farm country just outside of Milan, Italy looked just like Ohio.
> 
> I think every place has it charms. The only thing I'd change here is to make the climate a lot warmer.  And have a major league baseball team. We have a minor league one.


Well, we have all of the things that you mentioned _AND_ a major league baseball team!  :Wink:  But I can't discusss that team because they just upset me!  :Mad:  Anyway......

What I like is that since I live in the city I have access to all of the things that a city has to offer, but then we aren't that far from the country and farmland and quaint, little towns. I really enjoy that fact. I like that I can participate in all of the things that a city has to offer, and when I want to get away from city life, I can easily get to some of the smaller towns and countryside around here. I think the scenery is absolutely beautiful in Wisconsin. I always say that the reason I liked Missouri so much was because it was so green, and *full* of trees and lakes, that it reminded me of Wisconsin.  :Smile:  I loved that similarity because I love that Wisconsin is like that. I am thinking about going back there again in a couple of weeks. I loved it there and I love it here.  :Smile: 

If there was one thing I would change, it would involve this city. I would appreciate a better clean-up job when it came to plowing the snow! That is my *major* complaint. Other than that, I am fine with things here.  :Smile:

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## PeterL

> I've traveled so much, to every continent but Antarctica (and I don't want to go there). I can tell you, if someone dropped me down in the middle of Sacramento, California, I'd swear I was in Ohio. Even the farm country just outside of Milan, Italy looked just like Ohio.
> 
> I think every place has it charms. The only thing I'd change here is to make the climate a lot warmer.  And have a major league baseball team. We have a minor league one.


That's one of the several reasons why I hate travelling, every place looks the same, and we all know that humans are generally the same. Now it's even worse; I'll think: Oh no, this looks like Ohio.  :Smile:

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## Pensive

Yeah I completely forgot to mentioned Brontes (Anne, Charlotte, Emily as well as the brother who helped them with works and could write with both hands equally well...what was his name...something like Branwell oh well), Sylvia Plath (really depressing) and D.H. Lawrence and Edgar Allan Poe. All added to my list now. Hope I haven't forgotten any now.

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## EricP

Ngugi wa Thiong'o -- After gaining success and notoriety as an author and intellectual in Kenya, Ngugi was imprisoned for his Marxist political beliefs. He wrote his novel "Devil on the Cross" while in prison under the Jomo Kenyatta dictatorship, writing it all on toilet paper and smuggling it out of the prison. After writing his first several books in English, he decided that neo-colonialism and globalization was threatening to destroy his native language. He decided that he would write only in Gikuyu. 

I also find the lives of Kafka and Marquis de Sade interesting.

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## birdgerhl

For me, Jaroslav Hašek and Thomas Chatterton both had particularly intriguing lives, although for completely different reasons.

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## livMB

> How About Lord Byron? Too cliché?


Have you seen the BBC adaptation of his life? The BBC does portray him as having the affair with his sister; by the end of it the viewer is left thinking, "Wow, my family doesn't seem as screwed up now."

Anyways, I find C.S. Lewis to be an interesting character.

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## Page Sniffer

How about 3 favorites?
T. E. Lawrence 
e.e. cummings
Sigfried Sassoon

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## Sancho

Splendid thread!

I think that authors, as a whole, live outside of the norm. To a certain extent, that is what makes their writing interesting to the rest of us.

Hunter S. Thompson led an interesting life, and nobody could call it normal. Also he kept just about everything that he ever wrote. The letters from his formative years are collected in a book entitled: “The Proud Highway.” I found it fascinating. I also had the uncomfortable sense that I was reading something I shouldn’t be reading. Something private. Something stumbled upon while staying at friend’s house. Something found, wrapped-up, and hidden in the back of the underwear drawer in the guest bedroom. Anyway, it’s a good read.

Wisconsin rocks! I was hatched at The Dane County Municipal Hospital. It was right around 9 months after some sweaty, anxious, dorm-room action on the UW campus – a few years ago. 

Snobbery be damned; some great writing has come out of small towns.

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## Jane's Nemesis

Poe was a freak!! Byron was twisted (with regards to incest etc) and what's weird about his life is that he never really got shunned by society as you might expect.

James Tully wrote a book called "The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte", which basically claims that Charlotte was complicit in murdering her sisters, that Arthur Bell Nicholls 'helped' all three sisters write their novels, he got Emily pregnant, he also apparently killed Branwell, and finally to top it all off, he also had a running affair with Martha Brown the maid at Haworth and finally killed Charlotte. 

Needless to say, there is very little substantiating evidence for his claims. Also, Tully tends to disregard the Brontes as being three women with perhaps not a lot of worldly experience, but a bit nonetheless, and certainly a background of reading and writing long before Nicholls came onto the scene. And it's badly written- possibly worse than Dan Brown (and you know how bad that is). 

Well, back to the actual subject of the thread...I think there's quite a bit of speculation about Shakespeare (did he write the plays? What about the gap of a few years which we know nothing about? etc, etc). Mary Shelley had a pretty interesting life. So did George Eliot, especially with her conflict with her brother over the 'immorality' of her relationship with Lewes.

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## LadyWentworth

> Wisconsin rocks!


 :Thumbs Up:  Agreed!  :Biggrin:  




> Snobbery be damned; some great writing has come out of small towns.


Agreed again.  :Smile:

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## slobone

Graham Greene intrigues me, because he was so un-tortured as a writer. He'd methodically write 500 words a day (apparently literally: he'd stop in the middle of a sentence if that was word #500), often finishing by 9 in the morning. Then he'd have the rest of the day free to do whatever he wanted. And yet he was quite a prolific author who wrote to a pretty high standard.

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## bree

Christopher Marlowe. He was radical in his thinking and wasn't afraid to show it in his writing. This is more than likely why he met an untimely death.

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## JBI

Kathrine Mansfield, er, before she got Syphilis, and TB, and god knows what else.

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## JBI

> Have you seen the BBC adaptation of his life? The BBC does portray him as having the affair with his sister; by the end of it the viewer is left thinking, "Wow, my family doesn't seem as screwed up now."
> 
> Anyways, I find C.S. Lewis to be an interesting character.


He didn't just have an affair with his sister, if I remember correctly there was a child involved.

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## Sweets America

Jack Kerouac had an interesting life, to me, all his travels, quests for something quite mysterious, maybe himself or salvation, and his life as a bum, and his troubles with alcohol...

Emily Dickinson too, when she got secluded at some point of her life and I like the mystery of the Master Letters she wrote.

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## Trystan

The Marquis de Sade had an eventful life. Now _he_ was an interesting character. Far more interesting than the bulk of his work, actually. :Sick:

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## bree

> I love the work of Christopher Marlowe. You might like the book _A Dead Man In Deptford_.


I will definitely read this one. My favorite Marlowe work has to be The Jew of Malta.

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## Trekker114

I find it interesting that Wallace Stevens life was so uninteresting. He went to law school and got a job at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company…and that was pretty much it, except he wrote some beautiful poetry in his spare time.

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## mtpspur

Would have to be Dashiell Hammett as I am very fond of his Continental Op stories. Have often wondered what he would have written if writer's block and a disdain for the detective genre had not killed his career off circa 1935. Almost 30 years went by and he started a few things but never finished them. Helped Lillian Hellman with her plays but I was never a fan of her. To give her due credit she followed his wishes and allowed only certain stories/books to stay in print but since her death his othe rmaterial is seeing the light of day which has been a mixed blessing as I see some stories are best left in the dust bin. Sigh. But at least all the Op stories made it back.

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## chasestalling

> I find it interesting that Wallace Stevens life was so uninteresting. He went to law school and got a job at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company…and that was pretty much it, except he wrote some beautiful poetry in his spare time.


Not utterly devoid of colorful moments as he, Wallace Stevens, had decked Ernest Hemingway while they were in a bar.

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## wessexgirl

> I will definitely read this one. My favorite Marlowe work has to be The Jew of Malta.


Another very good book about Marlowe is _The Reckoning_ by Charles Nicholl, about the strange circumstances of his death. He's one of the authors who intrigue me, along with the greatest writer of them all of course, Shakespeare. Other greats who I find fascinating are Zola, Orwell, Hardy, Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and many more. I am usually interested in a person if I like their work.

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## Jozanny

> Perhaps Victor Hugo. I mean, he lived in France in the 19th century, need i say more? Although admittedly the ones who go insane/ commit suicide/ descend into alcoholism etc, tend to be more interesting...


I haven't read much Hugo biography, but I think Les Miserables is the weaker masterpiece, due to his daughter's death. Hunchback has some of Hugo's long-windedness, but IMO, is better paced.

Les Miserables was nearly laying it on too thick, and I think it exhausted my capacity to ever reread it.

I know they didn't have grief counselors in those days, but Hugo verily needed one.

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## stlukesguild

_Les Miserables_ surely rambles on, has vast digressions, can be overly melodramatic, and plays it loose and quick with historical facts... especially if these facts concern a culture outside of that of France (Chauvinism being another great flaw as can be seen when he writes of Cromwell or the American Revolution which are significant only for their parallels with Napoleon and the French Revolution). In spite of its flaws, _Les Miserables_ is still a masterpiece... albeit a flawed one... but then again, the same might easily be said of _Don Quixote_. The fact is that Hugo's output is so great and he had an ego to match, so that one is led to imagine the "great man" unwilling to attempt to edit his own work. Or perhaps his drive and energy were such that he could not bother with such... having finished one work he was on to the next. Hugo surely is a writer that could have and does benefit from a good editor... although personally I want nothing to do with an edited, cropped down version of _Les Miserables._ Give me all of it... the good, the bad, and the ugly... and I'll make up my own mind.

I doubt that the death of Hugo's daughter played a major part in the resulting inconsistencies or flaws of _Les Miserables_. Hugo's daughter died from drowning at the age of 19 in 1843. For two years Hugo was unable to write any poetry. In 1851 he was exiled from France under Napoleon III and this reopened the wound as a result of his being unable to even visit his daughter's grave (a yearly ritual). In 1856 he composed _A celle qui est restee en France (To the One Who Stayed in France)_, as part of his seminal poetic collection, _Contemplations_. This was one of his strongest poems, and along with _At Villequier_ it has been put forward as holding a position within Hugo's oeuvre similar to that held by "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" in the oeuvre of Whitman. _Les Miserables_ was published in 1862, and while one surely never forgets the death of one's child, I doubt that he was still so traumatized nearly twenty years after the fact, as that it led to his artistic failings... especially when one considers the wealth of writings... poetic and otherwise... from this period.

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## Jozanny

> I doubt that the death of Hugo's daughter played a major part in the resulting inconsistencies or flaws of _Les Miserables_. Hugo's daughter died from drowning at the age of 19 in 1843. For two years Hugo was unable to write any poetry. In 1851 he was exiled from France under Napoleon III and this reopened the wound as a result of his being unable to even visit his daughter's grave (a yearly ritual). In 1856 he composed _A celle qui est restee en France (To the One Who Stayed in France)_, as part of his seminal poetic collection, _Contemplations_. This was one of his strongest poems, and along with _At Villequier_ it has been put forward as holding a position within Hugo's oeuvre similar to that held by "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" in the oeuvre of Whitman. _Les Miserables_ was published in 1862, and while one surely never forgets the death of one's child, I doubt that he was still so traumatized as that it led to his artistic failings... especially when one considers the wealth of writings... poetic and otherwise... from this period.


Cognizant argument, but I am not entirely convinced there were some unresolved bereavements of Hugo's that made Valjean's surrender of Cosette slightly unwholesome.

I surfed some of the end chapters looking for the passage where Hugo writes that Valjean had emotionally put all his eggs in one basket, sexually, paternally, and otherwise, in his need to be near Cosette, and could not find it, but Les Miserables is too much novel not simply because 19th novelists had to expound on everything, but because Hugo was incapable of dispassionate observation.

Unlike, say, Henry James. James's repression of his sexual orientation now colors nearly every reading of his major works in the tireless revisionism of the academy, but I would still argue his inability to come out of the closet doesn't hinder the reader from a better empathy for Isabel Archer than for the ups and downs of Valjean's fortunes.

Editors always say Hugo's heart was in the right place in Les Miserables, but that doesn't really count for much with me. More head might have created a better work.

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## stlukesguild

I am always wary of too great of a Freudian interpretation of any artist's work. Knowledge of an artist's repressed sexual orientation, childhood traumas, Oedipal complexes, familial conflicts, etc... are intriguing... but only go so far. Certainly the creation of any work of art includes elements of the subconscious or subliminal... references to hidden desires, repressed needs and beliefs... but there is also much that is quite conscious... quite aware. There is also the element of role-playing...or as Wilde suggests, "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim."

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## Jozanny

I guess it would change my perception of Henry James if I knew whether he was monastic or secretly slept with men. I have a copy of Sheldon Novack's biography which I haven't started yet, in all these years since he sent it to me as a gift.

I prefer to see James as celibate--which says more about me than Henry James.

Interpreting the masterworks through a closeted code--much like one is taught to do with EM Forster, this may be titillating, and offer new perspectives, but for me it breaks my heart. I have argued on the James listserv that James had too fine a mind to have his work filed in the gay and lesbian section of the book store.

My objection was cast as "an oversimplification" which rankled.

However, I only recently read "The Master..." a later short story, and the homoeroticism reaches out and slaps you in the face, so, I suppose James was feeling his oats as 1916 moved in.

It is sad, and I know asserting it is sad isn't all that objective  :Smile:

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## Dori

Dostoevsky, for sure.

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## coolestnerdever

You can't beat Hemingway- he had the life I most want to copy out of all my favourite authors.

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## Bakiryu

Sylvia Plath~

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## coolestnerdever

> Silvia Plath~


Oh, I agree on this one (It's Sylvia, though).

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## Bakiryu

> Oh, I agree on this one (It's Sylvia, though).


Oh sorry, I just typed it really fast and totally spaced out (ADHD anyone?  :FRlol:  )

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## stlukesguild

Rimbaud had a hell of an interesting life as well.

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## EricP

After being dishonorably discharged from the military, Jean Genet became a prostitute and a thief. While in prison he wrote the novel "Our Lady of the Flowers". An international group of writers and artists, including James Baldwin, Sartre, and Picasso were so impressed with his work that they successfully petitioned the French government to have his life sentence commuted. He met with the Black Panther Party in California and influenced Panther leader Huey Newton to speak out in favor of gay rights (a cause not popular even among the New Left at the time). He also spend some time living in a Palestinian refugee camp. 

Sartre wrote an excellent biography of Genet called "Saint Genet". Genet's novel "The Thief's Journal" is largely autobiographical.

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## antonia1990

Lord Byron's life intrigues me, followed by that of the Bronte sisters.

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## Emil Miller

> Graham Greene intrigues me, because he was so un-tortured as a writer. He'd methodically write 500 words a day (apparently literally: he'd stop in the middle of a sentence if that was word #500), often finishing by 9 in the morning. Then he'd have the rest of the day free to do whatever he wanted. And yet he was quite a prolific author who wrote to a pretty high standard.


I am a little ambivalant about Graham Greene because his early work is by far and away his best and after the Quiet American and Our Man In Havana, his novels seemed to lose their way.
He divided his stories into serious work and "entertainments" but his writing is instantly recognisable in both categories.
Despite his religiosity and left-wing stance, his books perfectly capture the disorientation of the 20th century in the wake of two World Wars.
I don't understand the adulation shown to The Power and the Glory which, in my view, is not one of his better novels although there is some very good writing in it.
His best work is surely Brighton Rock, which is also one of the best British films ever made;The Heart of the Matter is also very good.

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## WICKES

George Orwell  had a very interesting life: educated at Eton where he was rebellious and difficult; served in the Burmese police; fought in the Spanish civil war; worked in the freezing mines of northern England and lived like a tramp in both London and Paris etc. A brave, noble man- my hero if I had heroes.

Byron  need I say more?

Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson: colourful characters in a dramatic, colourful age- the lives of the writers of Elizabethan England all make interesting reading.

Shelley: the archetypal rebel poet.

Aldous Huxley: born into the British intellectual upper class when Britain ruled a third of the globe, educated at Eton during the Edwardian period yet died in California high on LSD the day Kennedy was shot, a friend of Timothy Leary and hero to the hippies! His grandfather had been Darwin's friend and champion and his brother was one of the great evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, yet he wrote books on mysticism. He was friends with D H Lawrence, Betrand Russell, H G Wells, Arnold Bennett and many other interesting people.

I don't know why so many people revere Hemingway. He was such a boaster, liar and poseur. He portrayed himself as this world weary war horse. In fact he was an ambulance driver on the Italian front ffs! It's not like he fought at Verdun or Passchendale.

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## Janine

D.H.Lawrence ~ of course!  :FRlol:  I have only obsessed now on about 5 biographies, and tons more research material on his life.

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## LitNetIsGreat

[QUOTE=Sancho;

I think that authors, as a whole, live outside of the norm. To a certain extent, that is what makes their writing interesting to the rest of us.



I was thinking this too, honest. 

Oscar Wilde.

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## Leabhar

Almost all good authors are pretty interesting.

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## Janine

> Almost all good authors are pretty interesting.


I agree!...and with Neely, too!

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## Emil Miller

There are some interesting authors` lives listed on this thread but none of them match W.S.Maugham`s.

Born in the British embassy in Paris in 1874 he was orphaned at nine and sent to England to stay with an uncle in Kent where he attended the Kings School Canterbury. He later studied medicine and became a doctor at St Thomas`s hospital London. He wrote several successful novels before the First World War where he served as a medical auxilliary on the western front until his knowledge of foreign languages had him recruited as a secret agent by the British government. Working from Switzerland he had a number of adventures recruiting foreign agents until he was sent to Russia in 1917 with a promissary note from the British government of funds to prop up the Kerensky administration; then under attack by the Bolsheviks. When the Bolsheviks overan the Kerensky regime, he managed to escape from St Petersburg on a ship bound for Sweden. About this time he contracted tuberculosis and spent some time in a sanatorium in Scotland. He travelled to the south seas on a liner on which he met a San Franciso stockbroker who persuaded him to invest in the market and from which he made a fortune. His books were also making him famous and he took to writing plays which were so popular that he was the only playwrite ever to have four plays running in London simultaneously. He was possibly the most travelled writer ever; seeking out exotic locations and studying the places and people he saw on his travels to get inspiration for his books. He was said at one time to be the richest writer in the world and he lived a sybaritic lifestyle in a superb villa on the riviera until the Germans invaded Vichy France and once again he managed to escape;this time on a merchant ship bound for England. He spent the rest of the war in America before returning to his villa in France and eventually died in the American hospital in Nice at the age of 91. He is buried in the grounds of the Kings School Canterbury.

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## weltanschauung

my alter ego

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## bree

John Milton, I have just read Paradise Lost and found it really interesting. It makes you wonder why he wrote it like he did.

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## DeadAsDreams

Celine, Dostevsky, Kafka, Poe

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## Mortis Anarchy

> my alter ego


Me too! He is incredibly fascinating. Also, William Butler Yeats, Edgar Allen Poe, and Jose Luis Borges are very interesting to me.

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## Etienne

Byron, Genet, Rimbaud, Charrière, Saint-Exupéry, Sade, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Voltaire, Tolstoy, Villon, Bely, Gogol, De Quincey, among others...




> Jose Luis Borges


Well the man is interesting, but how is his life so interesting?

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## Jeremiah Jazzz

> dostoevsky, its interesting to know that he wrote most of his works just to be able to pay his gambling debts.


I agree and the fact that he was pardoned at the last minute or so is something!

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## The Comedian

Most fascinating author for me is Edward Abbey -- a beer-guzzling redneck radical environmentalist philosopher/poet womanizer and classical music enthusiast. I just love a guy who can crack open a cold Schlitz under the Arizona starlight and listen to Beethoven on car radio.

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## Snowqueen

Here is the list of few authors whose lives have always fascinated me, Christopher Marlow, Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, Bronte sisters, Tolstoy, Oscar Wild, Hafiz Shirazi, Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

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## PoeticPassions

As many others I will note three main authors I have been interested in:

1) Oscar Wilde... I was intrigued by him after reading _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, and a bought a short biography of his soon after. I've been slightly in love with him ever since. 

2) Dostoevsky.. not just the gambling thing, but his time spent in Siberia, his epilepsy, his transformation... fascinating figure, really. 

3) Kafka. Eternal identity crisis. Father issues. Interesting background. Somewhat of a loner. And the fact that he would read his stories to friends and laugh... he thought they were very funny (not many did, always). 

But many more interest me... like Fitzgerald, Nabokov, Conrad... I like to read up on most authors. At least to gain a general picture of what they were like and what kind of lives they led.

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## Darcy88

Rimbaud's life really is pretty fascinating, even the long part he speny in Oman or wherever it was. Camus too, though maybe that's just because I like him so much. He was interesting apart from his life as a writer though. He was a serious amateur actor, journalist, was heavily involved in politics at certain points, and he lived and wrote through world war 2.

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## hawthorns

Wouldn't mind following Hemingway around for a while.

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## Jason Cardona

Raymond Carver. For the whole blue collar thing.

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## WyattGwyon

> Perhaps Victor Hugo. I mean, he lived in France in the 19th century, need i say more? Although admittedly the ones who go insane/ commit suicide/ descend into alcoholism etc, tend to be more interesting...


Definitely Victor Hugo! He is more interesting than any ward full of lunatics and alcoholics.

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## Desolation

Thomas Pynchon.

He ? and then he ?. Not to mention the time that he and ? went to ? and ?ed the ?. Oh, and then ? ? ? with a ? and ? for ?, when ? ? looked and then ?! What a ?.

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## JuniperWoolf

^Yeah, that's the same reason I'd want to follow Shakespeare around. He's not my favorite, but you've got to be curious. 

As for who's life intrigues me most, that would be Lord Byron.

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## hazelk

Flannery O'Connor

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## lowradiation

Definitely Pynchon, purely because no one really knows anything about him. But at the same time, I don't think the illusion should be broken, as i reckon he's a pretty regular guy.

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## aliengirl

> Here is the list of few authors whose lives have always fascinated me, Christopher Marlow, Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, Bronte sisters, Tolstoy, Oscar Wild, Hafiz Shirazi, Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz.



Good to see that you included Hafiz, Iqbal and Faiz. The first two are among my favorite poets. Have you read any thing by _Mir Taqi Mir_? He led an interesting and troubled life.

Sylvia Plath always intrigued me a lot. I'll say that for Ted Hughes too as their lives are so interwoven that you can't help thinking about both together. Also Kafka, Beckett and Dostoevsky are quite interesting.

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## Venerable Bede

I think Shakespeare would be a fascinating person to meet. I imagine having a conversation with him, in which he is mocking you with such eloquence and intelligence that you don't catch his insults till several minutes after he's delivered them, by which time he has already moved on to new ones.

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## Insane4Twain

> Mark Twain is the number one person for me. No particular reason except that I like the man.  So, I always like to know more about him.


Well, he certainly lived a life worthy of biography: Mississippi riverboat pilot, desultory Confederate soldier, silver miner and newspaper writer in Nevada boom-towns, public speaker and itinerant world-wide correspondent. He was familiar with other well-known writers and people of his time, particularly Ulysses Grant.

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## Insane4Twain

> I don't know why so many people revere Hemingway . . . It's not like he fought at Verdun or Passchendale.


Come to think of it, Tolkien should be on this list.

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## hawthorns

Wouldn't mind following Hemingway around for a while.

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## Jason Cardona

Raymond Carver. For the whole blue collar thing.

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## WyattGwyon

> Perhaps Victor Hugo. I mean, he lived in France in the 19th century, need i say more? Although admittedly the ones who go insane/ commit suicide/ descend into alcoholism etc, tend to be more interesting...


Definitely Victor Hugo! He is more interesting than any ward full of lunatics and alcoholics.

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## Desolation

Thomas Pynchon.

He ? and then he ?. Not to mention the time that he and ? went to ? and ?ed the ?. Oh, and then ? ? ? with a ? and ? for ?, when ? ? looked and then ?! What a ?.

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## JuniperWoolf

^Yeah, that's the same reason I'd want to follow Shakespeare around. He's not my favorite, but you've got to be curious. 

As for who's life intrigues me most, that would be Lord Byron.

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## hazelk

Flannery O'Connor

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## lowradiation

Definitely Pynchon, purely because no one really knows anything about him. But at the same time, I don't think the illusion should be broken, as i reckon he's a pretty regular guy.

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## aliengirl

> Here is the list of few authors whose lives have always fascinated me, Christopher Marlow, Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, Bronte sisters, Tolstoy, Oscar Wild, Hafiz Shirazi, Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz.



Good to see that you included Hafiz, Iqbal and Faiz. The first two are among my favorite poets. Have you read any thing by _Mir Taqi Mir_? He led an interesting and troubled life.

Sylvia Plath always intrigued me a lot. I'll say that for Ted Hughes too as their lives are so interwoven that you can't help thinking about both together. Also Kafka, Beckett and Dostoevsky are quite interesting.

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## Venerable Bede

I think Shakespeare would be a fascinating person to meet. I imagine having a conversation with him, in which he is mocking you with such eloquence and intelligence that you don't catch his insults till several minutes after he's delivered them, by which time he has already moved on to new ones.

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## Insane4Twain

> Mark Twain is the number one person for me. No particular reason except that I like the man.  So, I always like to know more about him.


Well, he certainly lived a life worthy of biography: Mississippi riverboat pilot, desultory Confederate soldier, silver miner and newspaper writer in Nevada boom-towns, public speaker and itinerant world-wide correspondent. He was familiar with other well-known writers and people of his time, particularly Ulysses Grant.

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## Insane4Twain

> I don't know why so many people revere Hemingway . . . It's not like he fought at Verdun or Passchendale.


Come to think of it, Tolkien should be on this list.

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