I agree and the fact that he was pardoned at the last minute or so is something!
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Wouldn't mind following Hemingway around for a while.
Raymond Carver. For the whole blue collar thing.
Thomas Pynchon.
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^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.
Flannery O'Connor
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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.
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.
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.
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.