Which author's life most intrigues you?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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."

[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

[Dori]

Dostoevsky, for sure.

[coolestnerdever]

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

[Bakiryu]

Sylvia Plath~

[coolestnerdever]

Silvia Plath~

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

[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? )

[stlukesguild]

Rimbaud had a hell of an interesting life as well.

[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.

[antonia1990]

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

[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.

[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.