D.H.Lawrence ~ of course! I have only obsessed now on about 5 biographies, and tons more research material on his life.
D.H.Lawrence ~ of course! I have only obsessed now on about 5 biographies, and tons more research material on his life.
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears."
Chapter 7, The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
[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.
Almost all good authors are pretty interesting.
My mother is a fish.
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.
John Milton, I have just read Paradise Lost and found it really interesting. It makes you wonder why he wrote it like he did.
Byron, Genet, Rimbaud, Charrière, Saint-Exupéry, Sade, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Voltaire, Tolstoy, Villon, Bely, Gogol, De Quincey, among others...
Well the man is interesting, but how is his life so interesting?Jose Luis Borges
Last edited by Etienne; 11-17-2008 at 09:20 PM.
Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines
Apollinaire, Le chantre
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.
Last edited by The Comedian; 11-18-2008 at 11:09 AM.
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.
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
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.