Which author's life most intrigues you?

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.

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

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Originally Posted by JBI

How About Lord Byron? Too cliché?

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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.

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

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.

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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Originally Posted by Sancho

Wisconsin rocks!

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:thumbs_up Agreed! :D

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

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Agreed again. :)

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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by livMB

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

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.

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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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

I love the work of Christopher Marlowe. You might like the book A Dead Man In Deptford.

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