Rimbaud had a hell of an interesting life as well.
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Rimbaud had a hell of an interesting life as well.
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.
Lord Byron's life intrigues me, followed by that of the Bronte sisters.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by slobone
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.
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.
D.H.Lawrence ~ of course! :lol: I have only obsessed now on about 5 biographies, and tons more research material on his life.
[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.
I agree!...and with Neely, too!Quote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar
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.
Celine, Dostevsky, Kafka, Poe
Me too! He is incredibly fascinating. Also, William Butler Yeats, Edgar Allen Poe, and Jose Luis Borges are very interesting to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by weltanschauung
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?Quote:
Jose Luis Borges