Fun and Lit-Nerd Facts from the "Secret Lives of Great Authors"

To relieve any poor soul forced to troll through, or conversely anyone who happily stumbles across the "heavy" academic digression (pfft) that appears on this site, I thought i might include the odd relevant observation or relevant fun fact. Last week's readings inspired some thought to be given to some of our great literary inspirations and counterparts, so the following appear courtesy of Secret Lives of Great Author's (Robert Schnakenberg). A rippingly good coffee table/ throw cushion book for the literarily minded. It will simultaneously make you feel entirely better about your own life as a writer living in a time where both the plague and syphilis are no longer rampant as well as entirely guilty that your own life has neither been as neurotic, booze, tit or cock-filled. 

                                                                                   - mia

FUN FACTS TO MAKE YOU BLUSH, SCOFF, JUDGE OR OTHERWISE:

Speaking of Balzac - "Balzac revealed to friends that, while having sex, he preferred not to ejaculate out of fear it would sap his creative energy." 

Was thoroughly disappointed the first time he slinging hash with Baudelaire. It was not the "maddening" experience he assumed it would be.

Edgar Allen Poe was a Capricorn. 

"James Joyce sent many erotic letters to his longtime lover, Norah Barnacle, expressing his desire to be smacked, flogged, and whipped."

Steely Dan famously takes their name from the enormous rubber dildo featured in William Burrough's Naked Lunch. 

"The term heavy metal is also a Burroghism."

"Later in life, Burrough developed close collaborative relationships with several rock music performers, including Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle. His good friend Kurt Cobain even asked him to appear as Jesus Christ in the video for Nirvana's 'Hear Shaped Box', but Burroughs declined. In 1992 he recorded an EP with Cobain entitled "The Priest They Called Him".

After one critic gave Ernest Hemingway a bad review, Hemingway popped open a can of blitchslap and wrestled him to the floor. 

Louisa May Alcott - massively addicted to opium. 

Lord Byron - proper man slut. Rumored to have bedded 250 women and a young man in Venice in one year alone.

Picture credit here.