Schnakenberg - Secret lives of great authors : what your teachers never told you about famous novelists, poets, and playwrights

Copyright 2008 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2007937187
eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474-744-1
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59474-211-8

Cover designed by Doogie Horner
Interior designed by Joshua McDonnell
Illustrations by Mario Zucca

Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.quirkbooks.com

v3.1

The author would like to acknowledge Jean Kim, Jure Fiorillo, and Karen Lurie for their help in researching this book.

IS IT JUST ME, or do we expect great authors to lead sedate, contemplative, uninteresting lives? Granted, some of them doIm looking at you , Jane Austenbut you wont find any of them in this book. The vast majority of literary legends live more like debauched Hollywood actors than shy, retiring bookworms. Theyre drug addicts and pee drinkers, womanizers and wannabe movie stars, more likely to be seen with a half-empty bottle of gin in hand than a feathered quill.

We can probably thank our teachers for this misperception. They were trying so hard to encourage us to slog through Ulysses , they forgot to tell us about James Joyces weird sex lifewhich, come to think of it, might have made it easier to slog through Ulysses (or at least understand it). Just as knowing how much Ayn Rand enjoyed the 1970s TV jigglefest Charlies Angels might have made us more inclined to read all 1,100 pages of Atlas Shrugged . Well, okay, maybe not so much.

But you get the point. Great writers put their underwear on one leg at a time just like the rest of us (although in Hemingways case, it might be ladies underwear). They freak out, feud with each other, get slammed in the press, and join obscure religious cults just like anyone else in the public eye. This book fills you in on all the flaws, foibles, and human frailties that you may not have heard about the first time you encountered these literary giants, and hopefully you will be intrigued enough to read, or reread, their works. Along the way, you may just learn a few useful facts that could help you fill out that skimpy term paper or keep up with that cocktail party blowhard who somehow found the time to read every one of Faulkners novelsin French. One well-placed Did you know? from the tidbits compiled here could be the room-clearing rim shot you need at the next campus bull session.

IF YOU PRICK US, DO WE NOT BLEED?

Shylock in The Merchant of Venice , by William Shakespeare

A note about the contents. A book like this one is bound to be subjective, and it is not meant to offer a comprehensive survey of the worlds great writers. I struggled with leaving out a figure as colorful as Truman Capote. But the opportunity to discuss his mesmerizing performance in Neil Simons Murder by Death will have to wait for another day. Norman Mailer was another late scratch. His bizarre 1969 vanity campaign for mayor of New York City merits a volume all its own. What I have tried to do is narrow the list of subjects down to a fair, representative sampling of historys most accomplished, most iconic, and most interesting authors. Your high school English teacher may have wanted to keep all this stuff secret, but, to borrow another line from Shakespeare, the truth will out.

A pril 23 is one of the most joyousand saddestdays in literary history. Thats the day, in 1564, that William Shakespeare was born (if you subscribe to the reasonable supposition that his delivery predated his baptism by three days) as well as the day he died, fifty-two years later. April 23, 1616, is also the day Miguel de Cervantes died, but surely even the author of Don Quixote would have graciously accepted being upstaged by a man considered to be the greatest writer ever.

Shakespeare wasnt exactly born into a distinguished family. His father, John, was a prosperous glove maker who sometimes ran afoul of the law. He was fined for maintaining a dunghill in front of the familys home and prosecuted for selling wool on the black market. Once a respected alderman, the elder Shakespeare saw his social status gradually decline to the point where his application for a family coat of arms was rejected by the College of Heralds. William Shakespeare would later succeed where his father had failed, selecting the motto Non sanz droit (Not without right) that suggests he was still steamed at the way the old man had been treated.

Details on the Bards early life are sketchy. At age eighteen, he was married to twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was at least three months pregnant on their wedding day. By 1585 the Shakespeares had added a set of twins to the family. About this time, Shakespeare drops off the map, so to speak. Speculation abounds concerning his activities during the next seven years. Some say he worked as a scrivener, a gardener, a coachman, a sailor, a printer, or a moneylender. One fanciful Bardolater even posits that he spent some time as a Franciscan monk. Well likely never know the real story.

Shakespeare returns to historical records in 1592, when a fellow playwright denounces him in print as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers. The cattiness of the remark indicates that young Will had already achieved some measure of success in London. Although his early plays may seem a bit raw today, they were huge hits at the time. The gate receipts for bawdy comedies such as The Comedy of Errors and gory tragedies like Titus Andronicus enabled Shakespeare to live the life of a country gentleman, a goal to which he had always aspired. He wheeled and dealed in real estate, lent money at interest and sued to get it back, and bought an equity stake in the Globe Theater that helped make him a wealthy man. He also cheated on his wife with impunity, flipped the taxman the bird, and generally acted like a man untouchable by both the law and bourgeois morality. Is it any wonder why we love this guy?

Life was good for Shakespeare when he retired to his estate at Stratford in 1613, and its been good for him, literary-reputation-wise, ever since. Sure, there are still those who charge that someone from such humble origins and with less-than-stellar education could not possibly have written such brilliant plays, but theyre mostly crackpots like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry James, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and Sir John Gielgud, to name just a few. Some even claim that Queen Elizabeth I wrote Shakespeares plays, though how she continued writing them after her death in 1603 remains a mystery. The real Shakespeare lived on until 1616, when he became illpossibly after a bout of hard drinkingand passed away at the (then) ripe-old age of fifty-two.

WHATS IN A NAME?

As anyone whos ever tried to plough through a trough can tell you, English spelling is notoriously irregular. In Shakespeares time it was even more chaotic. As a result, there are more than eighty-three equally valid ways to spell Shakespeare. Shagspere and Shaxberd are just a couple of the more exotic. Even the Bard himself had trouble keeping his surname straight. He signed it at least six different ways, and in increasingly erratic handwriting: Shackper (on a 1612 deposition), Shakspear (on a 1612 deed), Shakspea (on a 1612 mortgage), Shackspere (on the first page of his 1616 will), Shakspere (on page 2 of that same document), and, finally, Shakspeare (on page 3 of, you guessed it, his last will and testament). At least he got a little closer every time.