Title: Literary rogues : a scandalous history of wayward authors /
Authors: Shaffer, Andrew
Publisher: Harper Perennial,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Authors Anecdotes; Authors Conduct of life.; Authors Humor.; Scandals History.; Scandals Great Britain History; English literature History and criticism; English literature History and criticism; American literature History and criticism
Abstract: Rock stars, rappers, and actors haven't always had a monopoly on misbehaving. There was a time when authors fought with both words and fists, a time when poets were the ones living fast and dying young. This witty, insightful and wildly entertaining narrative profiles the literary greats who wrote generation-defining classics such as The Great Gatsby and On the Road while living and loving like hedonistic rock icons, who were as likely to go on epic benders as they were to hit the bestseller lists. Literary Rogues turns back the clock to consider these historical (and, in some cases, living) legends, including Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bret Easton Ellis. Brimmming with fascinating research, Literary Rogues is part nostalgia, part literary analysis, and a wholly raucous celebration of brilliant writers and their occasionally troubled legacies - Publisher's description.
Contents: The vice lord: Sade -- The opium addict: Coleridge -- The pope of dope: De Quincey -- The apostle of affliction: Byron -- The romantics: the Shelleys -- American Gothic: Poe --The Realists: Balzac, Flaubert, and Sand -- The fleshly school: Baudelaire -- The French decadents: Rimbaud and Verlaine -- The English decadents: Wilde and Dowson -- The lost generation: the Fitzgeralds -- Flapper verse: Parker and Millay -- Bullfighting and bullshit: Hemingway -- The Southern gentleman: Faulkner -- Deaths and entrances: Thomas -- The beat generation: Kerouac and Ginsberg -- Junky: Burroughs -- Dead poets society: Berryman and Sexton -- The merry pranksters: Kesey -- The new journalists: Mailer and Capote -- Freak power: Thompson -- The workshop: Cheever and Carver -- The toxic twins: McInerney and Ellis -- Prozac nation: Wurtzel -- The bad boy of American letters: Frey -- Postscript: where have all the cowboys gone?