Weirdo Authors

Some authors are just plain weird, and those proclaimed to be masters of literature are no exception.

Since I'm super busy catching up on accounting and the fracking paperwork, I thought I'd take the easy way out of blogging today and post an excerpt from one of my books.

Weirdo Authors

I hope you enjoy these odd facts about some of the greatest authors from my book of motivation, Little Book of Sunshine for Readers and Writers, only 99cents--also available at the other ebook sellers.

Thomas Hardy: In the last seven years of his life, Mr. Hardy took no baths. (Yuk! I imagine everyone wanted him Far From the Madding Crowd!)

Jonathan Swift went a full year without speaking to anyone.

Lord Byron set his hair in curlers at night.

Charles Dickens detested being called Grandpa.

Harold Robbins said about Ernest Hemingway: “Hemingway is a jerk.”

Tolstoy said about Nietzsche: “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

Truman Capote had little admiration for anyone. He was known as much for his biting, acerbic remarks about his fellow authors as he was for his writing. Some of his best-known insults are these.

About Mick Jagger: He moves like a parody between a majorette girl and Fred Astaire.

About Joyce Carol Oates: To me, she's the most loathsome creature in America.

About William Faulkner: He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet.

About Gore Vidal: I’m always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day.

About Jacqueline Susann: She looks like a truck driver in drag.

Oddly enough, he was mild when talking about Elvis: He was nice. I sort of liked him.

Takeaway Truth

I'll finish with a self-deprecating remark from Kurt Vonnegut who seemed to be a much nicer human being. Mr. Vonnegut once said: “I’d rather have written Cheers than anything I’ve written.”

2 comments:

  1. Wow. I know we're all a little on the strange side, but I admit to being surprised by the meanness, even from Capote. Wasn't it Henry James who said Louisa May Alcott wasn't a genius?

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  2. I don't know for sure, but that sounds like something Henry James would have said. *g*

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