Trivial Thursday

I’m a trivia collector and loved the odd fact long before there was a game for the pursuit of the esoteric tidbit of knowledge. Since I'm an author, I, of course, adore amusing items about authors, writing, and books. Of course, this means I occasionally (hopefully, every January) must clean out the clutter. This process takes longer than it should because I stop to read instead of tossing in the circular file.

Here are a few goodies I found today.

In the last seven years of his life, Thomas Hardy took no baths. I imagine everyone hoped he'd stay FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Jonathan Swift went a full year without speaking to anyone.

Lord Byron set his hair in curlers at night. (True, he probably wasn't the only man of his day to do so, but the mental picture is still funny.)

Charles Dickens detested being called Grandpa.

Frank is the real first name of Mickey Spillane.

L. M. Olenhewitz was Jules Verne.

Some authors have SUCH admiration for their peers that they simply can't repress it but must express it publicly. And often. Of course, if you've been online longer than a nano second, you're accustomed to name-calling far worse than these comments.

Harold Robbins on Ernest Hemingway: “Hemingway is a jerk.”

Tolstoy on Nietzsche: “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

Truman Capote had something to say about everyone it seems. He was infamous and prolific in his biting remarks so it's kind of pointless to single out any individual for his caustic comments.

Let’s finish up with the very modest Kurt Vonnegut who said about himself: “I’d rather have written Cheers than anything I’ve written.”

Ah, Kurt, the world would have been poorer if that had happened though the thought of you bringing your own inimitable prose to Cheers does make me sigh.