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  1. amateurvoice

    amateurvoice New Member

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    Authors with shady pasts?

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by amateurvoice, Feb 12, 2011.

    The other day a friend told me that the comic artist Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman with Jerry Siegel, was at one point in his career involved in, um, much more explicit forms of drawing where such comics really resembled his famous DC characters. This makes me wonder if writers have done this kind of thing. Have any of you heard of interesting, odd, or weird facts about famous writers before or during their career?
     
  2. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    many famous authors had not only shady pasts, but also presents, when they were at their peak of writing success...

    poe was an alcoholic drug addict... the fitzgeralds were libertine drunks... before writing the oz books, frank baum wrote inflammatory editorials calling for the 'total annihilation' of native americans... and literary lion martin amis is a widely-acknowledged 'serial philanderer'...

    writers are people... and people all too often are not the nicest of creatures...
     
  3. Mallory

    Mallory Contributor Contributor

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    Poe also chopped off his own ear and mailed it to his ex-girlfriend.
     
  4. arron89

    arron89 Banned

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    I'm pretty sure you're confusing Poe with Van Gogh. But it wasn't his girlfriend, it was a prostitute he knew, and he gave it in person wrapped in newspaper.
     
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  5. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    That would be Van Gogh. ;)

    EDIT: NINJA'D!!!

    At any rate, I heard that Stephen King was also an alcoholic. He wrote books where his protagonist was dealing with their alocoholism.
     
  6. joelpatterson

    joelpatterson New Member

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    Uh... no comment, on the advice of my lawyer...
     
  7. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Hunter S. Thompson, prime example.

    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Gonzo, not fiction!

    Apparently your friend reads Cracked.
     
  8. Mallory

    Mallory Contributor Contributor

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    Oh yeah. It was Van Gogh. My bad! :D
     
  9. amateurvoice

    amateurvoice New Member

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    Correct! I never knew the site existed until he told me about the article.

    Wow.
     
  10. jaywriting

    jaywriting New Member

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    Yeah all the best writers are insane in the membrane :D
     
  11. yuriicide

    yuriicide New Member

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    One of my favorite writers, Truman Capote, was a bad alcoholic :cool:
     
  12. Speedy

    Speedy Contributor Contributor

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    He also did quiet a bit of drugs, esp coke.
     
  13. sidtvicious

    sidtvicious Contributor Contributor

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    This thread makes me a little confused, especially in terms of what we're calling "shady." I'm not sure I find addiction to be such, though my own issues with substance abuse may have a lot to do with that bias. Anyway, Cormac McCarthy said, "If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking." Pairing this alongside another beautiful line of his stating, "I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing." We all have our vices, sometimes it's easier and more beneficial to embrace the "shady" than not.
     

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