Authors are weird people. Don't bother denying it, we all know its true. Hemmingway liked his wives to pretend to be his daughters, and appearantly had a turn for transvestititism and gender reversal (according to Mary, anwyay). Voltaire once responded to a critic by writing "Sir, I am currently in the smallest room of my house with your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me." Authors are weird people. What's your weirdest author factoid or pithiest author quote? For the sake of the thing, let's not go for Pratchett.
"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." ~Douglas Adams He's got some other weird ones too but their mostly a) funny b) probably would make sense in context or c) both.
Douglas Adams once had a job as a security guard for a wealthy family of Arabs. his job was to sit outside their suite of rooms at some posh hotel, and look intimidating in case anyone came to assassinate them. He said that his planned course of action was to run away, screaming like a little girl, at the first sign of anyone brandishing a grenade
This about the author J.R.R Tolkien. "Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary (among others, he initiated the entries wasp and walrus)." But what did they call wasps before? Them bitey bee thingys? and were walrus's "lumps of blubber wit big teeth?" :? It makes you think
Heh. One of the more noteworthy freelance contributors to the OED was an american civil war vet, confined to an asylum for, I think, criminal insanity? might be mixing up a few people into one, tho
HC Andersen, was afraid of death, amongst other things, and always carried a piece of rope with him (so that he could escape if the building he was in caught fire) and a paper stating that he wanted them to be really sure he was dead before burring him. I can't remember the wording exactly but I think they were to check he didn't have any pulse at all, after that they were to cut his heart out.
Thomas Moore who wrote Utopia in the 16th century would wear hair shirts and when a suitor came to ask for his daughters hand in marriage Moore took him up to the daughters room where she was sleeping naked, ripped off the covers and said: "Thats what your marrying." Nutter. No wonder he was hanged.
Not so much a story about his weirdness as a few others have already metioned him- but a great (in my opinion) quote from Byron. Which I may use for my sig! 'All men are intrinsically rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can't bite them'. Lord Byron I just like the fact that he used the word rascal- not a word you'd hear very often unless you watched lots of Bug's bunny cartoons.
My maternal grandmother owns Byron's writing case. She's bequeathed it to my cousin in her will, which I think is most unfair.
Wow That is pretty amazing. Could you not secretly go to your gran's and write your name on the bottom of the writing case- then you can childishly say: 'nah nah na na na, Cousin X it's got my name on it, and then so that it's really yours 'baggsy' it.
Who can be surprised at anything Byron said. He was under the influence of recreational pharmaceuticals most of the time. Which brings us back to Douglas Adams...........
Probably. He's supposed to have been (can't find any pictures at the moment) edited because I found a picture. He was. . . pretty. That's about all I can say about him. Couldn't find a picture of his sister though
Didn't Byron used to dance naked in the fountain at one of the Cambridge colleges as well? Bloomin' romantics.
Our English teacher told us this story (and it sat, undisturbed, in my memory for the past 8 years until now)... When poet Percy Shelley died (drowned in a boating accident?), his friends decided to burn his body on a pyre. Byron was among the attendees. As Shelley's body popped open from the heat (like a hot dog in a microwave), Byron supposedly reached in, pulled out the heart and handed it to his lady friend, saying "Here, this is the heart of a great poet!"
Yes, Keats tried to rescue him, but couldn't. That story is gross! Those romantics, I dunno... And you just know that in his head, Keats turned the thrashing, blubbering, head-pounding panic of trying to save his non-swimming friend from drowning into a gloriously tragic sinking into sweet death.
Actually, it was Edward Trelawny who rescued Shelley's heart. It was kept by Shelley's widow for the rest of her days.
I was in Greece this summer and when we were at Delfi (Delphi?), looking at the ruins and fresh springs and everything, the guide showed us this old pool that criminals in Ancient times would be made to cross, and assassins would be made to jump in (or something, I can't remember the exact story) and anyway when Byron visited, he jumped into the pool!
Ernest Hemmingway was whacked out on Absinth most of the time. I believe he coined the phrase "The Green Fairy" I also believe that Ba will correct any of these facts if they are wrong.
Romantics...I'm telling you, both in writing and in music they were over the top. Bach was damn difficult to learn, but at least his works were like very interesting puzzles eg, how to play a fugue without splicing your brain. Romantics were just plain difficult, with all those trills and frills and stuff. Bah! give me the Classics every time.
Researched...Stand corrected! Sorry Let's see, whenever Gaston Leroux ("Phantom of the Opera") would finish a book, he'd stick his head out the window and yell - this would signal for his family to run around banging pots and pans in celebration. When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote his first Tarzan novel, he accidentally put a tiger in the middle of an African jungle (when I started writing a story about a tiger, I did the same thing, only I put him in the middle of a savannah )
