Friday, February 8, 2013

Top ten misbehaving literary rogues

Andrew Shaffer is the author of Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors and Great Philosophers Who Failed At Love.

"They may have written such generation-defining classics as The Great Gatsby and On the Road, but they were just as likely to go on epic benders as they were to hit the bestseller lists," writes Andrew Shaffer about the subjects of his new book. "They were outspoken and polarizing, and lived fast and too often died young. They were the bad boys and girls of Western literature, the literary rogues." One rogue on his list:
Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker smoke, drank, and slept around—in short, everything her male colleagues in the Algonquin Round Table were doing. Unfortunately, she went a little overboard with the alcohol and cigarettes (three packs a day), forcing her to use an undertaker’s perfume to mask the smell of her vices. She was well known for her contrarian wit, and was not afraid to speak her mind. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force,” she once said after reading a terrible book.
Read about the other entries on Shaffer's list at The Daily Beast.

--Marshal Zeringue