Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Andrew Shaffer's Literary Rogues is an unflinching look at the bad behavior of some of our most beloved authors, from Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, to Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to Hunter S. Thompson and Bret Easton Ellis.
Literary Rogues is a wildly funny and illuminating history and analysis of the bad boys and girls of lit, from the author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
Part nostalgia, part serious history of Western literary movements, Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors is a raucous celebration of oft-vilified writers and their work, brimming with interviews, research, and personality.
Andrew Shaffer
Andrew Shaffer is the New York Times bestselling author of the essential survival guide, How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters, and the Goodreads Choice semifinalist Fifty Shames of Earl Grey.He has appeared as a guest on FOX News, CBS, and NPR, and has been published in Mental Floss, The Philosophers' Magazine, and Maxim. He has professionally reviewed romance, erotica, and women's fiction for RT Book Reviews magazine.He writes in multiple genres, including humor, science fiction, horror, and literary nonfiction.Shaffer attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a summer semester and studied comedy writing at Chicago's The Second City. An Iowa native, Shaffer lives in Louisville with his wife, novelist Tiffany Reisz.
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Reviews for Literary Rogues
26 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5My time would have been better spent skimming a few Wikipedia articles rather than reading Literary Rogues. Wikipedia would probably have been more accurate.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting and engaging, but learned very few new things herein. Guess that might be saying more about me and how much I read about authors and writers and publishing et al.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There was a time when writers were treated like and acted like rock stars. I knew about most of the writers in this book, so I didn't learn anything new. I did enjoy it, though and would recommend it to anyone who likes reading about the lives of writers.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If you are a lit buff, there is nothing in these pages that will come as any surprise to you. The book is a fun, quick ride. Brief bios of all kinds of men (and a sprinkling of women) who led colorful and self-destructive lives that probably reduced their output by decades. Interspersed, this collection of addicts and train wrecks managed to write some of the greatest books in the world before departing this mortal coil.Opium and laudanum play a prominent role in many of these writers lives. Second place is alcohol with all the rest of the pharmacopia falling back to a distant third. Sprinkle in some serious mental health issues among this group and you pretty much have your rogues gallery.No bio is particularly long. A couple of pages is enough to hit the high points and to send you in the right direction if you want to delve further into an individual authors work and life. It's a whose who- from Poe, to Coleridge, to Fitzgerald and Hemingway and right on up to gonzo journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson.If you are a throwback romantic hoping that massive amounts of heroin and alcohol will feed your genius, then maybe this work is an inspiration. If you are more of realist though, the romance of these authors addictions wears off quite quickly when you realize that but for their crutch, they could have written so much more. The true fun of the book is that it is a short read and its focus is on people who had a love affair with the written word. That is always and inspiration for any writer. It also helps to put in perspective the truth that most writers are not out there making a million dollars. Many times the work of these authors reached their greatest audience after their untimely deaths. Take heart – sobriety might just help you get your work out there. If not, you might be a rich corpse!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very entertaining. Evidently being demented or finding a destructive addiction is a prerequisite to being a writer.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Literary Rogues consists of portraits of the 'bad boys' of literature, though some women, too, merit a place within these pages. These are the authors with wild lifestyles, drug habits, and an endless string of romantic relationships. Though not a history tome by any means, this relatively brief nonfiction book is a delightful light read for those curious about author biographies but not perhaps committed to a full length work on a particular author.
As a reader, I cannot help but be fascinate by authors and the lives that they live. Of course, most authors do not live lives radically different from other people. In our imaginations, though, they take on characteristics of their characters, of their narratives. Shaffer opens by relating a story from his youth, wherein he meets Marvel Comics writer Frank Castle. Shaffer had a number of expectations of what Castle would be like, and none of them came close to the reality. In Literary Rogues, Shaffer peers into the lives of some of the most famously vibrant, dramatic personalities in writing and shows both how exciting their lives were and how sad.
Literary Rogues will appeal to fans of general knowledge. If you love trivia, there are endless tidbits to be garnered from within these pages. For example, William S. Burroughs murdered his wife (in a drunken game of William Tell) and Norman Mailer stabbed his. Fun facts, no? Almost all of the wayward authors struggle with drug or alcohol abuse, often combined with mental disorders, like depression. It's really tragic the way these lives fell apart. I also find it odd that some lived to such old ages, though they partook of terrible life choices just as much as anyone else. The drugs and alcohol become so tied up in the creative process of writing that the habits are hard to shake, for fear of losing talent.
The time period ranges from the Marquis de Sade to James Frey. The earlier authors are covered chapter by chapter, with a brief rundown of their life and some of the wildest stories. As Shaffer moves forward in time, he begins interweaving more authors into each chapter, covering the generations and adding in more history, this seeming to be more where his passion lies. Though I can see why he switched up his style, I preferred the more organized method of tackling one author at a time. I also struggled a bit with the sections on the Beat Generation and Ken Kesey's group, since I took a college course on them and new most of the information already.
Shaffer's writing style is very readable, and he adds quite a bit of humor to subject matter which alternates between depressing and hilariously ridiculous. For an overview of some of the most sensational authors, Literary Rogues is a great choice, and, now that I know a bit more about these authors, I know which ones I want to research more extensively.