Writers Gone Wild: The Feuds, Frolics, and Follies of Literature's Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes

by Bill Peschel

Truth is stranger than fiction.

If you've imagined famous writers to be desk-bound drudges, think again. Writers Gone Wild rips back the (book) covers and reveals the seamy underside of the writing life.

Insightful, intriguing, and irresistibly addictive, Writers Gone Wild reveals such fascinating stories as:

* The night Dashiell Hammett hired a Chinese prostitute to break up S. J. Perelman's marriage (and ran off with his wife).

* Why Sylvia Plath bit Ted Hughes on the cheek.

* Why Ernest Hemingway fought a book critic, a modernist poet, and his war correspondent/wife Martha Gellhorn (but not at the same time).

* The near-fatal trip Katherine Anne Porter took while high on marijuana in Mexico.

* Why women's breasts sent Percy Bysshe Shelley screaming from the room.

* The day Virginia Woolf snuck onto a Royal Navy ship disguised as an Abyssinian prince.

Pull up a chair, turn on good reading light, and discover what your favorite writers were up to while away from their desks. Sometimes, they make the wildest characters of all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, History, Biography, Books About Books, Writing, Historical

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2010

About the author

Bill Peschel is a former journalist who shares a Pulitzer Prize with the staff of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. The author of Writers Gone Wild (Penguin), he publishes through Peschel Press the 223B Casebook Series of Sherlockian parodies and pastiches; a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories featuring Mark Twain; reprints of Victorian true crime books; and annotated editions of mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. He also is a mystery fan who runs the online Wimsey Annotations. Peschel lives with his family in Hershey, where the air really does smell like chocolate.

Reviews

[Bill Peschel]

I'm a bit biased since I wrote the book, so even though it's not out until November, I'm happy to recommend it to all of my Goodreads friends who are interested in true, strange, sad and sometimes funny stories drawn from the lives of famous writers.

[Mauoijenn]

This was a crazy book about what authors have done in their lives. Some was good, gunny, bad and pretty ugly. An interedting book to read all the short tell all stories.

[Judy]

I have been decking those halls and ringing those bells trying to get ready for Christmas so I haven't had a lot of spare time to read. This book is perfect. The short anecdotes about famous writers are in turn hilarious, amazing, sad, and a touch scary. Even great writers couldn't make up some of these episodes. One of my favorites was Virginia Woolf dressing up as an "Abyssinian potentate" and tricking the Royal Navy into giving her, and several friends, a VIP tour of a warship--complete with cannon salute. Or how about Henry Miller trying to convince Eudora Welty to write pornography to make a little easy money. Eudora's mother was so furious that she refused to allow Miller to enter their house. On a side note--Miller was taken to the same restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi three nights in a row, although he entered the restaurant by a different door each night. Miller was impressed and commented that he didn't realize that Jackson had three such nice restaurants. And professional jealousy and disdain? Ernest Hemingway described Sherwood Anderson as "a sort of retarded character", William Faulkner said that Ernest Hemingway "has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary", and Carson McCullers said, "I have more to say than Hemingway, and God knows, I say it better than Faulkner." Love it. And fighting? Oh, yes, blows have been thrown. Theodore Dreiser slapped Sinclair Lewis across the face at a public dinner, Mary Lamb stabbed her mother and was sent briefly to a mental institution, and Norman Mailer headbutted Gore Vidal in the green room before their appearances on The Dick Cavett Show. Great stories. A fun read that you can pick up, read a few anecdotes, and go back to whatever else you were doing.

[Terry Cornell]

An amusing work of some of histories greatest writers and their exploits. It doesn't have to be read from cover to cover, as each writer's story stands alone in chapters collecting that particular type of antic--whether it be drinking, affairs, war stories, etc. Incredible amount of research went into Peschel's work. Most writer's chronicled seem to be from the distant past, some from more recent history (1950s, 1960s) very few present day. Does this mean more current writers aren't as crazy? Maybe they lead more private lives, or the public's attention is more focused on the 'reality' and mass media stars of today.

[Kevin Johnson]

I appreciated all of the research that went into writing this book. the bibliography is rather long on a book this short. It does a very good job of showing the humorous and often dysfunctional relationships of many historical authors. The author does reference his initial view that seemed to indicated he had writers on too high a pedistool before and liked that they were flawed which taints some of the writing.

[Annabelle]

Fun and funny! A perfect complement to my prior read, "Love Letters of Great Men and Women." This confirms earlier glimpses into Shelley's manias, Byron's enigmatic allure and Wilde's depraved sense of dedication, among other by-products of genius. And it's aptly sandwiched with my current book, an even more compelling "The Oxford Book of Essays," which forgives them their nasty nuances and restores your consideration, if not esteem, for genius at any cost.

[Airiz]

Everybody knows that skeletons of the past fill up an average person’s closet, usually up to the brim. When I got my hands on this gossipy compendium of anecdotes centering mostly on the foibles of a bunch of well-known, well-loved wordsmiths, I was given a peep through the keyholes of their closets. That’s when I realized that some people’s closets are not only choked with ghosts of yesterday, they also provide portals to places that are way crazier than Wonderland or Narnia.

But this is non-fiction. I’ve always known that most writers are bonkers—it’s almost like a requirement actually—but that didn’t stop the pin of my Insanity Meter to go totally haywire while flipping the pages of this book. For so many years some of these writers worked hard to inflate their literary brainchildren to life, fleshing out characters to a 3D fullness. A little did they know, even little bits of their lives make the best stories ever, and they themselves are insanely amazing characters. Incredibly intriguing, addictive, and awe-inspiring, Writers Gone Wild is a gem that literature buffs will surely love.

From the author info in the book I learned that Bill Peschel is a copy editor and layout designer(?) at the Harrisburg Patriot-News, and that he loves collecting weird and wild stories. Being written by someone who’s got some journalistic background is a reassuring fact that these stories have credibility. With his cool and simple writing tone, the reading is made more enjoyable.

Here we get to see Franz Kafka’s ‘Kurious Kollection’ of porn materials, Philip K. Dick’s prophetic visions, Virginia Woolf sneaking onto a Royal Navy ship disguised as an Abyssinian Prince, Sylvia Plath bite-kissing Ted Hughes on their first meeting in a literary party, Theodore Dreiser resigning from a newspaper company after fake-reviewing a performance that has been cancelled, and many more. For a few more teasers I’d like to share a few direct lines from the book:

1.) Of his many affairs with both sexes, and even with his half-sister Augusta, Byron by far preferred teenage boys. But he had to be careful expressing his desire. Before publishing his love poems, he carefully changed the pronouns from masculine to feminine.

2.) F. Scott Fitzgerald liked champagne or gin, but when he was trying to cut back would limit himself to thirty bottles of beer. A day.

3.) When Shakespeare found love, it certainly wasn’t with his wife, Anne. At his death he left her only “my second best bed with the furniture.” While some biographers have tried to put a positive spin on it, it should be noted that in his first draft of the will, he didn’t mention his wife at all.

4.) Chekhov’s funeral was anything but serious. The procession to the graveyard crossed paths with the funeral cortege of a Russian general, and some mourners ended up following the wrong body.

All in all this is a fun, juicy romp through the lives of the authors that most of us loved during our high school days. :p

[Sarah Bradley]

Not quite as entertaining as I thought it would be, mostly because of the author's storytelling style. However, the stories of authors misbehaving did make me want to read and reread many of their works, so that's a good thing!

[Kara]

I wish this book were as good as the title. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to read dish about your favorite drunken authors doing the craziest shit imaginable, please skip this title and go straight to A Drinking Companion by Kelly Boler. I'm afraid I've spoiled myself forever on authors' drunken antics by having read ADC first. Only Hunter Thompson continues to impress me post mortem with his lunacy. And I get the feeling that if I read more about Mailer, he'd surprise me, too.

[Tracy]

I didn't read this start to finish; I more scanned the table of contents and went to a section that sounded interesting but I also skipped around a lot too. It was a fun read, for what I did read, kind of interesting (and unusual) facts and details about various authors "behind the mask". I wouldn't mind going back to read more of it at some point.

Light reading.

[Roux Stellarsphyr]

Better than I anticipated. A lot of the resources you can check out from your library rely chiefly on anecdotal stories. Peschel's inclusion of a robust and respectable bibliography means that you don't need to take the boulder of salt necessary for other books. This is a fascinating and quick read for anyone interested in the lives of writers without getting bogged down in talking about writing.

[David Meyer]

This was fun. The book goes through stories (often shocking and vulgar) about famous literary figures. Each story is only about a page or 2, if not less. I read it all the way through, but if you like reading multiple things at once, this is a good book to leaf through a few pages at a time.

[Katherine]

One of the best "fun reads" I've ever picked up! A must-have for any literature lover (or hater).

[Deb Salisbury]

Writers Gone Wild is a brilliant collection of short anecdotes about writers and their odder moments. Funny, astonishing, and occasionally sad, this book lays bare parts of many famous writers' lives. Highly recommended, especially if you only have brief moments to read at one time.

[Julie Mendel]

This is a series of short stories about the beloved writers from years gone by. It is interesting to see what is available on an individual's life and how what appears to be quirkiness is really what makes writers like everyone else.

[Ron]

The wild side of the literary world. The fights, affairs, rivalries, loves, hatreds, drunkenness and debaucheries.

Not surprisingly, Hemingway and Mailer make multiple appearances in the book.

A fun read.

[Adele]

Wow! Everything you wanted to know ~ and some things you didn't ~ about favorite famous and infamous authors.

This reminds me of the book "An Alarming History of Famous and Difficult! Patients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR" by Richard Gordon.

[Mary]

Wonderful book. A blast to read. You will titter and giggle throughout.

[Janet]

Seems like the author did a lot of googling and turned it into a book. I was a little surpised how often famous authors interacted (unpleasantly) with each other.

[Heaether]

Fun, fun, fun read.

[Jen]

two stars.

meh.

[Cindy Cunningham]

What a fun romp through the fun romps of others!

[Rebekah R]

So fun! Lots of crazy stories about writers we love/hate/never heard of. The hard part was keeping track of who had done what. It's fun, pick it up. B

[TK]

Got through the first half of the book okay, but had to force myself to read the last part. The whole book is loaded with interesting information, just best to take in small doses.

[Melissa Shmish]

Lackluster and ultimately disappointing.

[Robin]

Mum bought it for me on a whim, it's hysterical

[Patty]

Not that revelatory. If you are at all vaguely familiar with authors most of these stories won't be new or shocking to you. Fun enough.

[Dawn]

Silly, gossip-filled tidbit's about some of the greatest writer's in history. Good for a giggle.

[Karen]

Pretty raunchy, which put me off, but some authors were hilarious in their personal lives!

[Christine]

It was a fun look at the fact that some people that many of us consider brilliant and would hope that they were above the rest, are in fact, just people!