Customer Reviews

Married to Genius

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Great writers usually make bad spouses. Their dedication to their work means they have less time for real consideration and feeling for other human beings, even those closest to them. Jeffrey Meyers in this work studies the lives of nine important writers, and the spouses they made their lives with. Cold Shaw was happy to be married to a woman he had no physical connection with . Passionate Lawrence was involved in endless public and private wrestling and shouting matches with the woman he loved and hated, who gave him much inspiration for his work. Virginia Woolf was cared for and loved by Leonard Woolf though their marriage was never physically consummated. Conrad too needed to be babied by his wife Jesse and was jealous of their child. Katherine Mansfield needed a Leonard Woolf but received instead a selfish philandering John Middleton Murray who abandoned her during her final illness.Joyce's Nora could not understand her dirty- minded genius of a husband, but provided for him the means to understanding the eternal feminine. Hemingway's super-machismo behavior did his first three marriages in. F.Scott Fitzgerald could not really tame or control Zelda. They both needed help but neither could give it to each other. The greatest of the writers Tolstoy is depicted by Meyers as the worst monster. But here I am not sure he gets it completely right, as the long complex relationship of Tolstoy and the former Sonya Behrs had moments of great love and passion in it, along with the terrible quarreling and disagreements.
On the whole Meyers suggests that the marriages provided support for the writers which enabled them to get on with their work.