Customer Reviews

Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's folks like Bob Schnakenberg that make me "proud" to be a resident of this God-forsaken burg. Bob Schnakenberg, and once-upon-a-time Hubert Selby, Jr. But Hubert moved on to L. A. Bob's still with us here in Brooklyn. I'd like him to make a million, but I don't want to lose him to Manhattan -- which is where all "successful" writers seem to end up (pace Paul Auster).

This book rips. It rips with humor and Schadenfreude (never a dull sentiment). It also rips APART -- viz., the real-life reputations of many of our guiding literary lights (never "lites").

I wondered at one point whether Bob had pulled his punches a bit with Richard Wright...but I then moved right on to Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and a few others and forgot all about whether Bob had or hadn't sacked Write adequately.

This book is worth every buck you can scrounge up to buy it. Do yourself a favor: go without a Starbucks for a night or two and splurge.

Russell

The Secret Lives of Great Authors by Robert Schnakenberg is a fun romp through literary land. The book examines the private lives of 41 classic authors from William Shakespeare the amorous playwright of Avon to the weird reclusive author Thomas Pyncheon.
This little book is also fact filled. Among listing the major works of the authors the book examines the quiddities of the great. Among such gems were these:
Lord Byron collected the public hairs of each of his many lovers.
Louise May Alcott had a crush on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and the eccentric Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau's family owned a pencil company for which Thoreau worked).
Franz Kafka refused to drop his shorts at a nudist camp.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was a practical joker including the use of whoopee cushions.
JRR Tolkien had to sleep in the bathroom since his wife hated to hear him snore in bed.
You get the idea! Much of this material is trivial but it does serve the purpose of humanizing these iconic figures. After all they were human!High School students and those just getting immersed in the wonderful world of literature would enjoy these humorously short profiles.
The book is poorly proofread
As an example, Twain could not have given a lecture on flatulence to Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603) who had been dead for centuries before the American Lincoln of our Literature was born in Missouri in 1835. Some words are misspelled. Better editing should be exerted for the next edition.
The book is the companion volume to "The Secret Lives of Great Painters and Sculptors" published by the Quirk Publishing Company.

The book lists QUEEN VICTORIA as the Queen that Mark Twain entertained with his story on flatulence. Victoria was born in 1837 and died in 1901. Twain was born in 1835 and died in 1910. It's entirely possible (highly probable, even) that they met during their lifetime. The story concerning the flatulence was SET in 1601 - it's in the title of the story, "[ Date: 1601.] Conversation, as it was the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors". It didn't actually happen in 1601. There is no mention of Twain meeting Elizabeth I in the book I read. Where are people coming up with all this Elizabeth I confusion?

This is such a fun read. It would make a great gift for an English literature teacher/professor - sprinkle some quirky bits of info into lectures and people are sure to perk up.

I picked this up the other day & I've been enjoying it ever since. The layout of each chapter being a different author or set of authors is nice, since it makes for a good bathroom book or a nice book to read before you go to sleep. I'm not sure if all of the facts are true (as said by one of the other reviewers), but they make for good reading.

My only complaint is that the book is set up very strangely. The book's pages are rather thick & stiff, which puts me at constant fear of the spine breaking apart if I'm not careful. While the book does feel nice under the fingertips, I'm afraid that it's not very practical. Still, it's a minor complaint overall.

I'd recommend this to book fans, both serious bibliophiles & casual readers. Everyone will find something they like, whether it's complaining that some things are a little off or whether it's discovering that their favorite author wasn't as squeaky clean as our teachers would have liked us to think.

... I found one serious flaw that bugged me (and made me question the resources the author used). The author stated that Mark Twain made a speech on breaking wind to an audience that included Queen Elizabeth I. The year of birth given for Mark Twain is 1835. Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926, and the author dates Mark Twain's death as 1910, and therefore there is no typo here. He must have meant Queen Victoria. For this, I have deducted a star, but nevertheless, I found this book to extremely entertaining. I definitely recommend this book for a good laugh, if nothing else.

i'm enjoying the content of the book, very much, BUT the fonts and colors chosen, the heavy, stiff bond AND the terrible binding are all making me a little crazy. i would not buy another book from this publisher if that's the way all their books are bound.
however, the exposes of the ticks and addictions of each author are all fascinating. it's just a pity that the physical book was not more carefully treated by the folks who put it together.

One reviewer has already noted this, but this book is full of bad info. I'm not sure who did the fact checking here, but a lot of the blurbs are just plain wrong. I admit, I haven't read the whole thing, but just reading up on my two favorite authors -- Hemingway & Kurt Vonnegut -- yielded bad info.

It says that Hemingway never actually ran with the bulls in Pamplona. This is technically true. He never ran down the street with the bulls charging. But he did get in the ring when the bulls reached the arena, and nearly got gored. There are pictures of this!

It says that Vonnegut ran a Saab dealership (one of the first in the country) while writing his most famous books, including Slaughterhouse-Five. It is true that Vonnegut opened and ran one of the first Saab dealerships in the country, but not while he was writing his novels. He wrote Slaughterhouse-Five while teaching at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.

This books is fine for harmless fun and bathroom reading, but for Truth and serious research, look elsewhere.

I will quote this error to start with since it is such a whopper:

"Mark Twain once delivered an entire speech on breaking wind to an audience that included Queen Elizabeth I." (p.101) Wow! Talk about impossible time travel.

Virgil is called an ancient Greek poet. (p. 201) He was a Roman.

The author tells us that we wouldn't have the word "gyre" without Yeats. (p. 121) Yet he has already quoted Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky with the word "gyre," and basic math indicates that Yeats was seven years old when Jabberwocky was published, so he can hardly have been the one to give us the word.

We are told (p. 107) that the Marquess of Queensbury wrote that Oscar Wilde was a "sodmomite." The Marquess actually (and famously) spelled the word as "somdomite."

If the author had spent less time trying to be supersarcastic and more time checking his prose for accuracy, this book would not be so bad. I don't understand why alternating paragraphs need to be different colored and different sized fonts. The paper is too thick and makes spine-breaking sounds as you turn pages.

I did enjoy the section on F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I have to wonder how many of the little anecdotes are true based on how inaccurate so much of the other stuff is. I have read two other books in this series (Painters and Musicians), and this one is by far the worst.

I love this book. Ive read and re-read it several times, often laughing out loud.
the illustrations are especially clever and apropos.

regards

Doc

Literature courses would have been a lot more fun if professors had
also assigned Robert Schnakenberg's engaging book, SECRET
LIVES OF GREAT AUTHORS . . . its subtitle tells you why:
WHAT YOUR TEACHERS NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT FAMOUS
NOVELISTS, POETS ADN PLAYWRIGHTS.

I never knew, for example, that:

* J. D. Salinger drank his own urine;

* Ayn Rand was a big fan of CHARLIE'S ANGELS;

* Louise May Alcott had a crush on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau; and

* Frank Kafka refused to drop his shorts at a nudist camp.

I also did not know that Mark Twain adored cats:

* In fact, in his later years he would rent kittens from his neighbors
to keep him company during his summer-long sojourns in New Hampshire.
"If a man could be crossed with the cat," Twain once observed, "it would
improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

And I was fascinated to learn that F. Scott Fitzgerald had a devil
of a time coming up with a good title for his greatest novel:

* He originally planned to call THE GREAT GATSBY by the title TRIMALCHIO
IN WEST EGG (a too-clever reference to a character in Petronius'
SATYRICON). His editor, Maxwell Perkins, thought better of that and
persuaded him to change it. For a while, Fitzgerald was hot on THE
HIGH-BOUCING LOVER before hitting on the classic, succinct title we
know today. Even then, Fitzgerald had his doubts. Just before the book
was to be printed, he cabled Perkins with the suggestion that they
change the name to UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE. What would
be the consequences of delaying publication, Fitzgerald asked. Perkins's
cabled, one word reply: "Fatal."

There was a fun, interesting Appendix that contained some great
rejection letters, such as this one:

* An American publisher apparently missed the point of George Orwell's
ANIMAL FARM. He sent back the manuscript with the note: "It is
impossible to sell animal stories in the USA."

There was also a listing of famous last words, including this moving
quote from Arthur Conan Doyle to his wife:

* You are wonderful."

Lastly, illustrations by Mario Zucca greatly added to my enjoyment
of this book.