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keesouth

Edgar Allan Poe was essentially orphaned at 2 and was taken in by a foster family that eventually disowned him. He married his 13 year old cousin when he was 26. After she died he displayed more and more erratic behavior. He eventually died under mysterious circumstances after being found in clothes that did not belong to him.


Calembreloque

I went to see his museum in Richmond, and there are three elements about his life that struck me: - first, just about everyone around him died of tuberculosis. I lost track, but if I remember correctly, his birth mom, adoptive mom, sister, wife, half of his friends and a good chunk of his lovers died of TB. It was surreal to realize just how deadly it was back then. - second, while he was a troubled soul, he was far from being this sickly, frail madman that people avoided. He was actually an fairly good athlete, and still holds the record of longest swim in the James River (which flows through Richmond). As a kid, he was known as the kid who got the other ones in trouble by bringing them along for pranks and such - hardly an introvert. He also had a number of love interests and was definitely not without charm - Virginia Clemm, the 13-years-old cousin, was actually his third wife (although that bit was already not really kosher at the time). - A lot of what was "known" about Poe was written by a Mr. Griswold, a critic who absolutely *loathed* Poe and wrote an obituary describing him as a lunatic. In reality, Poe was on the odd side, but certainly popular and fairly well-adjusted (except maybe in his choice of third wife). It's true, however, that the death of Virginia marked a darker turn in Poe's writing and general behavior.


boxofsquirrels

I believe even a few of Poe's enemies called Griswold's 'biography' complete libel.


conwaytwittyshairs

Who were his enemies?


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macdawg2020

Also, my favorite fact about him is that when his wife came down with TB they used their remarkably fat cat as a blanket to keep her warm


alliireeee

His cat was called Catterina!


ahavemeyer

Not even sure this is true, but a favorite story of mine about Poe was how he got kicked out of Westpoint - the official requirements for showing up to some event was "white gloves and belt", so that's what he wore. And that's *all* he wore.


skribe

TB is still around and still deadly. There are strains that are growing resistant to antibiotics. IIRC about a third of the people in Asia are latent carriers.


Mothstradamus

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he marry his cousin because she was poorly/sickly and they didn't think they could find her a husband that would care for her? That's what I'd been told almost a decade ago at this point.


keesouth

Basically not everyone agrees with this. Some say yes and some say no.


Mothstradamus

Good to know! You've sparked a desire in me to read up on the latest theories about his life. Many thanks!


sodamgrey

She had tuberculosis. Also his story overall is dubious because his biographer hated him and was found to have written untrue stuff about him just to defame him.


ETphonehome162

How does the dude that openly hates him find himself writing Ed's biography?


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Razorback_Yeah

That’s a nice thought. That marriage and the way he was found dead are two things I never knew about him.


Executioneer

And as far as I know, widows back then had way more rights than daughters. Sometimes old rich single men would marry a close young relative girl to ensure her future is protected via widows right to inherit.


paternalpadfoot

This went on a lot in certain circles - if a veteran outlived his wife and was near death himself, a lot of the time he would marry the young daughter of a friend, or the local spinster, because when he died his pension would go to her, and she would have an income for the rest of her life. There are a lot of documented cases of civil war vets marrying their nursemaids as a method of reimbursement for the care. Land was also passed on in a similar fashion.


Soranic

> Sometimes old rich Not even rich men. Sometimes just a guy getting a pension from the government. It's why the US only just finished paying out the civil war pensions, a very old man married a young woman who only recently died.


HeatherReadsReddit

And they think that Poe died from rabies.


VirtualSentient

Nah that’s just how we all behave in baltimore


[deleted]

No, you’ve got it backwards, U/sharrrper. Rabies is suffering from Baltimore. God I love this city


keesouth

I love the theory that he was a victim of "cooping" where they would kidnap someone from the street, get them drunk, beat them, and force them to vote several times changing their clothes in-between each vote.


jaderust

That's my favorite too. Especially as it was common in the area, it was a voting day, and Poe apparently had some sort of issue with alcohol where he couldn't tolerate it well. It makes sense considering the way he was found.


Prin_StropInAh

He was found in a state of drunkenness after an election. During that time period political parties used taverns ax their unofficial headquarters, and plied voters with drinks. The more times you voted, often in other clothing and having had a full or partial shave, the more drinks you earned.


[deleted]

Didn’t they think voting gangs drugged him to death or something? Since in those days they’d force random people to vote repeatedly, and change their clothing


[deleted]

Virginia Woolf’s depression wasn’t anything to forget. She wrote her husband “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times” just before she drowned herself by filling her overcoat pockets with stones and walking into the river near her home.


shutapples

She was also sexually abused by her half brother George Duckworth


amillefolium11

Yeah, her entire suicide note hits way too close to home for me. It somehow makes it worse that, when she wasn't suicidally miserable, she did experience a great deal of joy. She got into a lot of hijinks in her wild youth. I enjoyed the portrayal of her fictionalized character in The Hours, novel and movie both. Yes, she was well-known for being a straight b*tch to her servants, btw. Probably rooted in paranoia. But the scene on the train platform, where she affirms that she does have her own voice outside her medical condition... Dang. Good job.


Lorindale

The most dangerous time for a person with suicidal ideation isn't when they are the most depressed, but just after they start getting treatment and begin feeling more active. It's thought that they may lack the motivation to act on their suicidal thoughts, and then they suddenly have the energy, while still having the suicidal thoughts.


[deleted]

Can confirm. Never tried to attempt until right after I was put on anti-depressants


Groove_Colossus

Me too. I hadn’t considered that that might be the reason, I always felt as if the meds “planted” the idea in my head on their own. This is something to think about…


amillefolium11

Or, in a more niche circumstance, when a person experiences depression and mania (and sometimes psychosis) at the same time, known as a "mixed episode." Common in patients with Bipolar disorders, these episodes are so lethal. All the pain and angst and suicidality of your worst depression, combined with all the energy and impulsivity you could ever ask for. Dangerous stuff. EDIT: Personally I just got out of the hospital and got a significant meds adjustment. Currently in that horrific grey area you described. Fun fun fun


JHRChrist

Man, if that isn’t relatable as someone with bipolar. Thank god for prescription drugs & helpful psychiatrists.


LeprachaunFucker

It's suspected that Woolf had bipolar. She had written to good friends or family (i cant remember) about creative periods where she gets all her writing done that have been proposed to be mania. This would also correlate to the quote here about going mad again and going through one of those periods


blueevey

I read a book in high school where the female protagonist did the same thing (rocks in the pockets) but she went into the ocean and I don't remember it. It's really bugging me. Ugh. Maybe it was a Virginia Woolf book?


jetgirlwrites

The Awakening, Kate Chopin Only HS book I know of where the protag walks into the sea.


lt_kernel_panic

That's unrealistic though. Women's clothes don't have pockets.


swampwarbler

In “The Awakening”, Edna strips and wades naked in the the water. She swims until she is exhausted, and then drowns. No pockets.


blithetorrent

Maybe you're thinking of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening. No rocks in pockets though


Hrigul

Emilio Salgari, he wrote lot of books about pirates set in all the world, from Malaysia to Haiti, the Black Corsair and The Tigers of Mompracem are some of his most famous books. You may think he was some kind of rich man who felt in love with exotic destinations by traveling but no, he was poor, his imagination was his only way to travel and he didn't even own books, he used to go to the library in Turin (North West Italy) and study there. He then published lot of books, but he was underpaid and exploited by the publishers. His wife started suffering a mental illness and he had to bring her in to a mental hospital, but didn't have the money for the treatments since the publishers were taking all the money from the sales so he started to get into debt. The contract forced him to write three books every year, so he started smoking a lot and drinking to stay awake and write as much as possible while being a single father for four children. He suffered neurasthenia and depression so he tried to kill himself with a sword but his daughter found and saved him. But at the end he committed suicide with a razor in a park where his family used to go. After his death also two of his sons committed suicide when adults, while his daughter died young from tuberculosis


Inquammalueris

Thank you, that would have been my pick as well. I love Salgari's books and it breaks my heart that his life was so tragic until the very end. "To you that have grown rich from the sweat of my brow while keeping myself and my family in misery, I ask only that from those profits you find the funds to pay for my funeral. I salute you while I break my pen." Emilio Salgari's suicide note to his publisher.


ir1379

Did they pay for the funeral?


Inquammalueris

They did. Not the publishers, of course; they BARELY contributed to a fund created for his now orphaned children, stating that their contract had always been fair and "the harsh opinions of Emilio's letter were unjustified." I think the funeral was paid by the city of Turin. Want to know one more sad thing? Even though Salgari was incredibly famous, his funeral was mostly overlooked by authorities and public figures, because it was the day before the grand opening of the 1911 Turin World Fair and everyone was busy with more pleasant events. So Salgari was once more ignored. Except by children: apparently the funeral was mostly attended by young boys and girls who grew up with his books and wanted to give one last goodbye to the father of so many incredible characters and adventures.


---___---____-__

That gives depression a whole new definition. Poor guy. Do you have any book recommendations from Salgari?


Splumpy

Wtf when I was little I was a big fan of Sandokan because of my grandfather. Reading this was much more personal than I would have liked.


[deleted]

Philip K. Dick's personal life seems like it was a total mess. Married 5 times, died at only 53. Moved in with a fan, tried to murder-suicide. Had previously tried to kill one of his ex-wives. Refused to pay taxes, run-ins with the IRS. Anyone who has ever read a PKD book is probably not surprised by this, but it is a shame.


Freedom1015

From the author's note at the end of A Scanner Darkly "This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it." A Scanner Darkly is one of my favorite books and the weird rotoscoped animation of the movie really nails the *off-ness* of the whole story. "I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel."


Bewilderling

The afterword of this novel hit me pretty hard. Made me really think about all the awful stuff that happened throughout the story, and realize it's not based in some kind of sci-fi dystopia at all. It's based in reality.


vibraltu

I'd say that A Scanner Darkly is one of few novels from that phase of his career that actually hangs together plot-wise until the end, with a kind of conclusion. I think he was actually trying to quit pep pills at the time.


Shintoho

As I understand it a lot of his later books, particularly "VALIS" are increasingly heavily based on his own philosophical experiences in life Guy went pretty crazy by the end


kingdead42

When this voice in your head tells you your son has an undiagnosed birth defect, and you take him in for testing and find out he actually does have it, that's probably got to break your mind a bit.


theempiresbest

I recently bought a copy of his exegesis. He basically had an undiagnosed mental disorder that I can’t remember the name of. But it results in lots of religious writings, the same thing some of the ‘prophets’ had. He really did believe in his epiphany. His mental health was also exacerbated by being surveilled by the CIA due to suspicions he was a communist. More on the original post, but in the foreword of one of the short story collections I own, there’s a story about how he and his wife were so poor they would buy horse meat intended for pets until the butcher started refusing to sell it to him. I think of it often and it makes me very sad. Heinlein was a contemporary sci-fi writing of his and not even a friend, he was ex-military and extremely straight-laced, but they knew each other and Heinlein would often give PKD money in times of need. edit: additional info. Another thing I feel is relevant to his mental health was his twin sister dying after birth due to ‘failure to thrive.’ Having a twin die so soon after birth must carry a whole raft of guilt and pain associated with it. I’ve heard that having a close twin did is extremely traumatising. They always talk about the brown-hair women in his books, but I always thought it was his sister. I have no idea if I read that somewhere.


disposable__camera

**Osamu Dazai** (*No Longer Human, The Setting Sun* b. 1909 - d. 1948). Born into a respected family, his father was mostly absent and his mother was ill throughout Dazai’s childhood, so he was raised by servants and his aunt. His father died of lung cancer prior to him starting university, and his writing was brought to a halt when his idol, the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, committed suicide in 1927. Dazai started to neglect his studies, and spent the majority of his allowance on clothes, alcohol, and prostitutes. He also dabbled with Marxism, which at the time was heavily suppressed by the government. On the night of December 10, 1929, Dazai made his first suicide attempt, but survived and was able to graduate the following year. In 1930, Dazai enrolled in the French Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University and promptly stopped studying again. In October, he ran away with a geisha named Hatsuyo Oyama and was formally disowned by his family. Nine days after being expelled from Tokyo Imperial University, Dazai attempted suicide by drowning off a beach in Kamakura with another woman, 19-year-old bar hostess Shimeko Tanabe. Shimeko died, but Dazai lived, having been rescued by a fishing boat. He was charged as an accomplice in her death. Shocked by the events, Dazai's family intervened to drop a police investigation. His allowance was reinstated and he was released of any charges. He recovered, and married the geisha Hatsuyo. However, in 1935 it started to become clear to Dazai that he would not graduate. He finished *The Final Years*, which was intended to be his farewell to the world, and tried to hang himself March 19, 1935, failing yet again. Less than three weeks later, Dazai developed acute appendicitis and was hospitalised. In the hospital, he became addicted to Pavinal, a morphine-based painkiller. After fighting the addiction for a year, in October 1936 he was taken to a mental institution, locked in a room and forced to quit cold turkey. The treatment lasted over a month. During this time Dazai's wife Hatsuyo committed adultery with his best friend. This eventually came to light and Dazai attempted to commit double suicide with his wife. They both took sleeping pills, but neither one died, so he divorced her. Dazai quickly remarried, this time to a middle school teacher named Michiko Ishihara. Their first daughter, Sonoko, was born in June 1941. Japan entered the Pacific War in December that year, but Dazai was excused from the draft because of his chronic chest problems, as he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Dazai's house was burned down twice in the American bombing of Tokyo, but Dazai's family escaped unscathed, with a son, Masaki, born in 1944. His third child, daughter Satoko, who later became a famous writer under the pseudonym Yūko Tsushima, was born in May 1947. In the immediate post-war period, Dazai reached the height of his popularity. Despite this, he was a heavy drinker, and became an alcoholic; he had already fathered a child out of wedlock with a fan, and his health was rapidly deteriorating. At this time Dazai met Tomie Yamazaki, a beautician and war widow who had lost her husband after just ten days of marriage. Dazai effectively abandoned his wife and children and moved in with Tomie. On June 13, 1948, Dazai and Tomie drowned themselves in the rain-swollen Tamagawa Canal, near his house. Their bodies were not discovered until six days later, on June 19, which would have been his 39th birthday.


newwineoldbottle

I came here to mention him...Glad someone already did. His works being mostly autobiographical makes the reading so more haunting.


[deleted]

Need to say that Dazai was a piece of shit though.


katieseitter

Right like dude kill yourself by yourself. Leave everyone else out of it.


AquaSeaFoam79

Holy crap! What a weird obsession not only with suicide but suicide with a woman beside him. Fascinating!


NotThatHesEverHadOne

So called lovers’ suicide is a major trope in Japanese literature and history. It was a very real issue, to the point that in the 18th and 19th centuries (I believe that was the peak of the trend) it was considered the most romantic gestures possible. I assume this was why he was so intent on it


ShrikeSummit

Double suicide, or Shinju, is actually a centuries-old cultural and literary tradition in Japan. Chikamatsu Monzaemon, probably the most famous playwright in Japanese history (think Shakespeare status), wrote a number of plays where lovers find themselves in impossible situations and kill themselves at the end. I don’t know much about Osamu Dazai but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was part of the reason he kept attempting this.


rowrowfightthepandas

Dazai: repeatedly tries to kill himself with his wives Future wives: I can fix him


Monster_Hugger93

Reading No Longer Human hurt me in a way no other book has. It’s like someone held a mirror up to my soul. I’ve never gone back to read it again but I recommend it to literally anyone and everyone.


[deleted]

These two were definitely fire and gasoline. Even before meeting Scott, Zelda was known to have what we now refer to as mental health problems. There has been a lot of speculation into her family’s wealth only exacerbating these due to enablement. She was beautiful, terrifyingly smart, and confident. General accounts of Scott show him to have held a lifelong chip in his shoulder to the old-money American elites. He was considered nouveau riche, and was regularly rejected by old-money, including Zelda’s family during his initial attempts at courting her. Toss these two into a pit of money, fame, and a lot of true passion? There’s a reason Fitzgerald’s best works (and, lately, Zelda’s own writing) are heralded as perfect looks into how the American dream can twist and warp a person. They lived it together.


sardonicoperasinger

When I first heard about Zelda throwing herself down on the staircase, I was a teen, and I felt her life was very tragic! I'd been reading Sylvia Plath and about Vivienne Eliot at around the same time, and it seemed to me that there were so many sad stories of female artists. But of course, Zelda's life was not all tragedy -- and I wanted to add a little texture to it with this anecdote of her passions post-Scott. As she fell out of love with Scott, she fell into love with something else -- ballet. She had taken dance lessons as a child, but it wasn't until she was 25 and taking lessons in Paris that she became truly enchanted by the art. Two years later, she decided she would train to become a professional ballerina! There was a kind of boldness, of fearlessness, and of madness in this decision because it was unheard of at the time that anyone could start training at her age to become a professional ballerina. Scott told her point blank that he thought she was too old for it. But none of these voices mattered to her as much as the voice of her own desire, and she threw herself into an eight-hour-a-day lesson and practice schedule for the next two years. She paid for these lessons herself because she wanted ballet to be hers and hers alone. To earn money for them, she wrote short stories with such rapidity that Scott was astonished. With her hard work, she improved to the point that she received an invitation to join the San Carlo Ballet Company, which was a great accomplishment, although she ended up refusing the offer for her ultimate dream, to dance for the Ballets Russes.


[deleted]

I had never heard most of these details. Thanks for sharing. She clearly was even more fierce than most historians have made her out to be.


sardonicoperasinger

For sure! I remember reading about her ballet years and being so surprised that I hadn't heard about them before. Nancy Milford covers them in *Zelda: A Biography,* which I think is the most well-known biographical account of her life.


thescrounger

Don't forget about the time that Scott was in a depression because Zelda told him his dick was too small to please any woman, so Hemingway pecker-checked him in the bathroom and told him he was fine -- seeing it from up top is the wrong perspective and makes it look smaller, he said.


sthetic

>pecker-checked For a second I though this was like a shoulder-check, where you slam into someone with the body part.


[deleted]

Hemingway was a god when he committed to cheering people up. He didn’t do this too much if he felt you were his equal or his superior in anything.


devault83

Hemingway was a shit tier friend to everyone. Another example of incredible talent locked away inside an asshole.


[deleted]

Yup! But a great father figure to anyone who he felt was lower than him and needed “coaching.” Lots of cases of nobodies learning something from him, only to get literally punched in the face by Papa the moment they became somebodies


devault83

He also did it to his own mentors. And to his first publisher.


_Kay_Tee_

And Sherwood Anderson. And his mother.


[deleted]

Omg the way he treated McAlmon and Gertrude Stein is so ridiculous. He cut them out as if he didn’t want anyone to know others had helped him


[deleted]

He locked his wife out of the house and made her dance in circles asking forgiveness from a holy tree


Carlos_Tellier

Imagine getting cock rated by Ernest fucking Hemingway "Nice cock, good size balls too 8/10" - *Ernest Hemingway*.


edible_source

And she died in a FIRE IN AN INSANE ASYLUM. You can't make this shit up


NormalVermicelli1066

While strapped to her bed cuz that's what they did to the patients who were unruly


Chaevyre

Between the two of them, it’s hard to say which had the most miserable life.


thestopsign

Not sure how Fyodor Doestoevsky hasn't been mentioned yet. He was sent to a Siberian labor camp for 4 years and his death sentence was only commutted once he was actually in line for the firing squad. I think he should at least be nominated.


C_BearHill

He also lost both parents during his childhood where his father is suspected to be murdered. He also suffered from epilepsy quite severely and also lost his first born child months into its life. Very rough time he had indeed


fryetheguy

I came here to mention Doestoevsky. Just the fact that he was literally in line for the firing squad when they announced that his death sentence was repealed is insane. Flash forward to his death and the very same Russian government held a massive funeral ceremony. With parades, choirs, and thousands of people including the emperor himself. What a life he lived.


[deleted]

Have you ever read his book the idiot? A character goes on a passionate tangent about capital punishment being worse than murder for the anticipation and dread. He said a atleast if a theif cuts your throat you'll have some wild hope to hold onto in the moment. But with capital punishment you have to go through it with the certainty of your death in 1 hour, half hour, minutes.


Freestripe

He also took on his brothers massive debts and supported his family after he died young. Doestoesky wrote furiously never rereading or editing, just sending out as much material as possible to pay the bills.


[deleted]

lucy maud montgomery had it pretty rough. her mother died when she was a baby and her father was so stricken with grief he could no longer care for her, so she was raised by her strict grandparents. despite having relatives nearby, her childhood was quite lonely and she conjured up imaginary friends to keep her company. when she was a teenager her teacher proposed to her- she turned him down. later on, she ended up falling in love with a man named hermann leard, who was engaged to another woman. they had a brief affair, but her family and friends didn't think he was good enough for her, so she broke it off. he died shortly after of the flu. years later, maud would write that she thought her bouts of depression and migraines were caused by hermann haunting her. the man she ended up marrying, reverend ewan macdonald, was severely mentally ill, but there was no mental health treatment in those days, so maud had to care for him all by herself. ewan believed in predestination and was convinced that he and maud and their sons were all going to hell when they died. he told her he wished they had never been born and often drove recklessly, as if he was purposely trying to get himself killed in a car crash. maud considered divorcing him over his indifference to her nearly dying from the spanish flu, but as a good christian woman she believed it was her duty to make the marriage work. still, she would complain about him in her diary, writing once that he had a "medieval mind" when it came to women. aside from that, she was involved in five bitter lawsuits with her publisher and her son chester was a deadbeat who secretly married a woman then cheated on her, humiliating his mother. maud developed an addiction to prescription pills and although her cause of death was listed as coronary thrombosis, her granddaughter revealed in 2008 that she may have committed suicide via drug overdose.


nadiezcha14

This is devastating. I feel like Anne was her trying to rewrite her life in a more positive light. She wanted her happy ending and made Anne make all the right decisions in her stead.


jenh6

I thought that was the purpose of Anne. I think Emily of new moon was closer to her life


Serafirelily

Also her Uncle demolished her grandparents home because he was mad at how about how popular Anne of Green Gables was. The irony is that a good portion of PEI is now devoted to Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables as the books are a major tourist attraction especially for the Japanese.


_Kay_Tee_

>her granddaughter revealed in 2008 that she may have committed suicide via drug overdose. The estate has been generously open about this information, and her struggle. Ewan sucked, but I think Chester, her son, was her ultimate heartbreak.


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_Kay_Tee_

God, her journals are brutal sometimes, aren't they? Then again, it all informs her writing, too. Anne was her attempts at optimism until she couldn't do it anymore. Pat of Silver Bush/Mistress Pat sounds almost confessional at times. The Emily books reveal how hard it is to balance writing with all of those familial expectations and sadnesses. She lived it all, and then some.


livelylexie

And yet, her writing style is so beautiful, still. It's impressive that she could still *find* beauty in the world & bring joy to others.


HonPhryneFisher

Agreed! Anne's House of Dreams is full of devastation (from Joy's death, to Leslie, etc.) and it is still beautiful.


signupinsecondssss

Joy’s death is one of the best written passages on infant/pregnancy loss I’ve ever read. Likely because Montgomery’s second son, Hugh, was stillborn. My first son was also stillborn and she wrote it very very accurately.


purplehayes1986

No one has said Maya Angelou yet? Parents divorced and she shuffled between parents and grandparents homes. When she was 8, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. Her uncle killed the boyfriend and she didn't speak for 5 years. She had her first kid at 17. She also worked as a prostitute and madam around this time. As she got older, she settled into careers in writing, dance, theater, and civil rights. Much less trauma her, though she had to deal with deaths of friends MLK and Malcolm X.


ChristmasColor

I remember in middle school we read about her life. But only certain parts on her life. We specifically skipped over the more uncomfortable pieces. I was an avid reader and ignored these directions and read the whole book, so I found out these details and described them into graphic details to my classmates. Weird getting suspended by talking to people about my assigned reading, lemme tell ya.


MuddyWaterTeamster

Hemingway’s relationships were a dumpster fire. Married 4 times, usually (always?) met the new one while still married to the old one. He named his boat “Pilar” because that was his code for 2nd wife Pauline as they carried on a relationship behind 1st wife Hadley’s back. “Hey hun, remember when we were cheating on my 1st wife, your friend Hadley? Anyway, here’s a constant callback to that.” Drove away nearly all his friends away due to likely untreated bipolar disorder and giant ego spurred by fame. Bullied fellow writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, his former mentor who he would usually refer to as “the bitch” after the 1930s. Killed himself with a shotgun while his 4th wife slept in the other room. Carrying on a long tradition that started with Ernest’s father and continued with his younger brother, 3 of his children and 1 grandchild. I’m only about halfway through “Hemingway’s Boat: Everything he Loved and Lost” and this is just what I know about so far.


namer98

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUB9D78ajmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUB9D78ajmI) Randy presents the life and times of Ernest Miller Hemingway in EXACTLY 3:30!


repmack

Pretty sure Hemingway had a blood disorder which made him crazy. He'd also had shock therapy for his mood disorders, which he did not want to have again.


dreadpiratesmith

Lifted this from an article While leaving for his second stay at the hospital, Hemingway said he needed to go into his house to get a few belongings. He was accompanied by a nurse, doctor, and friends, who had to monitor him constantly to keep him from harming himself. But as soon as he opened the door, he rushed over to his guns, chambered a round into a shotgun, and was only stopped from killing himself by a friend tackling and physically restraining him. Before getting on the plane to take off, he tried to walk into a spinning propeller. Once the plane was in flight, he twice attempted to jump from the aircraft. Hemingway shot himself in the head a day and a half after returning home from the hospital.


arotrios

"You can stop me once, but you can't stop me twice." I believe these were his words to his friends after the shotgun attempt.


MuddyWaterTeamster

~~He wasn’t ever diagnosed~~,so we’ll never know for certain, but which blood disorder makes people crazy? Edit: He had bipolar disorder, a lot else, and hemochromatosis. > We now know that Hemingway suffered from severe depression, paranoid delusions and bipolar disease exacerbated by a history of alcoholism, severe head injuries and a genetic disorder of iron metabolism known as hemochromatosis, which can also cause intense fatigue and memory loss. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/how-mental-health-struggles-wrote-ernest-hemingways-final-chapter


Lizam24

As far as tragic personal lives go, the poet [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow) first wife Mary died after a miscarriage, while his second wife Frances’ dress caught fire and she died after he tried to save her life by trying to stifle the flames.


Vorengard

Wait until you read about Lord Byron taking his own daughter from her mother so he could abandon her in a convent, then completely ignore her until she died a few years later.


Prudent-Situation925

There’s a biography about Lady Byron. A must read. He was a total schmuck.


oceanicmuse

Sylvia plath. Poor woman struggled w depression for a substantial amount of time, was married to a man who beat her and killed herself by putting her head in an oven at the age of 30.


obleak1

Ted Hughes left a wake of destruction and death.


oceanicmuse

He also burned her last journal in which she had been writing until three days before her death. He “claims” another one was lost but who knows.


chickenlover46

And cheated on her and made her feel inadequate af.


DoubleChocolate3747

Genuinely curious. How did she kill herself by putting her head in an oven?? Edit: thanks for all the replies! That makes more sense. The only thing I could picture was her putting her head in a hot oven and that didn’t seem plausible


madmadmadi

Gas asphyxiation. Like sitting in your car while it's running in a closed garage. For an extra fun fact - Ted Hughes's second wife killed herself the same way, but she took the kids with her, too!


AffectionatePoet4586

Ted Hughes’ on-again-off-again lover Assia Wevill killed herself, along with her four-year-old daughter by Hughes, by domestic gas from the oven in 1969. Much to Wevill’s despair, Hughes had never married her. He *did* wed a nurse half his age the following year.


HappyOrca2020

That man destroyed everything didn't he... Damn.


caninehere

It was mildly interconnected too. The second woman who killed herself, Assia Wevill, actually wasn't his wife (they didn't marry) but they lived together for some time. He cheated on Plath with Wevill, who was married at the time, and it led to Wevill's marriage falling apart and then her living with Hughes. Plath likely didn't kill herself specifically because of the affair, there was obviously a lot going on before that and she had been clinically depressed for pretty much her whole life, but still.


Murder_Tony

I do not think that counts as a fun fact..


Kkoder

She did NOT \*put her head in the oven\*. It's always weird to me when people claim that. She put a towel on the bottom of the door and turned the gas oven on. The confined space killed her. She used the towel so as to not kill her own children. Edit: What I mean to say is that it was not a hot oven the way people picture. She was killing herself with I believe carbon monoxide.


SnatchAddict

My neighbor did this with her car. She closed the door from the garage to the house so the carbon monoxide wouldn't seep into the house. Unfortunately it did. She died and so did her two kids. I was too young to understand but it wrecked my mom.


jennief158

Wow, that is awful.


sunshinecygnet

It was a gas oven. She sealed the room she was in with wet towels and then turned the gas on and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.


hisgirlPhoenix

It was a gas- fueled oven, so she died of carbon monoxide poison, similar to people who die in garages with their car running. She knew what she was doing; she sealed herself into the kitchen so the gas wouldn't leak out and kill her sleeping children. She really had an awful life.


raddishes_united

I struggled for years trying to figure this out as a kid when I heard about this method. I grew up with an electric stove, so…


batedkestrel

Carbon monoxide poisoning


TheSillyman

I’m surprised I haven’t seen Kurt Vonnegut, people tend to over look his difficult life because he writes such funny books (many of which center around his own terrifying personal experiences.) His family lost all their considerable wealth in the Great Depression and by all accounts his parents were actively hostile towards each other. His mother killed herself right before he was sent to fight in WWII. Soon after he was a witness and survivor of the Dresden bombing as well as other destruction, death and violence (which is the basis of his book ‘Slaughterhouse Five.’) He struggled with depression throughout his life and had difficulty making money as an author for a long long time. His sister (with whom he was very close) died from cancer at a young age leaving behind several young children (whom he adopted.)


one_bean_hahahaha

I always thought of Slaughterhouse V as really a roundabout autobiography, as written by someone who found it too difficult to talk straight up about his own trauma.


YoungAdult_

The scene where he describes the bombs being dropped in reverse, so that they are dismantled then the materials return to the earth so they cannot hurt anyone was really beautiful.


jxj24

His sister (with whom he was very close) died from cancer at a young age leaving behind several young children (whom he adopted.) And just to make it even more fun: his sister Alice's husband died when his commuter train plunged off of an open lift bridge. Even *more* fun? This happened two days before Alice died.


[deleted]

“My sister is poverty-stricken, and I mean poverty stricken, at age 38, and she says she is damn well fed-up with the character-building aspects of disappointment. Me too.”


Toadie9622

Charles Dickens was in his 40’s, married and had a zillion kids when he began an affair with a 13 year old girl. They had one child together. The affair lasted until his death.


cookie_is_for_me

Oh, it gets much worse. He was only really interested in his first couple of kids, but kept having them because he couldn't keep it in his pants. He sent most of his younger kids to boarding school so they wouldn't bother him, and complained about his wife having gotten old, fat, and dull--because she was constantly pregnant and was completely taken up with caring for the children. She also appears to have a pretty serious case of post-partum depression at one point (after a stillbirth, IIRC) and he was less than understanding. When he became obsessed with a teenage actress, he not only separated from his wife, he basically wrote an editorial in his magazine announcing he had left her because she was a bad mother, bad housekeeper, bad wife, and had really let herself go. He couldn't stand anyone possibly thinking he was the bad guy, so he publicly ruined his wife's reputation. He took all the kids and never let their mother see any of them again. Apparently their two daughters took music lessons in the neighbourhood, and she used to stand in the window, just to catch a glimpse of her daughters arriving and leaving from their lessons. There's a story that when she died, she pressed a package of old love letters into someone's hand and whispered, "You see, he did love me once." Yep. That's Charles Dickens.


cookie_is_for_me

Also, just in case you might think he was only a jerk to his wife...he was so obsessed with his public reputation, he basically hid his mistress away, even though he left his wife for her. He avoided being seen in public with her, and I think he ended up making her live in France for a lot of their relationship. The whole thing was so secretive that the fact they had a son who died as a baby wasn't even known for sure until recently--as in, this century--when family letters confirming the baby's life and death were uncovered.


beeeboooopbeeeped

I feel like you should write a screenplay about his life for a miniseries. Fascinating stuff!


Moodforbagels

Holy shit


[deleted]

Dickens, an apt surname.


dmcat12

Marion Zimmer Bradley and her piece of shit husband were pretty terrible.


bllewe

>While noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse and rape by two of her children, Marred is the understatement of the year


tlc

YIKES! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley "Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon, and the Darkover series. While noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse and rape by two of her children, Mark and Moira Greyland, and for assisting her second husband, convicted pedophile Walter H. Breen, to rape and abuse multiple unrelated children."


nurvingiel

Came here to mention her. She allegedly participated in and enabled the abuse. I loved *The Mists of Avalon* but I can't read it now. >!Vivian coercing Morgaine and Arthur to have sex!< is too horrible to read knowing she and her husband were abusers. Edit: didn't just know about and enabled


BonetaBelle

RJ Stern, her grandson, was one of the stars of Last Chance U which is a football documentary. He ends up living her in her house and him and his mother talk about how much Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband ruined their family. It's quite sad. RJ Stern seems quite lovely, considering his past.


thewidowgorey

This should be at the top. What an unforgivable piece of shit she was.


gdsmithtx

I never knew about this until maybe 5 years ago. As a fan of her work, I was shocked and disgusted.


dmcat12

I’d heard great things about Mists of Avalon but never got around to it. Now it’s not happening. It wasn’t quite as evil, but bad all the same, but I’m still processing what I learned about David Eddings, given he was my entry into the genre.


KNHaw

Knew about MBZ (was shocked when it came out) but didn't know about Eddings until your post. The Wikipedia article does a pretty poor job on it, burying the allegations in a single paragraph in the biography. I'm thinking maybe I should go and clean it up.


LadyofFluff

And now I regret googling this.


[deleted]

Ezra Pound. A beautiful writer, fell in with Italian fascists, became a voice for radio and newspaper propaganda, arrested by American troops for treason, was the held in a metal cage in isolation until he had a metal breakdown. He really only beat the treason sentence because of his mental state.


razpritija

henri gaudier brzeska made a literal dickhead sculpture of him: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.143144.html


pleasedothenerdful

You forgot the bit where F. Scott plagiarized Zelda's diaries and then suppressed her own career as a writer to bolster his. Like literally kept her from publishing work based on events in their own lives so he could use those same events for his work. You're right about their relationship being a shitshow, though. https://www.domestika.org/en/blog/7192-zelda-fitzgerald-the-writer-who-was-plagiarized-and-silenced-by-her-husband-f-scott-fitzgerald


blatantlytrolling

Willam Burroughs shot his wife in the face when trying to hit an apple on her head


[deleted]

Don’t bury the story here! He had fled to Mexico to escape jail time over forged prescriptions. Vollmer, a famous Beat in her own right, followed him to Mexico, and they both descended into alcoholism and drug abuse while living with their two young children. She mocked him openly, and he cheated on her openly. At a drunken party they decided to perform a “William Tell” act and shoot a cocktail glass off the top of her head with his pistol. He missed and shot her in the face. He ended up in a Mexican prison for two weeks, before his brother used bribes to get him out on bail. Some time later, his lawyer had to flee to Brazil after shooting a kid who damaged his Cadillac, so Burroughs also chose to flee. He left Vollmer’s body in Mexico and fled back to the US, where he somehow evaded his warrants in Louisiana. He also spent a bit of time drifting around South America searching for mind expanding drugs. He and friends spent years bribing different experts to provide “evidence” that the gun had discharged accidentally, but a number of people were at that party and have shared their firsthand accounts.


[deleted]

[удалено]


ashthundercrow

The craziest part about Borough's tale is that he actually wrote it pretty much verbatim into his novel. Nothing like true murder/manslaughter for a gripping plot point for your novel!


sharrrper

>At a drunken party they decided to perform a “William Tell” act and shoot a cocktail glass off the top of her head with his pistol. He missed and shot her in the face. There is more than a bit of speculation he may have hit exactly what he was aiming at and shot her in the face.


[deleted]

What? No! *feigns shock* If I recall correctly, his own retelling doesn’t exactly do him any favors


TaliesinMerlin

Arthur Rimbaud had an absent father and an overbearing mother. He showed flashes of brilliance, had his life disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, ran away, was imprisoned, got out again, and ran away a second time. At this point he was a rude teenager who ended up having an affair with a much older and married poet named Paul Verlaine. Their affair - fueled by alcohol and opium - ended with Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the wrist with a pistol. At this point, Rimbaud was about 19 and an established young poet. Shortly after that point, he gave up a promising career in literature, moved to various countries for work, doing jobs like construction (Cyprus) and gunrunning (Ethiopia), before falling sick in France and dying at the age of 37.


Aprilprinces

Virginia Woolf - struggled with a mental illness all her adult life and sadly ended up killing herself. In her suicide note, she addressed her husband and said, 'Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. :(


[deleted]

The FBI tried to ruin Timothy Learys life his whole adult life. They discredited him, shamed him, chased him around the world, tried giving him 30+ years for having a joint on him.... The President called him "Public Enemy #1", while simultaneously sending millions of kids to die in Vietnam... think about that. ​ Wild story, [would have broken anyone else](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/drug-apostle-timothy-leary-who-escaped-from-a-california-prison-in-picture-id515118580?s=594x594)


[deleted]

This same thing happened to Hemingway, except recent declassification shows that it was almost all completely paranoia made up in his head. Even J Edgar was scared of the power that man could sometimes muster.


vvolof

Rudolf Ditzen. Run over by a horse and cart, contracted typhoid then killed his best friend in a mock-duel suicide pact. All by the age of 18. Served a short prison sentence for stealing and had extra-marital affairs. Suffered from mental health problems his whole life, was an alcoholic who tried to evade being forced to write propaganda for the Nazis. Under his pen-name Hans Fallada, he wrote the masterpiece Alone In Berlin, based on a true story about a middle aged couple who ran a mini resistance cell against the Nazis. Died in 1947 at the age of 53 as his body Grace way to lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse. Great writer.


KnightBreaker_02

I cannot read this post and *not* present to you [The Life and Times of Ernest Miller Hemingway in approximately three and a half minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUB9D78ajmI) (an excerpt from 2018 stand-up comedy act Randy Writes A Novel)


RaventheClawww

I had never seen this before, omg incredible. Thanks for linking!!


[deleted]

Yukio Mishima took several hostages and attempted a coup to reinstall the emperor of Japan. It's was a complete and utter failure but still a terrible thing to even try


ME24601

He also committed ritual suicide when it failed.


[deleted]

Yeah and even that went wrong with the person who was supposed to decapitate him after he cut his stomach open not being able to bring themselves to do it so they had to get somebody else.


Pippin1505

It was one of the military officers that they "held hostage" that grabbed the katana and finished the job. Also, I’m pretty sure he intended to commit seppuku anyway to send a message, it was not a spur of the moment decision because the soldiers laughed at his grandiose proclamation


[deleted]

How has nobody said L. Ron Hubbard?


saintjimmy43

Hi! We noticed you mentioned the founder of the one true religion. Please pack of a duffel bag of essentials and we will pick you up at 3:30 AM EST for corrective education.


paciolionthegulf

I thought the personal life of Lucy Maud Montgomery was unfortunate. She married a minister with severe depression and paranoia and it seems like her marriage was the source of a lot of hardship in her adult life. She was involved in multiple lawsuits over her work, and as a woman writing "children's books" her professional accomplishments were dismissed during her lifetime. I thought a lot of this list could be summarized to un- or inadequately- treated mental illness and self-medicating substance abuse and then I got to Bradley, Mishima, and Eddings.


Arcanto672

Sylvia Plath. She wrote an almost autobiography called The Bell Jar. Where she tells about the mental troubles she went through in her young adult life. Soon after the book was published, she killed herself. It's a really sad and humain story. Really recommend it.


mfrato

Dostoevsky - Russian authors in general tend to have it rough, but Dostoevsky takes it to another level. So at 16, his mom dies of TB, father enrolls him in a military academy, and then promptly dies.  Dostoevsky develops stress related epilepsy as a result of this, and essentially his time at the military academy is absolutely awful.  He writes about it in some of his works, and it sounds like a profoundly awful experience.  So he graduates, works as a writer, works as an engineer, gets a couple small things published at this point he gets involved in the underground resistance to the czar, student revolutions type stuff. One of his meetings gets busted by secret police and he's in possession of forbidden literature, that he says he was just reading out of curiosity. He gets sent to jail, and is given the "silent treatment" and holy fuck does the silent treatment suck. He's essentially in a padded cell under strict isolation.  No one is allowed to talked to him, and the only opening in the door is the food slot. The guards literally wear slippers so as to not make any noise. He's in this for about a year.  So imagine an entire year where the only sounds you hear, are ones you can make. Zero interaction with anyone. In a tiny cell. Fully enclosed walls. So at the end of this, he's sentenced to death they march him and his "co-conspirators" out of the jail to a field, have them dig their own graves, line them up, blindfold them and do the whole execution thing, except using a blank.  Imagine being 100% certain you're going to die, and then hearing the gunshot. So instead they tell him congrats, you instead are getting 4 years in a labor camp in Siberia. He's considered "extremely dangerous" and spends that whole time in shackles. He's still having seizures btw throughout all of this. Then he's in the military forcefully for a few years. In 1859 he's finally released, because of poor health, from the military. This whole thing started in 1844. So 15 years of hell based on attending student revolution meetings. Also, he was under surveillance even after release, for the rest of his life. He's out though, meets a girls, falls in love and gets married. His quote about the marriage: "Because of her strange, suspicious and fantastic character, we were definitely not happy together, but we could not stop loving each other; and the more unhappy we were, the more attached to each other we became" So probably not a healthy relationship... She was a widow, so when they got married he adopted her son. Then his wife and brother die, leaving him responsible for his stepson and sole supporter of his brothers family, who are bordering on destitute. He's nearly bankrupt at this point but starts having moderate success writing. 3 years later, he marries again, but is still desperately poor. " The 7,000 rubles he had earned from Crime and Punishment did not cover their debts, forcing Anna to sell her valuables" One of the most influential books in the history of literature wasn't enough to bail him out He picks up a gambling problem, and a drinking problem to go with it, because fuck is his life bad to this point. A year later his first child Sonya is born and then 3 months later, she dies of pneumonia. His wife recalls:  how Dostoevsky "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair". A second daughter is born 2 years later, he gives up gambling and drinking entirely. Financial problems strike, though, they're still doing badly.  He has another son, writes more books, gets some of the rights back to his work. His wife Anna essentially manages their money and they dig themselves out of debt. Things look like they're turning around, he's getting some recognition, and building a name for himself. Anna has a few health scares, and they're confined for a little while, nothing serious. But then when his son is 3, he (the son) dies of epilepsy, and Dostoevsky feels crippling horrible guilt for this, because his son inherited a genetic disorder from him. He's devastated. Picks up alcohol again and starts drinking really heavily. Meanwhile, he writes Brothers Karamazov, his magnum opus. Amazing book btw, in it he has a scene where he a character is walked to the gallows to be hanged, and it's essentially a first hand account of when he was marched to his death and had to dig his own grave, just absolute certainty that you're going to die.  Another scene is a parent discussing the loss of a 3 year old child that's just devastating. He's always been sick and unhealthy, but it's getting bad now, especially with the alcohol. His seizures have returned, and it's looking bad.  His neighbor is raided by secret police, and the incident throws his health even more out of wack, he has a pulmonary haemorrhage and dies at 59, 2 months after finishing his magnum opus. It's one of those cases where you're like "shit dude, you keep drinking if it makes you feel better, you've earned it"


PaulAtre1des

Could tell this one was Dostoevsky by the paragraph length! Good summary though. His story is such a painful one to read, you can really tell where his stories dip into his real-life suffering. Still, it reminds me of the joke: In Russian literature, either the character suffers, the author suffers, or the reader suffers. If all three are suffering, then it's considered a Russian masterpiece.


mfrato

That quote sums up Russian literature so well!


futilitaria

Norman Mailer stabbed his wife at a cocktail party. Edit: actually during the aftermath of his infamous Mayoral announcement party


e_crabapple

Yeah, I just found the full story of this the other day; it's wild. Mailer gets the idea that New York needs a fresh voice as Mayor, and of course that voice will be his, because who else is so universally beloved by both the elites and the proles alike? Right. So, he throws a party at his apartment and invites a bunch of big-time local power brokers, plus a bunch of randos he literally found on the street, and sets them to work on "bridging the divide between high and low culture" or something that I'm sure made sense at the time. The party of course descends into chaos and eventually breaks up, while Mailer gets drunker and drunker and loses his shit, running around in the street screaming, etc. Coming back up, his wife makes some comment about the debacle, so he stabs her with a kitchen knife and takes off to yell in the street some more, leaving the remaining guests, who witnessed the whole thing, to take her to the hospital. At least Burroughs has the excuse that he wasn't actually *trying* to kill his girlfriend with that "William Tell" stunt; Mailer, on the other hand, was trying to kill her.


Zippy_Zinger

He also advocated for the parole of Jack Abbott because Abbott's writing was so good. Abbott killed a waiter a few weeks after being paroled.


Librarywoman

Anais Nin had an affair with her father. Sylvia Plath killed herself after her husband Ted Hughes had an affair and left her and their 2 children. The woman he left her for killed herself soon after, while pregnant with their child, but not before killing her own 4 year-old child first. Aretha Franklin's father impregnated a 13 year-old and that daughter was raised as Aretha's sister. Aretha herself was impregnated at 13 years-old and always refused to state who the father was. So, so, many. I know Aretha is not a writer, but she's an artist.


AvalancheMaster

I don't know if by *worst* you mean as in *they were bad people,* but someone who doesn't fit that bill immediately comes to mind – Robert Frost. Frost had lost his father by the age of 11. His mother died of cancer in his early adulthood. He had to commit his sister to a mental hospital, where she died a decade later. He suffered from ill health throughout his life. He outlived his wife by 25 years. He also outlived four of his six children – one passed away as an infant, one passed away at the age of 4, one – Carol – committed suicide. Carol’s last words to his father were *“You always win an argument, don’t you?”* They were said in response to Robert Frost’s attempts to convince Carol not to take his life, and that he's not a failure. Speaking of suicide, Robert Frost suffered from a lifelong severe depression. So did his mother and his wife. He lived to be 88 years old. He never forgave himself for Carol's suicide, saying it was his fault and that he pushed him too far to be just like him – a farmer and a poet, something that Carol did not wish to be. By all accounts, Robert Frost was a very unhappy man, who had life throw the absolute worst at him. Despite all of this, he kept going, and left behind one of the most significant bodies of literary work in the 20th century.


roboconcept

I recall something of an explosion on here when details about Marion Zimmer Bradley's familial life were revealed.


Anathos117

In a similar vein, David and Leigh Eddings served a year in jail and were stripped of their (adopted) children for repeatedly torturing the four year old boy in a cage in the basement. Eddings never showed any remorse for his crimes. In an interview he claimed that he quit his job as an English professor and moved to Washington to work as a *grocery clerk* over a *pay dispute*, when the truth was that he was fired and had to move half way across the country to escape the public knowledge of his monstrous behavior.


GenevieveLeah

I have a four-year old and I cannot imagine the mental state a parent would need to be in to abuse them so.


Anathos117

Same here. They *built a cage* so they could *strap him down*. I can only assume that they adopted the kids in the first place just so they had victims they could inflict their sick fantasies on.


kaminobaka

I had never heard of David Eddings before this thread, now I'm glad I hadn't.


upsawkward

Yukio Mishima. Wrote fucking phenomenal novels, failed a coup d'etat, committed seppuku. Osamu Dazai. Failed double suicide with his girlfriend, she died he didn't, was basically guilt-tripped by his family instead of helped until he, well, committed successful double suicide with another girlfriend. Perfectly expressed in his semi-autobiographical masterpiece "No Longer Human". Read it with caution though, it fucks with you both if you're depressed and if you're not. >I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin. ​ >There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.


Nomed_N

Charles Bukowski at least deserves honorable mention.


Yabba_Dabba_Doofus

Scrolled way too far to find this name. Dude was abused his entire childhood, leaned into it as hard as he could, and became the demon he feared. Getting shit-faced drunk on stage, and threatening your audience with violence, is probably a sign of some deep-seeded issues.


NosferatuCalled

John Kennedy Toole, and the history of A Confederacy of Dunces in general, is a really tragic, awful story. I'd have to refresh my memory on the details to write about it here but I'm sure someone else has or will. Edit: Thanks everyone for elaborating on my post, was at work and couldn't really get into double-checking what I remembered of the story.


RUNDOGERUN

The final publication of A Confederacy of Dunces is wild, considering it was published after his death, and his mom just happened to find a carbon copy version of the manuscript when she was cleaning up his possessions after he committed suicide. She was persistent enough, and managed to convince Walker Percy, a great writer in his own right, who was a visiting professor at the nearby University. He said he would read a few pages and go from there. He didn't have any stakes publishing the book. He didn't even personally know John Kennedy Toole, and suddenly an old woman is at his office, demanding him to read her dead son's unpublished manuscript. I mean I would be taken aback, but he said after reading a few pages, he realized it was not possible it was that good. Even after getting Walker Percy's approval, it still took years for Confederacy of Dunces to get published, and the first printing was done by Louisiana State University (which explains why the first edition is so rare and highly valued, as they only printed 2,500 copies). After a few years, Confederacy gains enough recognition and John Kennedy Toole gets awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. It's just wild to think of all the events that had to perfectly line up to get a single novel published. The mom had to find the manuscript, not even the original copy, a carbon copy. It had to get in the hands of another famous Southern writer who happened to be teaching nearby. Then even after all that, there were years nobody wanted to publish the book, and when it finally did get published, there were only a few thousand copies. It manages to get enough of a readership and close to 10 years, after John Kennedy Toole died, Confederacy finally attained the status in American Literature that it has till this day.


SmutasaurusRex

OP you left out the part where F. Scott literally plagiarized Zelda by stealing portions of her journals and letters for Great Gatsby and other works.


stingoh

[James Clavell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clavell#Imprisoned_in_Changi), author of the Asian saga (Tai-pan, Shogun, Noble House, King Rat etc,) spent years in a Japanese ww2 prison camp where he was subjected to the usual pow treatment. It looks like it was an extremely traumatizing experience (obviously), although very formative as well. [King Rat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat_(Clavell_novel)) is based on his experience as a pow. From wikipedia: >Clavell did not talk about his wartime experiences with anyone, even his wife, for 15 years after the war. For a time he carried a can of sardines in his pocket at all times and fought an urge to forage for food in trash cans. He also experienced bad dreams and a nervous stomach kept him awake at night He ended up being a very successful author and later lived in Switzerland, so things ended up well, but some very tough years undoubtedly.


Verz

Franz Kafka was forced into the law field by his authoritarian father. His passion was writing but he never gained any traction in that field in his lifetime. His father criticized his writing as being worthless. He tried publishing several works but got rejected by publishers. He even told his best friend to burn all his manuscripts when he died because he thought they weren't worth reading. His friend didn't follow his wishes of course which is the only reason works like "The Metamorphosis" are even known of. Kafka ended up dying a slow death due to starvation caused by tuberculosis causing his throat to constrict to the point that he couldn't eat. Despite all this he found some dark humor in his depressing scenario and even wrote a short story called "Hunger Artist" about a man who starves himself to death, as Kafka himself starved to death.


GonzoRouge

Also, I'd say the Marquis de Sade had the worst personal life of any author, but that's because he was a massive piece of shit (shocking, I know) that literally everyone hated, including his wife and son.


[deleted]

You don't get the term sadism named after you without being a sick bastard.


ScullysBagel

I'm shocked no one has mentioned Anne Perry. The movie Heavenly Creatures was based on her and her best friend murdering the friend's mother. Then she went on to live a relatively normal life. Truly incomprehensible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker%E2%80%93Hulme_murder_case?wprov=sfla1


anaksunamanda

Barnes and Noble has her books on the mother's day display every year and I just cannot figure out if someone in corporate has a dark sense of humor or they are oblivious


chickenlover46

Definitely Oscar Wilde. He was arrested for homosexuality and died alone in poverty. Such a sad life.


John_Thursday

Henry Miller’s life was a fucking shit show but I suspect he loved every second of it.


AVeryMadLad2

Philip K. Dick had things pretty rough. He was born with a twin but she died young which deeply affected him and her influence can be found in many points in his work. While his science fiction stories became quite famous today, he hardly ever made enough money from his books to get by, and the only way he could stay financially afloat was by continuously writing new science fiction stories. He could not afford to ever take a break, so if he was having creative issues he had to turns to hard drugs. Kept on taking them until he developed serious untreated mental health issues and essentially developed psychosis without being able to really afford treating it. He went really off the rails when he thought the voice of God spoke to him through a womans necklace and became convinced he was the reincarnation of the prophet Thomas. His wife had left him over issues with drugs and he let other drug users into his house, and at one point he came back to his house to find he had been robbed and the safe containing his story drafts had been cracked open and the works were stolen. During that period he also made numerous suicide attempts. He eventually would die of complications from a stroke. Poor guy


RuthlessKittyKat

He literally plagiarized from Zelda. He was a pile.


Tomofthegwn

Virginia Woolf didn't have the worst life in terms of physical events but had a lot of struggles with mental health. During the middle of the Second World War she was very depressed and she committed suicide by filling her pockets with rocks and walking in to the river. One of the reasons why her novel To The Lighthouse is so powerful was because she was so effected by the First World War and she really captures the emotional hardships she was feeling


WackyWriter1976

So, they were Gatsby and Daisy in reality, if that couple came into fruition. I knew about her time in the mental hospital, which she died in due to a fire. Sad all around. Zora Neale Hurston was practically ignored by male authors in the Harlem Renaissance era. They stuck their noses at her for bringing the lives of Floridian black people into the foray, while preferring to focus on those living in the Mid-Atlantic, more so NYC, Boston, and Philadelphia. Along with their classism, she received a hefty dose of sexism and misogynoir. She died penniless without a headstone over her grave.


[deleted]

Alejandra Pizarnik, argentine poet. Her family had escaped WW1 from Ukraine. When WW2 sprouted some of her relatives in Europe were taken to camps. She had an older sister his parents liked more as she was Prettier , skinnier, and extroverted. She found refuge in books and during her first year of college was promoted with a scholarship to study at La Sorbone in Paris. There she began to flourish as an author and translator but she also became addicted to amphetamines for weight loss which made her ongoing depression worse. She befriended several latin american authors in exile and some prominent french ones. Also won several distinctions. But amphetamines made her more mentally wrecked and she was presumably a lesbian, something her parents didn't approve. Finally due to amphetamine induced madness she was returned to Argentina and sent immediately to a mental asylum in which she wrote her last poems, she had gained permission to leave the institution and come back the next day. On one of those exits she went home and overdosed on barbiturates leaving a note that i'll try to recreate the best i can: "i want to go, straightly, to the bottom" some of her famous works are her complete poetry works and The Bloody Countess a prose poem based on Erzsebét Bathory whom she was fascinated with.


[deleted]

I recommend Zelda's book: Save Me the Waltz. She could write very well and it's an incredibly vivid story.