“George Bernard Shaw inspired this book. Particularly his condoms.”
The opening sentence of Writers Gone Wild sets the stage for 200-plus pages of wickedly-amusing missives about some of our most beloved authors.
From Dashiell Hammett to Virginia Woolf, author Bill Peschel digs up the wildly-entertaining dirt that makes Writers Gone Wild a fun, fast, delightful read that will keep bibliophiles entertained for hours.
Mixed in with the short notations on authors’ lives are pull-out boxes with bullet points about author habits. You can read about what they liked to drink, dumb things they did and where they are buried. It reminded me a little of celebrity glossies like USWeekly and InTouch.
As a writer, one of my favorite stories was about Norman Mailer, who was highly criticized (and edited) by editors for his use of expletives. According to Peschel, Mailer decided it would take a dozen profanities to make a paragraph effective. He used 20, figuring the editors would cut it down to what he needed. Had he used exactly what he needed, editors would have cut too many.
Trust me when I say I thoroughly enjoyed this. After several years of dealing with editors – mostly in newspapers – it was delightful to find a writer who could outwit them.
Readers can also find out about love affairs, cross-dressing, drunken binges, public humiliation and the strange habits that permeated the underbelly of the literary world.
Writers Gone Wild is the perfect way to start any writers critique group meeting. Think your lives as writers are nuts? Read an excerpt from this book to see if you are as (in)sane as your famous counterparts.
The book also includes an extensive bibliography – much appreciated by this reader. Too many times these types of books don’t bother to credit the sources, or only make a half-hearted attempt to do so. For me, it is sometimes fun to go back to original publications.
These delightfully-titilating, sometimes hysterical factoids about your favorite authors will keep you entertained for hours. Readers who enjoy oddball trivia, or Harry Oliver books, should definitely check it out.
Thank you for your kind words!
A round of applause for your article post.Thanks Again. Awesome.