/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12349650]

What authors have the most fascinating life stories?
Surely Dostoevsky is up there.
Side note: is there a book anywhere that is just a collection of biographies of famous authors?

[Anonymous No.12349670]

>>12349650

Rimbaud

[Anonymous No.12349680]

This guy was basically a villain from a spy movie

[Anonymous No.12349704]

>>12349650
Off the top of my head: Jünger, Tolstoy, Orwell, Mishima.

[Anonymous No.12349744]

>>12349650
D'annunzio and MIshima

[Anonymous No.12349813]

Even though Crowley is pretty hated guy around these parts, I can recommend reading his biographies.

Can also recommend his own authagiography called "Confessions"

The guy was literally everywhere, travelled around every possible part of the world (Well not maybe Antarctica) while producing lots of material. Very interesting stuff and met with quite remarkable men. He also most probably was a spy working for the British.

[Anonymous No.12350487]

>>12349813
>Crowley is pretty hated guy around these part
Is he? I thought /lit/ was into edginess and vaguely occult/gnostic stuff - anyway, I was thinking of reading either The Book of the Law or The Book of Lies, which one would you rec?

[Anonymous No.12350521]

>>12350487
I just hate him because he was bald.

[Anonymous No.12350534]

>>12349650
Griboiedov, but let's just not count the ruskies

[Anonymous No.12350621]

There's something about author biographies that just bring out the autism in everyone. Melville's is over 2000 pages long for example, and the definitive one for Dostoevsky is 5 volumes I believe. Not that I'm complaining

[Anonymous No.12350779]

>>12349650
D. H. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Robert Graves
Siegfried Sassoon
Beryl Markham
Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)
Evelyn Waugh

[Anonymous No.12350786]

Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Machiavelli

[Anonymous No.12350798]

>>12349650
Nietzsche and F. Kafka came to mind. it's especially interesting how their lives influenced their works.

[Anonymous No.12350826]

the popularity of the beatniks is based on their biographies, not their actual work

[Anonymous No.12350838]

>>12349680
Who?

[Anonymous No.12351425]

>>12350838
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Parker_Yockey

[Anonymous No.12351443]

>>12349704
I was about to say Mishima. I like when. He got a ragtag band of dissenters together to overthrow the pussy Emperor. What a madman.

[Anonymous No.12352543]

>>12349650
Plotinus

[Anonymous No.12352759]

>>12349650

I'd second F. Kafka specifically because of not only how messy and abusive his life was but how that translated into his work, which he felt was so awkward he wanted it destroyed after his death.

A runner up would certainly be Orwell.

[Anonymous No.12352771]

>>12350487

i'm indifferent to him, but people probably hate him because he was fairly evil, by any reasonable definition of it

[Anonymous No.12352788]

>>12351443
Except he was the most flamboyant example in history of the way fascism attracts homos.

[Anonymous No.12352799]

>>12349650
Barley an author but Malcolm X's autobiography is pretty good my guy. It's kinda amazing how a bit of religious zeal can change a man.

[Anonymous No.12352835]

>>12352771
>fairly evil
He correctly saw the infantilization of modernity and modified his gimmicks to match it. The only really evil thing he ever did was childishly not go out to rescue those idiots on Kanchenjunga and he paid for it the rest of his life. He did stipulate that his was the final word on climbing, they did continue when he said stop, they did get fucked by it and he was being a shitty child by saying he'd taken his socks off so wouldn't go help.

The later quote about 'lol i laughed as you fell' was coping, marketing and doubling down.

[Anonymous No.12352850]

>>12350487
Book of the Law is a pamphlet, not crazily rewarding. It's more of a short manifesto for being an edgy, annoying, quasi-fascist manchild. Which works better if you're rich, but then again, everything does.

[Anonymous No.12352912]

>>12352835

i'm not talking so much about the k2 expedition, i think trying to be a hero in that situation would have been stupid. hell, that event is so interesting to me that i want to write a book about it. but what i'm referring to has to do more with the sexual abuse, and him popularizing rituals that bring for a negative energy. thelemites say that 'under love' are the two words missing from the law intentionally, but i don't buy it.

[Anonymous No.12352925]

desu

[Anonymous No.12352941]

>>12349650

[Anonymous No.12352981]

>>12352925
His WW1 performance was exemplary

[Anonymous No.12353020]

>>12352912
>i think trying to be a hero in that situation would have been stupid
Except that men went out and did try to be heroes, which is heroic enough, and word got out about Crowley's decision not to. Only a kid would fail to see the effect this has on a man.

As for interpretations of Thelema, interpretations show to the tenth decimal place how educated and deep you are, so we should all be careful with that.

Good luck with writing that book, but beware of assuming things as good or evil, one man's evil is another's polite chuckle.

[Anonymous No.12353037]

>>12352925
I used to love finding works created by resentful outsiders, works that were intricate, extensive, containing sweeping negations and cataclysmic conclusions.

Then history showed me the great muddy swirls of bullshit and mayhem they create and i got bone tired of that crap. The rough, crazy and dopey nature of the picknoses behind nazism were just a clear example of what happens when an ideology gives licence to shitheads. What happened in Russia was a bigger Holocaust and the schmucks involved weren't as dishonest.

[Anonymous No.12353042]

>>12352925
Without any political bias, Hitler's life story is incredibly tragic - he did monstrous things but he undoubtedly had a good heart deep inside.

[Anonymous No.12353046]

All the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.12353059]

>>12353042
I agree, very rarely do people set out to do "evil" whatever that means. Even the most wicked often begin with good intentions.

[Anonymous No.12353064]

>>12353042
It's said that Hitler paints on a canvas of human skin at the gates of Hell, just outside.

Heaven won't have him because he didn't care about anyone, Hell resists him because he was trying to be an artist.

[Anonymous No.12353069]

>>12349813
I don't know why everyone who has a fascinating history needs to necessarily be an agent of some organization. The man was just out there.

[Anonymous No.12353157]

>>12353020

>Only a kid would fail to see the effect this has on a man.

thanks for the compliment with the whole kid thing. anyway, a normal person would have lost sleep over it, but he wasn't a normal person, right? i can seem him obsessively replaying the event in his head and getting his feelings hurt by people that misunderstood him, but i can also see him not caring as more likely.

>interpretations show to the tenth decimal place how educated and deep you are, so we should all be careful with that.

the hostility here is interesting to me. are you trying to say that he wasn't an evil person, or that he transcended any definition, so nobody can judge his life? i don't find it too useful to reduce a man's ethical capability as his only by his willpower, especially one that still attempts to live amongst and benefit from other people. if you're going that far to push the limits of what other people can take from you, you should be able to accept the consequences as well.

[Anonymous No.12353473]

Blaise Cendrars

[Anonymous No.12354531]

No many on /lit/ follow him, but Sábato's life was fascinating. He was born dirty poor and managed to go to university and get a doctorate in mathematical physics. In the mean time he joined the communist party and actually managed to reach a high position. Also, he read a shit ton of books during those times. After graduating, he won the most prestigious scholarship at the time and went to France to study physics. He then went to Russia for communist-related stuff and while discussing with some collegues he realized they didn't think of him as a true communist and that they could end up sending him to a gulag at any time, so he abandoned those guys and ended up living on the streets for a few months, until he went back to France to teach physics. After that, he went back to Argentina to dedicate himself to literature. And bare in mind, Argentina was in the middle of a fascist regime when he came back.

[Anonymous No.12354642]

GOETHE

[Anonymous No.12354654]

>>12353064
That's fucking stupid.