PREFACE
xiii As a young child: Edward Wyatt, “Public Library Buys a Trove of Burroughs Papers,” New York Times, March 1, 2006.
xiii Frank Castle (not his real name): This encounter, which happened in the summer of 1991, has been altered slightly to obscure the identity of the writer in question.
xv Writers used to be cool: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
1: THE VICE LORD
1 In order to know virtue: Michael Largo, Genius and Heroin (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 251.
2 Contemporary history and tragedy: Thomas Hanna, The Thought and Art of Albert Camus (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1958), p. 83.
3 Forgive my mischief: Maurice Lever, Sade: A Biography, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), p. 58.
4 Sometimes we must sin: Ibid., p. 79.
4 M. de Sade’s escapades: Ibid., p. 102.
5 Your nephew could not be more charming: Gilbert Lély, The Marquis de Sade: A Biography, trans. Alec Brown (London: Elek Books, 1961), p. 49.
6 the most appalling, the most loathsome: Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 561.
6 dreadful brats: Lever, Sade: A Biography, p. 338.
7 A prominent bookseller of the day: Ibid., p. 174.
8 to make them fart: Ibid., p. 195.
9 I pass for the werewolf: Ibid., p. 254.
11 went into prison a man: Ibid., p. 343.
11 the fresh pork of my thoughts: Ronald Hayman, De Sade: A Critical Biography (London: Constable, 1978), p. 141.
11 Imperious, angry, furious: Lever, Sade: A Biography, p. 313.
12 the most impure tale: Geoffrey Gorer, The Marquis de Sade: A Short Account of His Life and Work (New York: Liveright, 1934), p. 89.
12 I have imagined everything: Hayman, De Sade: A Critical Biography, p. 116.
12 truth titillates: Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, p. 929.
12 read it to see how far: Lever, Sade: A Biography, p. 385.
13 either I am or I am not: Ibid., p. 517.
14 to derive pleasure: Oxford Dictionary, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sadism (retrieved June 26, 2012).
14 do not be sorry: Lever, Sade: A Biography, p. 387.
2: THE OPIUM ADDICT
15 By a most unhappy quackery: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “On Toleration (Part II),” The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 20 (London: Smith, Elder, 1869), p. 380.
15 demands legislative interference: Daniel Stuart, ed., Letters from the Lake Poets (London: West, Newman, 1889), p. 181.
18 saw not the truth: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “On Toleration (Part II).”
18 Every person who has witnessed his habits: Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, 2nd ed. (London: Houlston and Stoneman, 1848), p. 373.
18 all the rest had passed away: The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, Complete in One Volume (London: A. and W. Galignani, 1829), p. 54.
19 highly struck with his poem: Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, Vol. 2, 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1828), p. 53.
19 I had been crucified: Earl Leslie Griggs, ed., Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Constable, 1932), p. 110.
20 When I heard of the death of Coleridge: The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, Vol. 26 (Philadelphia: Adam Waldie, 1835), p. 508.
3: THE POPE OF DOPE
21 If once a man indulges himself in murder: Thomas De Quincey, “Second Paper on Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 46 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1839), p. 662.
21 I am fond of solitude: H. A. Page, Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings vol. 1 (London: John Hogg, 1877), p. 75.
21 by your sick mind: Alexander H. Japp, De Quincey Memorials, Vol. 1 (London: William Heinemann, 1891), p. 85.
22 rattling set: Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Reprinted From the First Edition, with Notes of De Quincey’s Conversation by Richard Woodhouse, and Other Additions, ed. Richard Garnett (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885), p. 226.
23 Without your friendship: Thomas De Quincey, A Diary of Thomas De Quincey, 1803, ed. Horace Ainsworth Eaton (London: N. Douglas, 1927), p. 186.
23 My friendship it is not in my power: Japp, De Quincey Memorials, p. 120.
23 enjoy a girl in the fields: Thomas De Quincey, The Works of Thomas De Quincey: 1853–8, Vol. 18, ed. Edmund Baxter (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), p. 35.
23 bought for a penny: Thomas De Quincey (writing anonymously), “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” London Magazine 4 (1821): p. 355.
24 cleverest man: Page, Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings, p. 112.
24 not a well-made man: Thomas De Quincey, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1862), p. 139.
24 high literary name: Page, Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings, p. 109.
24 intellectual benefactor of my species: Japp, De Quincey Memorials, Vol. 2, p. 111.
25 lives only for himself: Sara Hutchinson, The Letters of Sara Hutchinson from 1800 to 1835, ed. Kathleen Coburn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954), p. 37.
25 proved a still greater poet: William Wordsworth, A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1816), p. 26.
25 a better wife: William Angus Knight, The Life of William Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1889), p. 203.
26 aloof from the uproar: De Quincey, “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” p. 361.
26 sights that are abominable: Thomas De Quincey, “Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 57 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1845), p. 747.
26 Nobody will laugh long: Ibid., p. 356.
26 unutterable sorrow: James Gillman, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1838), p. 116.
27 talk is of oxen: Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London: Walter Scott, 1886), p. 2.
27 to be the only member: De Quincey, “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” p. 357.
27 to be the Pope: Thomas De Quincey, The Works of Thomas De Quincey 3rd ed., Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1862), p. 199.
27 renounced the use: De Quincey, Confessions, p. 114.
28 The work must be done: John Ritchie Findlay, Personal Recollections of Thomas De Quincey (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1886), p. 40.
4: THE APOSTLE OF AFFLICTION
29 Problem: bored: Daniel Friedman (via Twitter, 2011).
29 a sensational story: Oliver Harvey, “Lord Byron’s Life of Bling, Booze and Groupie Sex,” Sun, August 18, 2008.
29 neither tall nor short: Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of His Life, Vol. 1 (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1830), p. 63.
30 I cry for nothing: John Murray, ed., Lord Byron’s Correspondence (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), p. 123.
30 an animated conversation: Marguerite Blessington, The Works of Lady Blessington, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838), p. 276.
31 a million advantages over me: Samuel Claggett Chew, The Dramas of Lord Byron: A Critical Study (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1915), p. 88.
31 no indisposition that I know of: Rowland E. Prothero, ed., The Works of 31 Byron: Letters & Journals, Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1898), p. 16.
31 the best of life is over: Leslie Alexis Marchand, ed., Byron’s Letters and Journals: “Famous in My Time”: 1810–1812 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 47–48.
31 I am tolerably sick of vice: Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, Vol. 1, p. 172.
32 outlived all my appetites: Marchand, ed., Byron’s Letters and Journals, p. 48.
33 every table, and Byron courted: Vere Foster, ed., The Two Duchesses (London: Blackie & Son, 1898), p. 376.
33 fame is but like all other pursuits: Marguerite Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (London: Henry Colburn, 1834), pp. 280–281.
33 How very disagreeable it is: Ibid., p. 114.
33 there were days when he seemed more pleased: Ibid.
33 anonymous amatory letters: Ibid., p. 98.
34 I will kneel and be torn from: Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (London: John Murray, 1974), p. 146.
34 I cut the hair too close: Bernard D. N. Grebanier, The Uninhibited Byron (New York: Crown, 1971), p. 117.
34 Any woman can make a man: Murray, ed., Lord Byron’s Correspondence, p. 85.
35 I am about to be married: Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, Vol. 1, 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1828), p. 257.
35 end in hell, or in an unhappy: Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of His Life, Vol. 3, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1833), p. 152.
35 the one I most loved: Peter Gunn, A Biography of Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron’s Half-Sister (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 99.
36 I was unfit for England: Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, Vol. 3, p. 44.
36 Nothing so completely serves: Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron, p. 237.
36 laws are bound to think a man innocent: Ibid., p. 275.
5: THE ROMANTICS
37 Our sweetest songs: Harry Buxton Forman, ed., The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, Vol. 2 (London: Reeves and Turner, 1880), p. 303.
37 Poets have no friends: Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron, p. 58.
38 live on love: Sarah K. Bolton, Famous English Authors of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1890), p. 160.
39 Many innocent girls become the dupes: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), p. 119.
39 wild and unearthly: Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2 (London: Edward Moxon, 1858), pp. 166–7.
40 To promise forever to love: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, with Notes (New York: Wright & Owen, 1831), p. 69.
40 never loved her nor pretended to: Margot Strickland, The Byron Women (London: P. Owen, 1974), p. 133.
41 I saw the hideous phantasm: Julian Marshall, The Life & Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1889), p. 142.
41 chimeras of boundless grandeur: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1891), p. 63.
42 democrat, great lover of mankind: Edmund Blunden, On Shelley (London: Oxford University Press, 1838), p. 43.
43 the writer of some infidel poetry: The Courier, August 5, 1822, p. 3.
44 The impression of the first few minutes: Marguerite Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron, pp. 1–2.
44 done with women: Blessington, The Works of Lady Blessington, Vol. 2, p. 252.
45 have blown my brains out: Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of His Life, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1830), p. 72.
45 composition is a great pain: Ibid., p. 436.
45 those who are intent only on the beaten road: Marguerite Blessington, The Works of Lady Blessington, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838), p. 265.
45 speculations of those mere dreamers: Rowland E. Prothero, ed., The Works of Lord Byron: Letters & Journals, Vol. 3 (London: John Murray, 1899), p. 405.
45 If I had to live over again: Rowland E. Prothero, ed., The Works of Lord Byron: Letters & Journals, Vol. 5(London: John Murray, 1904), p. 456.
46 genius, like greatness: Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron, p. 184.
6: AMERICAN GOTHIC
47 Men have called me mad: Edgar Allan Poe, “Eleonora,” The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 649.
47 The history of American writers: Alfred Kazin, “‘The Giant Killer’: Drink and the American Writer,” Commentary (March 1976): 49.
48 a worm inside that would not die: Edgar Allan Poe, Histoires Extraordinaires par Edgar Poe, trans. and introduction, Charles Baudelaire (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1856), p. xxvi.
48 I have absolutely no pleasure: John H. Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions (London: Ward, Lock, Bowden, 1891), pp. 174–175.
48 I do believe God gave me a spark of genius: Mary Elizabeth Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe, The Man (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1926), p. xi.
49 I could not love except where: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 83.
49 His whole nature was reversed: Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe with a Memoir, Vol. 1 (New York: Bedfield, 1857), p. xvii.
50 Edgar A. Perry: G. E. Woodberry, “Poe’s Legendary Years,” Atlantic Monthly 54 (1884): 819.
50 I left West Point two days ago: Dwight Thomas and David Kelly Jackson, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), p. 115.
50 I went to bed and wept through: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 393.
51 I am perishing: John Ward Ostrom, ed., The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1 (New York: Gordian Press, 1966), p. 50.
51 Mr. Poe was a fine gentleman when he was sober: Thomas and Jackson, The Poe Log, p. 168.
52 I believe that I am making a sensation: William Fearing Gill, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1880), p. 120.
52 unless he is famous: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 313.
53 women fell under his fascination: Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Selections From the Autobiography of Elizabeth Oakes (Prince) Smith (New York: Arno Press, 1980), p. 88.
53 My feelings at this moment: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 103.
53 I never heard him speak: H. L. Mencken, ed., The American Mercury, Vol. 29 (New York: B. W. Huebsch), p. 452.
53 I will be your guardian angel: Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe, the Man, Vol. 2, p. 111.
53 The death of a beautiful woman: Franklin Verzelius Newton Painter, Introduction to American Literature (Boston: Sibley & Ducker, 1897), p. 381.
53 Six years ago, a wife: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 174.
54 I am getting better, and may add: Ibid., p. 318.
54 did violence to my own heart: James A. Harrison, ed., The Last Letters of Edgar Allan Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), p. 22.
54 Ah, how profound is my love for you: Ingram, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, p. 375.
55 It is no use to reason with me now: John Ward Ostrom, ed., The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 2 (New York: Gordian Press, 1966), p. 452.
55 rather the worse for wear: John Howard Raymond, Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1881), p. 328.
55 almost a suicide: Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire on Poe: Critical Papers, trans. Lois and Francis E. Jr. Hyslop (State College, Pennsylvania: Bald Eagle Press, 1952), p. 101.
55 alcohol, cholera, drugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe (retrieved June 27, 2012).
56 Hic tandemi felicis: Eugene L. Didler, “The Grave of Poe,” Appleton’s Journal, January 27, 1872.
56 Edgar Allan Poe is dead: Rufus Griswold (writing as “Ludwig”), “Death of Edgar Allan Poe,” New York Daily Tribune, October 9, 1849, p. 2.
7: THE REALISTS
57 Vocations which we wanted to pursue: Eugene Ehrlich and Marshall De Bruhl, The International Thesaurus of Quotations (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 730.
57 Don’t force me to do anything: Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004). p. 90.
57 Above all else, we were artists: Ibid., p. 91.
58 Women one and all have condemned me: Honoré de Balzac, The Magic Skin and Other Stories, trans. Ellen Marriage (Boston: Dana Estes, 1899), p. 81.
58 immense and sole desires: Katharine Prescott Wormeley, A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892), p. 44.
59 The pleasure of striking out: Balzac, The Magic Skin and Other Stories, p. 88.
59 do anything, no matter what: Wormeley, A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac, p. 40.
60 I am about to become a genius: Ibid., p. 83.
60 Coffee is a great power in my life: Honoré de Balzac, “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” trans. Robert Onopa, Michigan Quarterly Review 35, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 273.
60 heard some celestial voices: Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion, p. 96.
60 The streets of Paris possess human qualities: Samuel Rogers, Balzac & the Novel (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), p. 45.
61 The majority of husbands: Robert I. Fitzhenry, The Harper Book of Quotations (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 280.
61 not precisely beautiful: Mary F. Sandars, Honoré de Balzac: His Life and Writings (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905), p. 171.
61 All great men are monsters: Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions: The Two Poets Eve and David, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893), p. 365.
61 beautiful unknown women: Graham Robb, Balzac: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), p. 281.
61 rather tiresome: Ibid.
62 Since you have read his novels: Ibid., p. 282.
62 My heart, soul, and ambition: Sandars, Honoré de Balzac: His Life and Writings, p. 325.
62 Three days ago I married: Ibid., p. 339.
63 There are no noble subjects: Gustave Flaubert, The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert, trans. Francis Steegmuller (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954), p. 131.
63 I pass entire weeks: Aimee L. McKenzie, trans., The George Sand–Gustave Flaubert Letters (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922), p. 46.
64 that poor sucker Flaubert: Marion Capron, Dorothy Parker, The Art of Fiction No. 13, The Paris Review (Summer 1956).
64 all without taking my cigar out of my mouth: Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, The Goncourt Journals, 1851–1870 (New York: Doubleday, 1958), p. 198.
64 this mode of ejaculation: Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion, p. 93.
64 Hatred of the bourgeois: McKenzie, trans., The George Sand–Gustave Flaubert Letters, p. 66.
65 Does the reading of such a book: Gustave Flaubert, The Works of Gustave Flaubert (New York: Walter J. Black, 1904), p. 277.
65 You can calculate the worth of a man: Elizabeth M. Knowles, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (London: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 316.
65 What a brave man she was: Lady Ritchie, Blackstick Papers (London: Smith, Elder, 1908), p. 243.
66 too imperious a machine: Natalie Datlof, Jeanne Fuchs, and David A. Powell, The World of George Sand (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), p. xix.
66 There is only one happiness in life: André Maurois, Lélia: The Life of George Sand (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 482.
66 in the theater or in your bed: Renee Winegarten, The Double Life of George Sand, Woman and Writer (New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 116.
66 She has a grasp of mind: E. C. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. 2 (Leipzig, Germany: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1857), p. 48.
67 brother George: Wormeley, A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac, p. 254.
67 Spare yourself a little: McKenzie, trans., The George Sand–Gustave Flaubert Letters, p. 48.
67 Not to love is to cease to live: Ibid., p. 213.
67 charming profession: Ibid., p. 46.
67 I believe that the crowd: Ibid., p. 208.
67 The world will know and understand: Curtis Cate, George Sand: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), p. 276.
8: THE FLESHLY SCHOOL
69 in evil lies all pleasure: F. W. J. Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned: A Biography (New York: Bloomsbury Reader, 2011), Kindle edition: location 4213.
69 Women write and write: Charles Baudelaire, Fatal Destinies: The Edgar Poe Essays, trans. Joan Fiedler Mele (Woodhaven, NY: Cross Country Press, 1981), p. 37.
69 dashes off her masterpieces: Warren U. Ober, ed., The Enigma of Poe (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1969), p. 130.
70 At school I read: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle location 682.
70 The moment has come: A. E. Carter, Charles Baudelaire (Woodbridge, CT: Twayne Publishers, 1977), p. 31.
71 weakness for loose ladies: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle location 755.
71 mistress of mistresses: Charles Baudelaire, The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire (New York: Brentano’s, 1919), p. 19.
72 so as to have peace and quiet: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle location 2411.
72 I am truly glad: Charles Baudelaire, The Letters of Charles Baudelaire to His Mother (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1928), p. 45.
72 had some qualities: Ibid., pp. 44–45.
73 Her legs were spread out: Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, trans. Jonathan Culler (London: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 59.
73 the way to rejuvenate Romanticism: Margaret Gilman, The Idea of Poetry in France (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 246.
73 refinements of excessive civilization: Benjamin R. Barber, The Artist and Political Vision (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1982), p. 32.
73 carcass literature: Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, p. xix.
73 Never, in the space of so few pages: Enid Starkie, Baudelaire (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 313.
74 in mourning for Les fleurs du mal: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle edition: location 3177.
74 It is impossible to scan any newspaper: Charles Baudelaire, The Essence of Laughter and Other Essays, Journals, and Letters, trans. Peter Quennell (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 195.
74 Always you join with the mob: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle location 3801.
75 I detest Paris: Ibid., location 3622.
75 an inner weight of woe: Jay Parini, Theodore Roethke, An American Romantic (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), p. 150.
75 One must always be intoxicated: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems, ed. Joseph M. Bernstein (New York: Citadel Press, 1947), p. 131.
76 Here in this world: Edward K. Kaplan, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), p. 32.
76 poisonous stimulants seem to me: Charles Baudelaire, On Wine and Hashish, trans. Andrew Brown (London: Hesperus, 2002), p. 66.
76 Hashish, like all other solitary delights: Baudelaire, The Essence of Laughter and Other Essays, Journals, and Letters, p. 104.
77 a dandy of the brothel: Clarence R. Decker, The Victorian Conscience (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1977), p. 68.
77 to blow out his brains: Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned, Kindle location 3716.
78 now you can get dressed again: Ibid., location 4192.
78 won himself a name in literature: Ibid., location 725.
9: THE FRENCH DECADENTS
81 preposterously French: Victor Plarr, Ernest Dowson 1888–1897 (New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1919), p. 22.
81 disregard everything our parents have taught us: Compton Mackenzie, Robert Louis Stevenson (London: Chapman and Hall, 1950), p. 11.
81 my whole life a failure: Ernest Mehew, ed., Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 29.
81 the heaviest affliction: Ibid., p. 29.
82 bewilder the middle classes: Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties (London: Kennerly, 1914), p. 161.
82 an infant Shakespeare: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 38 (1911): p. 371.
82 You have caused my misfortune: Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, trans. Oliver Bernard (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), p. 19.
83 the sufferings are enormous: Richard Ellman, The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds in Modern Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 203.
83 Come, dear great soul: Stefan Zweig, Paul Verlaine, trans. O. F. Theis (Boston: Luce, 1913), p. 39.
83 It was upon absinthe that I threw myself: Barnaby Conrad, Absinthe: History in a Bottle (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996), p. 25.
84 The first stage of absinthe: Ibid., p. viii.
84 in very respectable places: Phil Baker, The Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History (New York: Grove Press, 2003), p. 72.
84 diabolical powers of seduction: Ibid., p. 67.
85 People are saying I’m a pederast: Graham Robb, Rimbaud (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 210.
85 Have you any idea how ridiculous you look: Ibid., p. 213.
85 I retaliated, because I can assure you: Ibid.
86 London, Friday afternoon: Ibid., p. 214.
86 blow his brains out: Joanna Richardson, Verlaine (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 116.
86 you have disgraced yourself with Arthur: Robb, Rimbaud, p. 217.
87 It’s for you, for me: Jean Marie Carré, A Season in Hell: The Life of Arthur Rimbaud (New York: Macaulay, 1931), p. 138.
87 He was still trying to prevent me: Robb, Rimbaud, p. 220.
88 penis is short: Ibid., p. 224.
88 my heart, which beats only for you: Paul Verlaine, “Green,” Topic, no. 35 (Washington, PA: Washington and Jefferson College, 1981), p. 31.
90 prince of poets: The Contemporary Review, Vol. 74 (London: Ibister, 1898), p. 892.
10: THE ENGLISH DECADENTS
91 alcohol taken in sufficient quantity: Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 562.
91 I never could quite accustom myself: Ellman, Oscar Wilde, p. 40.
91 Dowson is very talented: Jad Adams, Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), p. 145.
92 Whisky and beer for fools: Desmond Flower and Henry Maas, eds., The Letters of Ernest Dowson (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1967), p. 441.
92 The sight of young Englishmen: Plarr, Ernest Dowson 1888–1897, p. 23.
92 We will cut a long story short: Ibid., p. 103.
93 Absinthe has the power of the magicians: Flower and Maas, eds., The Letters of Ernest Dowson, p. 441.
93 exceedingly violent poison: Gustave Flaubert, The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Jacques Barzun (New York: New Directions, 1967), p. 13.
93 conquered my neuralgia: Flower and Maas, eds., The Letters of Ernest Dowson, p. 175.
93 you here again, Mr. Dowson: Adams, Madder Music, Stronger Wine, p. 102.
93 sober, he was the most gentle: Arthur Symons, Studies in Prose and Verse (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922), p. 267.
93 to be always a little drunk: Adams, Madder Music, Stronger Wine, p. 23.
94 I tighten my belt: Ibid., p. 117.
94 so persistently and perversely wonderful: Ibid., p. 144.
94 one of the high priests: H. Montgomery Hyde, ed., The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (London: University Press, 1948), p. 12.
95 Nothing but my genius: H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde: A Biography (London: Methuen, 1975), p. 63.
95 We spend our days: Oscar Wilde, The Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde: What Never Dies, trans. Henry Zick (New York: Pearson, 1909), p. 88.
95 He dressed as probably no grown man: Harry Paul Jeffers, Diamond Jim Brady: Prince of the Gilded Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), p. 50.
95 caricature is the tribute: Robert Andrews, ed., The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 39.
96 the power of my affection for Oscar Wilde: Hyde, Oscar Wilde: A Biography, p. 213.
96 posing as somdomite: Ibid., p. 252.
97 blackmailers and male prostitutes: Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (New York: Basic Books, 2006), p. 381
97 a particularly plain boy: Gustaaf Johannes Renier, Oscar Wilde (Edinburgh: P. Davies Ltd., 1933), p. 115.
97 no such thing as a moral: Hyde, ed., The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, p. 109.
97 the train has gone: Ibid., p. 152.
98 the love that dare not speak its name: Ibid., p. 209.
98 procurer of young men: Ibid., p. 123.
98 there is not a man or woman: Gary Schmidgall, The Stranger Wilde (New York: Dutton, 1994), p. 273.
99 We are not Realists, or Romanticists: Arthur Symons, “Editorial Note,” The Savoy, no. 1 (London: Leonard Smithers, 1896), unnumbered page.
99 it was like cold mutton: Hyde, ed., The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, p. 311.
100 The Morgue yawns for me: Oscar Wilde, The Letters of Oscar Wilde, trans. Rupert Hart-Davis (London: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), p. 708.
100 You’ll kill yourself, Oscar: Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions, Vol. 2 (New York: Frank Harris, 1918), p. 538.
100 Literature has failed for me: Adams, Madder Music, Stronger Wine, p. 166.
101 I have no lungs left to speak of: Plarr, Ernest Dowson 1888–1897, p. 23.
101 supremely unhappy: The Book Lover: A Magazine of Book Lore, Vol. 2 (San Francisco: Book-Lover Press, 1901), p. 88.
11: THE LOST GENERATION
103 I was drunk for many years: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2009), p. 191.
103 All gods dead: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), p. 304.
104 to human happiness: Thomas C. Rowe, Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs: Money Down a Rat Hole (New York: Haworth Press, 2006), p. 14–15.
104 Prohibition was a personal affront: Elizabeth Anderson and Gerald R. Kelly, Miss Elizabeth (New York: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 90.
105 You are all a lost generation: Jeffrey Meyers, Ernest Hemingway: The Critical Heritage (London: Psychology Press, 1997), p. 360.
105 dead within two: Andrew Turnbull, ed., The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1963), p. 457.
105 He wasn’t popular with his schoolmates: Atlantic Monthly 186 (1950): 70.
105 one complete birthday cake: Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Avon Books, 1974), p. 34.
106 an outbreak of new heroines: Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Time: A Miscellany (Kent State, OH: Kent State University Press, 1971), p. 264.
106 The uncertainties of 1919: Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, p. 87.
107 after a few moments of inane conversation: Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Time, p. 266.
107 the most attractive type in America: Matthew Joseph Bruccoli and Judith Baughman, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), p. 31.
107 tried to drink myself to death: Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up, p. 253.
107 a rather pleasant picture: Bruccoli and Baughman, eds., Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 59.
108 We were married and we’ve lived: Ibid., p. 34.
108 too ostentatious for words: Leslie Frewin, The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 71.
108 That young man must be mad: Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 155.
109 There’s no great literary tradition: The Saturday Review 43 (1960): 54.
109 If I knew anything: Bruccoli and Baughman, eds., Conversations With F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 8–9.
109 riding in a taxi one afternoon: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” in Alexander Klein, ed., The Empire City: A Treasury of New York (New York: Ayer, 1971), p. 429.
110 because it seemed more fun: Atlantic Monthly 187 (1951): 66.
110 $4000 a screw: Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters (New York: Scribner’s, 1994), p. 58.
110 You could have and can make enough: Carlos Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (New York: Simon & Schuster), p. 307.
110 The public always associates the author: Bruccoli and Baughman, eds., Conversations With F. Scott Fitzgerald, p. 20.
110 narcotics are deadening to work: Ibid., p. 21.
111 The popular picture of a blond boy: Alfred Kazin, ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work (New York: World Publishing Co., 1951), p. 69.
111 The tempo of the city had changed: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Lost City,” p. 430.
111 It was very strange the way: Jay McInerney, “Bright Lights, Bad Reviews,” Salon.com, http://www1.salon.com/weekly/mcinerney2960527.html (retrieved April 26, 2012).
112 must have an utter confidence: Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Time, p. 296.
112 Our sexual relations were very pleasant: Sally Cline, Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice In Paradise (New York: Arcade, 2004), p. 329.
112 Of course you’re a rummy: Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, p. 408.
112 the well-known alcoholic: Saturday Review 10 (1984): xviii.
113 I have drunk too much: Andrew Turnbull, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner’s, 1963), p. 254.
113 The assumption that all my troubles: Ibid., p. 397.
114 third-rate writer: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), p. 199.
114 I am sorry too that there: Ibid., p. 239.
115 I shall never forget the tragic: Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 285.
115 Scott died inside himself: Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, p. 527.
115 balls into the sea: Ibid., p. 428.
115 When you once get to the point: Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 298.
115 You know as well as I do: Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Time, p. 299.
116 the last tired effort of a man: Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, p. 312.
116 The poor son of a bitch: Barry Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words (New York: Taylor Trade, 2004), p. 176.
116 The story of their marriage: Biography: F. Scott Fitzgerald. A&E Home Video, 1998. Videocassette.
12: FLAPPER VERSE
117 I don’t care what is written about me: Michael Largo, Genius and Heroin(New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 218; although this quote is widely attributed to Dorothy Parker, I couldn’t find any evidence she ever wrote or spoke these words—but it sounds like something she would have said, and she would undoubtedly have been amused by the irony of its widespread attribution to her.
117 the quickest tongue imaginable: Leslie Frewin, The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 29.
118 five minutes: Ibid., p. 49.
118 She commenced drinking alone: Dorothy Parker, “Big Blonde,” Marion Meade, ed., The Portable Dorothy Parker (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 193.
119 Just something light and easy: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 135.
119 One more drink: Ibid., p. 45.
119 putting all my eggs in one bastard: Ibid., p. 80.
119 The trouble was Eddie: Ibid., p. 138.
119 if you don’t stop this sort of thing: John Keats, You Might As Well Live (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), p. 104.
119 I’d rather have a bottle: Eric Grzymkowski, The Quotable A**hole (New York: Adams Media, 2011), p. 57; as stated in the main text, this is another likely misattribution. Other sources have attributed it to W. C. Fields, though that’s also suspect.
120 Everybody did that then: Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (New York: Villard Books, 1988), p. 164.
120 the greatest living writer of short stories: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 64.
120 Maybe this would do better: Ibid., p. 64–65.
120 I have just thrown away my only means: Ibid., p. 180.
121 flapper verse: New York Times Book Review, March 27, 1927, p. 6.
121 Nothing in her life became her: Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, p. 173.
121 I was following in the exquisite footsteps: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 105.
121 in America it has always been: Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), p. xiv.
122 you have a gorgeous red mouth: Ibid., p. 83.
122 the most beautiful and interesting play: Ibid., p. 141.
122 Those were the real giants: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 33.
123 the internationally known author: Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, p. 197.
123 She was very blond: Ibid., p. 90.
124 Why can’t you be funny again: Ibid., p. 304.
125 not dangerous enough: Natalie S. Robins, Alien Link: The FBI’s War on Freedom of Expression (New York: William Morrow, 1992), p. 252.
125 What are you going to do when: Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, p. 339.
125 stand between the poem and the reader: Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, trans. Edna St. Vincent Millay and George Dillon (New York: Harper, 1936), p. xiv.
126 I’m not going to live just in order to be one day older tomorrow: Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, p. 266.
126 a person who has been as wicked as I have been: Ibid., p. 268.
126 She had so changed: Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952), p. 784.
127 Get me a new husband: Frewin, The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker, p. 289.
127 I’m betraying my talent: Ibid., p. 143.
128 Promises, promises: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 136.
128 perfectly wonderful: Ibid.
13: BULLFIGHTING AND BULLSHIT
129 In order to write about life: A. E. Hotchner, ed., The Good Life According to Hemingway (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 12.
129 You have to work hard to deserve: “ … and the short words,” Printers’ Ink 243 (1953): 85.
130 Ernestine: Carl P. Eby, Hemingway’s Fetishism (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1999), p. 98.
130 a silly front: Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1929), p. 24.
130 with both knees shot thru: Constance Cappel Montgomery, Hemingway in Michigan (New York: Fleet Publishing, 1966), p. 113.
131 of great tragic interest: Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 145.
131 A Greater Gatsby: Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, p. 231.
131 When a man marries his mistress: Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Mistresses (Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 2003), p. 5.
132 I’ll probably go the same way: Madelaine Hemingway Miller, Ernie: Hemingway’s Sister “Sunny” Remembers (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975), p. 115.
132 began to drink more compulsively than ever: Tom Dardis, The Thirsty Muse (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), p. 181.
132 Got tight last night: Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1999), p. 206.
132 I have spent all my life drinking: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 157.
132 all bullfighting and bullshit: Meyers, Hemingway, p. 164.
133 What did he fear: Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 268.
133 Happiness in intelligent people: Hotchner, ed., The Good Life According to Hemingway, p. 117.
133 one marriage I regret: A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2005), p. 87.
133 I never wanted to get married: Ibid., p. 87.
134 under fire in combat areas: Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner’s, 1969), p. 462.
134 His injuries from the second crash: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 198.
134 If you keep on drinking this way: Noberto Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba (Seacaucus, NJ: L. Stuart, 1984), p. 63.
135 Drinking was as natural as eating: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, ed. Seán Hemingway (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 142.
135 I have spoken too long for a writer: Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, ed., Conversations with Ernest Hemingway (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), p. 196.
135 Unlike your baseball player: A. E. Hotchner, “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds,” New York Times, July 1, 2011.
135 quite as nervously broken down: Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography, p. 278.
135 It’s the worst hell: Hotchner, “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds.”
136 The FBI’s got them going over my account: Ibid.
136 he often spoke of destroying himself: Ibid.
136 in January he called me: Ibid.
136 This man, who had stood his ground: Ibid.
136 turned on him: Ibid.
137 Just because you’re paranoid: Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Alfred R. Shapiro, The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 164; while this saying is widely attributed to Joseph Heller, the phrase does not appear in his novel Catch-22—rather, it appears in Buck Henry’s screenplay for the 1970 film adaptation.
137 Beginning in the 1940s: Hotchner, “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds.”
137 Man can be destroyed: Ibid.
137 I spend a hell of a lot of time killing: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, p. 139.
138 the Hemingway Defense: Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 87.
14: THE SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN
139 Pouring out liquor: Joseph Leo Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 199.
139 Civilization begins with: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 7.
139 Bill Faulkner had arrived: Howard Mumford Jones and Walter B. Rideout, eds., Letters of Sherwood Anderson (New York: Little, Brown, 1953), p. 252.
140 somewhat in absentia: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 57.
140 Either way suits me: Frederick John Hoffman and Olga W. Vickery, William Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), p. 96.
141 the greatest writer we have: Day, ed., Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words, p. 67.
141 I am the best in America: Michael Gresset, A Faulkner Chronology (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), p. 52.
141 Pappy was getting ready: Stephen B. Oates, William Faulkner: The Man and the Artist (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 231.
141 I usually write at night: M. Thomas Inge, Conversations with William Faulkner (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), p. 21.
141 I get sore at Faulkner: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 204.
142 There is no such thing as bad whiskey: Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography, p. 357.
142 Never ask me why: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 87.
142 his powerful and artistically unique: Bernard S. Schlessinger and June H. Schlessinger, The Who’s Who of Nobel Prize Winners, 1901–1995 (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1996), p. 73.
143 extremely mean and stupid horses: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson, ed. Jann Wenner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 517.
143 The great ones die, die: Paul L. Mariani, Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 379.
15: DEATHS AND ENTRANCES
145 Do not go gentle: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” The Poems of Dylan Thomas, ed. Daniel Jones (New York: New Directions, 2003), p. 239.
145 I’ll never forget being taken: New York in the Fifties. Dir. Betsy Blankenbaker. First Run Features, 2001. DVD.
145 The first poems I knew: Paul Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2000), p. 25.
146 difficult to differentiate: Walford Davies, ed., Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1971), p. 122.
146 He was determined to drink: Cyril Connolly, Previous Convictions (London: H. Hamilton, 1963), p. 326.
148 You’re nothing but a lot: Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography, p. 200.
149 Would he arrive only to break down: Elizabeth Hardwick, A View of My Own: Essays in Literature and Society (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962), p. 104.
149 Nobody ever needed encouragement: Andrew Lycett, Dylan Thomas: A New Life (New York: Overlook Press, 2004), p. 286.
149 To touch the titties: Shelley Winters, Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (New York: Pocket Books, 1990), p. 24.
149 I do not believe it’s necessary: Ibid., p. 25.
149 rude, drunken behavior: Ibid., p. 34.
149 When one burns one’s bridges: Dylan Thomas and Donald F. Taylor, The Doctor and the Devils (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1955), p. 9; the actual quote in this script reads, “When one burns one’s boats,” though it is widely misquoted as “bridges.”
150 They ought to know what he’s really like in America: John Malcom Brinnin, Dylan Thomas in America: An Intimate Journal, Kindle edition, location 1705.
150 an overgrown baby: John Malcolm Brinnin, Sextet: T.S. Eliot and Truman Capote and Others (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1981), p. 70.
150 borrows with no thought of: “Books: Welsh Rare One,” Time, April 6, 1953.
150 it was all over: Dan Wakefield, New York in the Fifties (New York: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1992), p. 128.
150 That kid is going to kill himself: Brinnin, Dylan Thomas in America, Kindle location 1182.
151 I truly want to die: Ibid., location 4006.
151 eighteen straight whiskies: John Malcom Brinnin, Dylan Thomas in America: An Intimate Journal (London: Arlington Books, 1988), p. 272.
16: THE BEAT GENERATION
154 When the paint dried: Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2002), p. 2.
155 absurdity of life in the United States: Read all about their sex- and drug-fueled exploits in my first book, Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love (Harper Perennial, 2011).
155 American existentialists: Norman Mailer, The White Negro (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1957), page number unknown.
155 sitting around trying to think: Wakefield, New York in the Fifties, p. 163.
155 Our heroes were writers: New York in the Fifties, directed by Betsy Blankenbaker (First Run Features, 2001), DVD.
155 was like Paris in the twenties: Alice Denham, Sleeping With Bad Boys (Las Vegas, NV: Book Republic Press, 2006), p. 59.
156 one of the three most dangerous: Marcus Boon, The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 259.
156 The people here see more visions: Barry Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), p. 121.
157 New Vision: Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography, p. 58.
157 There wouldn’t have been any Beat Generation: Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011), DVD; quote is from the bonus features.
157 I just can’t stand it: Colby Buzzell, Lost in America (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), p. 41.
157 What a great city New York is: Ann Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940–1956 (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), p. 130.
159 Each of Kerouac’s books: Ann Charters, Kerouac: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1994), p. 159.
159 Benny has made me see a lot: Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940–1956, p. 100.
160 I saw the best minds: Allen Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography, Barry Miles, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 3.
160 The period of euphoria: William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 2009), p. 225.
160 Just as, more than any other novel: Kurt Hemmer, ed., Encyclopedia of Beat Literature (New York: InfoBase Publishing, 2007), p. 247.
160 He didn’t object to being famous: What Happened to Kerouac?, directed by Lewis MacAdams and Richard Lerner (Shout Factory Theater, 2003), DVD.
160 People knew him all over the Village: Ibid.
160 I hitchhiked and starved: Holly George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (New York: Hyperion Books, 2000), p. 119.
161 no wonder Hemingway: Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957–1969, p. 169.
161 I’m Jack Kerouac: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 132.
161 Guys like Neal: Charles E. Jarvis, Visions of Kerouac (Lowell, MA: Ithaca Press, 1974), p. 129.
162 I’m Catholic and I can’t: Steven Kates, The Quotable Drunkard (New York: Adams Media, 2011), p. 213.
162 Jack liked his scotch: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 134.
162 learned one of the unwritten rules: Ibid., p. 133.
17: JUNKY
163 Artists, to my mind: Ann Charters, The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, Vol. 1 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1983), p. xiii.
163 Morphine hits the backs of the legs: William S. Burroughs, Junky (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 7.
163 The needle is not important: William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 2009), p. 225.
164 I can’t watch this: James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg, eds., Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2000), p. 42.
165 I am forced to the appalling conclusion: William S. Burroughs, Queer (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. xxii.
165 He shot like he wrote: Thompson, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, p. 551.
165 Well, why don’t you: Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg in America (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 42.
166 A barrier had been broken: Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, p. 168.
166 glorification of madness: Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography, p. 530.
166 who let themselves be fucked: Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, p. 4.
166 filthy, vulgar, obscene: Ibid., p. 173.
167 Would there be any freedom of press: Bill Morgan and Nancy Joyce Peters, Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2006), p. 198.
167 Disgusting,' they said: David S. Willis, “Naked Lunch at 50,” Beatdom, no, 5 (2010): 12.
168 he romanticized drug use: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser (Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011), DVD.
168 When I was a kid: Martin Clarke, Kurt Cobain: The Cobain Dossier revised and updated edition (New York: Plexus Publishing, 2006), pp. 89–90.
168 There’s something wrong: Spencer Kansa, “The Rock God,” Beatdom, no. 7 (2010): p. 25.
169 The thing I remember about: Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2004), p. 338.
18: DEAD POETS SOCIETY
171 Even without wars: Anne Sexton, “Hurry Up Please It’s Time,” The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 393
171 murderous and suicidal: Eric Maisel, The Van Gogh Blues (New York: Rodale, 2002), p. 138.
171 made passes at women: The Poetry Review, Vol. 73 (Poetry Society of America, 1983), p. 6.
172 Dylan murdered himself: Paul L. Mariani, Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 274.
172 been said for sobriety: John Berryman, “57,” The Dream Songs (New York: Macmillan, 2007), p. 64.
173 best students: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 272.
173 Prostitution: Dawn M. Skorczewski, ed., An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. xvi.
173 I wanted to cuddle: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011), p. 89.
174 Any demand is too much: Ibid.
174 “kill-me” pills: Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 165.
174 There’s a difference between: Ibid.
174 I ought to stop taking: Ibid., p. 210.
174 Poetry led me by the hand: Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames, eds., Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), p. 335.
174 staying in shape: Anne Sexton, “The Addict,” The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 165.
175 Whisky and ink: Jane Howard, “Whisky and Ink, Whisky and Ink,” Life, July 21, 1967, p. 68.
175 When he first walked in: Ibid.
175 a man alone in a room: Ibid., p. 70.
175 I should know women: Ibid., p. 76.
175 would be bothersome: Ibid.
175 spinsters or lesbians: Ibid., p. 75.
175 He sweats a lot: Ibid., p. 70.
177 the way Americans mistreated: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 333.
177 every right to be disturbed: Jeffrey Meyers, Manic Power (New York: Arbor House, 1987), p. 13.
177 payment: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 385.
177 We have reason to be afraid: Howard, “Whisky and Ink, Whisky and Ink,” p. 76.
177 poor son of a bitch: Scott Donaldson, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 461.
177 given the chance: Karen V. Kukil, ed., The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962 (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 209.
177 That death was mine: Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography, p. 225.
178 O my love Kate: Steve Marsh, “Homage to Mister Berryman,” Mpls St Paul Magazine (September 2008).
178 interesting poetess: Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen (MGM, 2000), DVD.
179 What ended that was Bob Dylan: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
179 deep and moving work: Eugene Pool, “Anne Sexton, Her Kind Mix Poetry with Music,” The Boston Globe (May 27, 1969).
179 young upstart: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 445.
19: THE MERRY PRANKSTERS
181 People don’t want other people: Scott MacFarlane, The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 15.
181 the whole gang around: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 361.
182 I’ve seen God: Lewis Hyde, ed., On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), p. 126.
183 Acid is just a chemical illusion: Tom Underwood and Chuck Miller, eds., Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), p. 43.
183 a great new American novelist: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: The Viking Critical Edition, ed. John Clark Pratt (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 332.
184 I was too young: Rob Elder, “Down on the Peacock Farm,” Salon.com (November 16, 2001), http://www.salon.com/2001/11/16/kesey99/(retrieved July 2, 2012).
184 I write all the time: Magic Trip, directed by Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood (Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2011), DVD.
184 The bravest man in America: Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 261.
184 Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior: Todd Brendan Fahey, “Comes Spake the Cuckoo,” Far Gone Books (1992), http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html (retrieved July 2, 2012).
185 Go in peace: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 240.
185 used to think we were going to win: Lawrence Gerald, “A 1992 New York Interview with Ken Kesey,” SirBacon.org, http://www.sirbacon.org/4membersonly/kesey.htm (retrieved July 2, 2012).
185 We’re only a small number: Ibid.
20: THE NEW JOURNALISTS
187 I’m an alcoholic: M. Thomas Inge, ed., Truman Capote: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987), p. 364.
187 Part of me thought it was: Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 119.
188 that awful man who stabbed: Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, p. 367.
188 prime the pump: Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 19.
188 not a weekend went by: Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), p. 182.
189 Take off your clothes: Denham, Sleeping With Bad Boys, p. 53.
189 a good night for you two: Ibid.
189 I tried to remember what: Ibid.
190 You don’t know anything about a woman: Michael Lennon and Donna Pedro Lennon, Norman Mailer: Works and Days (Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press, 2000), p. 114.
190 a tremendously sexy man: Wakefield, New York in the Fifties, p. 148.
190 enemy of birth control: Charles McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer with a Matching Ego, Dies at 84,” New York Times, November 11, 2007.
190 a really exciting: Dissent 7, no. 1 (1960): 392.
191 attacked him with a hammer: Sally Beauman, “Norman Mailer, Movie Maker,” New York, August 19, 1968, p. 56.
191 He is a man whose faults: Gore Vidal, Sex, Death, and Money (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), p. 178.
191 He could reliably be counted on: McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer.”
191 I like to talk on TV: Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans, and Andrew Frothingham, eds., And I Quote (New York: Macmillan, 1992), p. 328; no definite attribution exists for this quote, although Capote certainly may have said it in one of his many frivolous television interviews.
191 I’ve always been solitary: Beauman, “Norman Mailer, Movie Maker,” p. 147.
192 Truman was wearing a little: George Plimpton, Truman Capote (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1998), p. 104.
192 a ballsy little guy: Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 465.
192 the most perfect writer of my generation: Ibid.
192 I had to be successful: Alan F. Pater and Jason R. Pater, eds., What They Said in 1978: The Yearbook of Spoken Opinion (Los Angeles: Monitor Book Company, 1979), p. 421.
192 I began writing really sort of: Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy, Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara? (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 282.
193 Lee protected him from bullies: Andrew Haggerty, Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2008), p. 19.
193 as if he were dreamily: Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman, American Novelists Since World War II (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1978), p. 83.
193 I feel anxious that Truman: Robert Emmett Long, Truman Capote—Enfant Terrible (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008), p. 50.
194 which is sad, because: Philip Gourevitch, ed., The Paris Review Interviews (New York: Macmillan, 2009), p. 33.
194 a really serious big work: The Saturday Review 49 (1966): p. 37.
194 very closest friends: Albin Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59; Novelist of Style and Clarity,” New York Times, August 28, 1984.
195 We were a little chilly: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 214.
195 He accelerated the speed: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
195 This is just like the book: Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 438.
196 spoke badly of other writers: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 43.
196 This isn’t writing: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
196 you queer bastard: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 109.
196 Finishing a book is just: Applewhite, Evans, and Frothingham, eds., And I Quote, p. 309; while this quote is widely attributed to Capote, I’ve never found a good source for it.
197 they’re too dumb: Cosmopolitan 205 (1988): p. 181.
197 Writers don’t have to destroy: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 43.
197 He’s Truman. What can you do: Ibid., p. 69.
197 When God hands you a gift: Andrew Holleran, “Five-Finger Exercise,” New York, August 18, 1980, 69.
197 Let me go. I want to go: Biography: Truman Capote (A&E Home Video, 2005), DVD.
198 a good career move: Anthony Arthur, Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (New York: Macmillan, 2002), p. 181.
198 most of them slim: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
198 One’s eventual reputation: McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer.”
198 two sides to Norman Mailer: Mary V. Dearborn, Mailer: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), p. 408.
21: FREAK POWER
199 I do not advocate: Anita Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom : Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2009), p. 321; this is often quoted as “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me,” which may or may not have been the words he used in a speech at Stanford—no one seems to know for sure.
200 to hell with facts: Ben Agger, The Sixties at 40 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), p. 262.
200 Hunter identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald: Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Dir. Alex Gibney. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2008. DVD.
200 a nation of frightened dullards: Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 251.
201 great writer: Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson, eds., Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), p. 269.
201 A bird flies: Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, p. 61.
201 two bags of grass: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 4.
202 I unfortunately proved: Breakfast with Hunter, directed by Wayne Ewing (HunterThompsonFilms.com, 2003), DVD.
202 In today’s culture: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, directed by Tom Thurman (Starz/Anchor Bay, 2007), DVD.
202 I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw: Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, p. 456.
202 The guy whipped out this vial: Corey Seymour and Jann S. Wenner, Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), p. 211.
203 He’d come in the office: Ibid., p. 141.
203 Thank Jesus for Norman: Ibid., p. 433.
203 I was living for Hunter: Ibid., p. 218.
204 some kind of sex palace: Ibid., p. 223.
204 He enjoyed drugs, all kinds of them: Ibid., p. 240.
204 prevent pitching this film: Letter from Hunter S. Thompson to Johnny Depp, April 14, 1998; transcribed at http://www.johnnydepp-zone.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=11809 (retrieved July 2, 2012).
205 I’m really in the way: Fear and Loathing: On the Road to Hollywood, directed by Nigel Finch (BBC, 1980), Videocassette.
205 And so we beat on: Seymour and Wenner, Gonzo, p. 272.
205 a sweet family moment: Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
205 17 years past 50: William McKeen, Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), p. 351.
205 The door was open: Seymour and Wenner, Gonzo, p. 67.
22: THE WORKSHOP
207 I never wrote so much: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 44.
207 With no other privilege: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Henry Nelson Coleridge, eds., Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, Vol. 1 (New York: George P. Putnam, 1848), p. 324.
207 There’s a question in my mind: Allen Hibbard, Conversations With William S. Burroughs (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), p. 72.
208 the days when a writer: Olsen and Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers, p. 75.
208 facing the delicious prospect: Ibid., p. 91.
208 We go to workshops for community: Ibid., p. 99.
209 family had essentially washed: Ibid., p. 169.
209 I had John Cheever my second year: Ibid.
210 A student in your course: Letter from University of Iowa staff to John Cheever, dated November 27, 1973, http://www.writinguniversity.org/author/john-cheever (retrieved July 2, 2012).
210 Writing for Travel and Leisure magazine: Travel & Leisure 4, no. 9 (September 1974): 32–33, 50.
210 tended to be men of a certain age: Olsen and Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers, p. 186.
211 My name is John Cheever: Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 4.
211 the most terrible, glum place: Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Ballantine, 1989), p. 504.
211 I can’t convince myself: William L. Stull and Maureen Patricia Carroll, eds., Remembering Ray (New York: Capra Press, 1993), p. 91.
23: THE TOXIC TWINS
213 processed by the hype machine: Susan Squire, “Zeroing in on Bret Easton Ellis: Embraced by N.Y. Literati for His First Novel, the Young L.A. Author Ponders an Encore,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1986.
214 in 1980, it became clear: Jay McInerney, “Yuppies in Eden,” New York, September 28, 2008.
214 enthusiastically tried cocaine: Carol Sklenicka, Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), p. 364.
214 a bull’s-eye into yuppie: Scott Thomas, “The Bright Light of Jay McInerney,” Sun-Sentinel, September 21, 1986.
215 Catcher in the Rye for the MBA set: Susan Reed, “Leaving Cocaine and Discos Behind, Bright Lights Author Jay McInerney Turns to Samurai and Sushi,” People, October 14, 1985.
215 dusted with cocaine: Ibid.
215 I suddenly invented cocaine: Kurt Soller, “Bright Lights, Different City,” Daily Beast, October 14, 2009, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/10/14/bright-lights-different-city.html (retrieved July 2, 2012).
216 clergymen, lawyers: Mark Pendergrast, For God, Country and Coca-Cola (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 24.
216 I was competing against my books: Soller, “Bright Lights, Different City.”
216 married a string: William Skidelsky, “Jay McInerney: ‘I Was Fortunate to Get a Lot of Mileage Out of My Vices,’” The Guardian, May 19, 2012.
216 One of the hardest things: Soller, “Bright Lights, Different City.”
216 writers as luminous madmen: Jay McInerney, “Raymond Carver: A Still, Small Voice,” New York Times, August 6, 1989.
217 You had to survive: Ibid.
217 the new Jay McInerney: Squire, “Zeroing in on Bret Easton Ellis.”
217 It wasn’t a documentary: This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis. Dir. Gerald Fox. First Run Features, 2000. Videocassette.
217 went club hopping with Ellis: Richard Wang, “Bret Easton Ellis, 2001,” Index Magazine (2001), http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/bret_easton_ellis.shtml (retrieved July 2, 2012).
217 really small liberal arts: Squire, “Zeroing in on Bret Easton Ellis.”
218 toxic twins: Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park (New York: Random House, 2006), p. 10.
218 chewed up by the time he’s twenty-three: Squire, “Zeroing in on Bret Easton Ellis.”
218 writing obituaries of the yuppie: McInerney, “Yuppies in Eden.”
218 Not since Salman Rushdie: Bob Sipchen, “Weighing the Merits of ‘American Psycho,’” Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1991.
219 about me at the time: James Brown, “Patrick Bateman Was Me,” Sabotage Times, October 3, 2011, http://www.sabotagetimes.com/people/patrick-bateman-was-me/(retrieved July 2, 2012).
219 Entertainment Weekly, in 1991: Roger Friedman, “Bret Speaks,” Entertainment Weekly, March 8, 1991.
220 This is not art: Cohen, “Bret Easton Ellis Answers Critics.”
220 The writer may have enough talent: Roger Cohen, “Bret Easton Ellis Answers Critics of ‘American Psycho,’” New York Times, March 6, 1991.
220 Bateman is a misogynist: Ibid.
220 I was staying in the nicest hotel: Ariel Adams, “Bret Easton Ellis Interview,” Ask Men (undated, presumably from 2010), http://www.askmen.com/celebs/interview_400/428_brett-easton-ellis-interview.html (retrieved July 2, 2012).
220 I had a really good run in New York: Christopher Bollen, “Bret Easton Ellis,” Interview magazine (undated, presumably 2010), http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/bret-easton-ellis/#_ (retrieved July 2, 2012).
221 “not interested” in drugs: Brown, “Patrick Bateman Was Me.”
221 The party ends at a certain point: Bollen, “Bret Easton Ellis.”
221 the symbol of hard, fast living: Jay McInerney, “Bright Lights, Bad Reviews,” Salon.com (retrieved April 26, 2012), http://www1.salon.com/weekly/mcinerney2960527.html.
221 If I hadn’t written Bright Lights: Scott Eyman, “Novelest Jay McInerney discusses wine and mentor Raymond Carver,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 2007.
221 a spokesman for a generation: Jay McInerney, “The Butterfly Crusher,” The Guardian, September 18, 2007.
222 wine and sex: Skidelsky, “Jay McInerney: ‘I was fortunate.’”
222 Dick Clark of literature: Joel Stein, “Books: A Man of His Time,” Time, September 28, 1998.
24: PROZAC NATION
223 The shortness of life: Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation (New York: Riverhead, 1994), p. 42.
223 I think there is no rebellion: Torrey and Simonson, eds., Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson, p. 55.
223 We were always in the shadow of: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
224 When Nirvana started selling records: Ibid.
225 There is a classic moment: Wurtzel, Prozac Nation, p. 19.
225 Love it or hate it: Gabi Sifre, “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die,” Vice (1994).
225 neurotic, smart, sexy, rich: Peter Kurth, “‘More, Now, Again’ by Elizabeth Wurtzel,” Salon.com, January 23, 2002.
226 The question of whether: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
226 I don’t know why they didn’t care: Ibid.
227 No one ever had the sense: Elizabeth Wurtzel, “Beyond the Trouble, More Trouble,” NYMag.com, September 21, 2008.
227 Every recovered addict: Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 19.
227 full of enormous contradictions: Karen Lehrman, “I Am Woman, Hear Me Whine,” New York Times Book Review, April 19, 1998.
227 When somebody close to you: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
228 I don’t remember whose idea it was: Ibid.
228 It just seemed too narcissistic: Ibid.
228 rampant egotism: Toby Young, “Elizabeth Wurtzel Went Shopping ...,” The Guardian, March 2, 2002.
228 Her narcissism is so deep-seated: Ibid.
228 Sorry, Elizabeth: Peter Kurth, “‘More, Now, Again’ by Elizabeth Wurtzel,” Salon.com, January 23, 2002.
229 habit of diseased introspection: The Atheneum, December 17, 1859, p. 815.
229 Yesterday I was twenty: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
229 Kitten, I’m going to kill you: Ibid.
25: THE BAD BOY OF AMERICAN LETTERS
231 Writers used to be cool: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
231 My grandmother’s still alive: Jessica Strawser, “Bestselling Author Nicholas Sparks Explains the Creative Process,” Writer’s Digest (February 2011).
231 you don’t see many radical books: Suzanne Mozes, “James Frey’s Fiction Factory,” NYMag.com, November 12, 2010.
232 You’re the next one of us: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
232 I am a literary bad boy: Ibid.
232 the bad boy of American letters: Ed Pilkington, “James Frey Forced to Defend Literary Ethics, Four Years After Oprah Attack,” The Guardian, November 21, 2010.
232 I realized that the books: Open letter from James Frey to advance readers of A Million Little Pieces (undated, presumably from 2005).
232 You go to the airport: Larry King Live, CNN, January 11, 2006.
233 When I wrote Prozac Nation: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
233 I think of this book more: Evgenia Peretz, “James Frey’s Morning After,” Vanity Fair, June 2008.
234 Fuck him: Joe Hagan, “Meet the New Staggering Genius,” New York Observer, January 23, 2006.
234 FTBSITTTD: Personal interview with James Frey, 2012.
234 Oprah Winfrey’s been had: The Smoking Gun, January 8, 2006.
235 There is no truth: Gustave Flaubert, Salammmbô, Vol. 1 (New York: M. Walter Dunne), p. x.
235 subjective retelling of events: Larry King Live, CNN, January 11, 2006.
235 “citations” and “traffic violations”: The Smoking Gun, January 8, 2006.
236 You have so far exceeded: Stephanie Merritt, “This Much I Know,” The Guardian, September 14, 2008.
236 Are you really as bad as you are: Oprah, January 26, 2006.
236 If someday you choose: The Colbert Report, January 30, 2006.
237 tougher and more daring: Edward Wyatt, “Frey Says Falsehoods Improved His Tale,” New York Times, February 2, 2006.
237 The French revere people: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
238 It was a nice surprise: Evgenia Peretz, “James Frey Gets a Bright, Shiny Apology from Oprah,” VanityFair.com, May 11, 2009.
238 So, you’re the guy that caused: Peretz, “James Frey’s Morning After.”
238 To produce the next Twilight: Mozes, “James Frey’s Fiction Factory.”
239 make me out to be a villain: Pilkington, “James Frey Forced to Defend.”
239 I’m there every day: E-mail from James Frey.
239 these umbrella peddlers: Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).
240 Not quite what you were expecting: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
241 Did you read the Esquire piece: Ibid.
241 a tiny man in his head: Laura Miller, “James Frey Does Jesus,” Salon.com, March 16, 2011.
241 I always wanted to be the outlaw: Decca Aitkenhead, “James Frey: ‘I Always Wanted to Be the Outlaw,’” The Guardian, April 18, 2011.
241 They won’t blink in the face: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
242 what a naughty, naughty boy: Comments section, “James Frey: ‘I Always Wanted to Be the Outlaw,’” The Guardian, April 18, 2011.
242 fine with my life: http://www.james-frey.com/james-frey/q-and-a/(retrieved June 21, 2012).
242 Be willing to misbehave: Personal interview with James Frey, 2011.
POSTSCRIPT: WHERE HAVE ALL THE COWBOYS GONE?
243 Today’s writers seem: Anne Roiphe, “Why Alpha Male Writers Became Extinct,” Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2011.
243 the “good old times”: George Gordon Byron, Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 8 (London: John Murray, 1873), p. 265.
244 My addictions and problems: Open letter from James Frey to advance readers of A Million Little Pieces.
245 to paraphrase Joyce Carol Oates: Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 49; the actual quote is, “[Emily Dickinson] was not an alcoholic, she was not abusive, she was not neurotic, she did not commit suicide. Neurotic people or alcoholics ... make better copy, and people talk about them, tell anecdotes about them. The quiet people just do their work.”