Literary Rogues (30 page)

Thank you to David McClay, senior curator of the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland, and Virginia Murray, for assisting me in tracking down the lost pubic hair of Lady Caroline Lamb. Alas, it was a fool's quest...

And, last but not least, thank you to everyone who has followed my ramblings in past books, on Twitter, and elsewhere.

These are some of the more accessible books and documentaries that I consulted during my research that may be of interest to the reader. Further sources can be found in the endnotes.

Ackroyd, Peter.
Poe: A Life Cut Short
. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2009.

Adams, Jad.
Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent
. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.

Bailey, Blake.
Cheever: A Life
. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Baker, Phil.
The Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History
. New York: Grove Press, 2003.

Beckerman, Marty.
The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within, Just Like Papa!
New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2012.

Boon, Marcus.
The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs
. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Brinnin, John Malcom.
Dylan Thomas in America: An Intimate Journal
. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1955.

Bruccoli, Matthew J., and Judith S. Baughman.
Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald
. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

Charters, Ann.
Kerouac: A Biography
. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1994.

Dardis, Tom.
The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer
. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989.

Davenport-Hines, Richard.
The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics
. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Davison, Peter.
The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994.

Day, Barry.
Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words
. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004.

Denham, Alice.
Sleeping With Bad Boys
. Las Vegas, NV: Book Republic Press, 2006.

Eisler, Benita.
Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame
. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

Ellis, Bret Easton.
Less Than Zero
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Epstein, Daniel Mark.
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay
. New York: Holt, 2002.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
On Booze
. New York: Picador USA, 2011.

Frey, James.
A Million Little Pieces
. New York: Random House, 2003.

George-Warren, Holly.
The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture
. New York: Hyperion, 2000.

Hay, Daisy.
Young Romantics
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Hemmings, F. W. J.
Baudelaire the Damned
. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982.

Hotchner, A. E., ed.
The Good Life According to Hemingway
. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Jack, Belinda.
George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large
. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Lever, Maurice.
Sade: A Biography
. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.

The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
. DVD. Directed by Jerry Aronson. New Yorker Films, 1997.

Mariani, Paul L.
Dream Song: Life of John Berryman
. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

McInerney, Jay.
Bright Lights, Big City
. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

McKenna, Neil.
The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde
. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Meade, Marion.
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
New York: Penguin Books, 1989.

Middlebrook, Diane Wood.
Anne Sexton: A Biography
. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Milford, Nancy.
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
. New York: Random House, 2001.

Mizener, Arthur.
The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald
. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

Morgan, Ted.
Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs
. New York: Henry Holt, 1988.

Morrison, Robert.
The English Opium-Eater
. New York: Pegasus Books, 2010.

New York in the 50s
. DVD. Directed by Betsy Blankenbaker. First Run Features, 2001.

Olsen, Eric, and Glenn Schaeffer.
We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop
. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011.

Plant, Sadie.
Writing on Drugs
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

Plimpton, George.
Truman Capote
. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.

Robb, Graham.
Balzac: A Biography
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

                               
.
Rimbaud: A Biography
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Rollyson, Carl.
The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography
. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Sandars, Mary F.
Honoré de Balzac: His Life and Writings
. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1904.

Sisman, Adam.
The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge
. New York: Viking, 2007.

Sklenicka, Carol.
Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life
. New York: Scribner, 2009.

Symons, Arthur.
The Symbolist Movement in Literature
. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919.

This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis
. VHS. Directed by Gerald Fox. First Run Features, 2000.

Thompson, Hunter S.
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
. Edited by Jann Wenner. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.

Wakefield, Dan.
New York in the 50s
. New York: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1992.

Wall, Geoffrey.
Flaubert: A Life
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Wasson, Ben.
Count No 'Count: Flashbacks to Faulkner
. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983.

Wenner, Jann S., and Corey Seymour.
Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson
. New York: Little, Brown, 2007.

Wolfe, Tom.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
. New York: Picador, 1968.

Wurtzel, Elizabeth.
Bitch
. New York: Doubleday, 1998.

                               
.
More, Now, Again
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

                               
.
Prozac Nation
. New York: Riverhead, 1994.

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader's search tools.

absinthe, 83–84, 89–94, 96, 100, 104, 132

“Addict, The” (Sexton), 174

Advice to Opium Eaters
, 26–27

alcohol, 104, 111, 154, 211–12

absinthe, 83–84, 89–94, 96, 100, 104, 132

Baudelaire and, 71, 75–76

Berryman and, 171, 172, 175, 176–77, 178

Burns and, 18

Capote and, 197

Carver and, 211

Cheever and, 209, 211

Dowson and, 91–94, 100

Ellis and, 221

Faulkner and, 139–43

Fitzgerald and, 110–13, 116

Frey and, 232, 235–37

Hemingway and, 129–30, 132, 134–35, 137–38

Kerouac and, 159, 161, 162

King and, 138

Mailer and, 188, 189

Millay and, 125–27

Parker and, 118–20, 123, 125, 127–28

Poe and, 48, 49, 51–52, 54, 55

Prohibition and, 104–5, 141

Sexton and, 174

Thomas and, 145–51, 172

Thompson and, 201, 204

Verlaine and, 83–85, 89, 90

Alcott, Louisa May, 27

Algonquin Round Table, 118, 122, 124, 128

Allan, John, 49, 51

Allen, Woody, 178

America, 47–48, 148–49

American Psycho
(Ellis), 218–20

American Revolution, 32

amphetamines, 158–60, 164

Anderson, Elizabeth, 104

Anderson, Sherwood, 104, 109, 131, 134

Faulkner and, 139, 140

Annie Hall
, 178

Answered Prayers
(Capote), 196

Aria da Capo
(Millay), 122

art for art's sake, 83, 95

As I Lay Dying
(Faulkner), 141

atheism, 38, 42

Atlantic Monthly, The
, 161, 199

Austen, Jane, xv

Balzac, Honoré de, 57, 58–63, 76, 92, 157

Sand and, 66–67

Barrère, Camille, 85

Battle of Waterloo, 57

Baudelaire, Charles, 57, 60, 69–79, 83, 92, 93, 125, 167, 204, 212

on Poe, 48, 55

Bearde, Chris, 197

Beat Generation, 154–57, 160, 167, 181, 184, 185, 196, 224

Beaton, Cecil, 193

Beauvoir, Simone de, 11, 154

Bell Jar, The
(Plath), 177

Belushi, John, 203

Benchley, Robert, 118, 119, 128

Benzedrine, 158–60, 215

Bergen, Candice, 194

Berryman, John, 143, 152, 171–79, 209, 244

Berryman, Kate, 175

Bibi-la-Purée, 90

“Big Blonde” (Parker), 118

Big Sur
(Kerouac), 160

Bingham, Rob, 226–28

Bitch
(Wurtzel), 226, 227, 228

Blake, William, 182

Blessington, Lady, 33, 44

Boissard, François, 60

Boissevain, Eugen Jan, 125

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 12

Boon, Marcus, 234

Boston Globe
, 179

Bower, Brock, 155

Boyd, Thomas Alexander, 109

Boyle, T. C., 209

Breakfast at Tiffany's
(Capote), 192, 195

Bright Lights, Big City
(McInerney), 214–17, 221, 239

Bright Shiny Morning
(Frey), 238

Brinkley, Douglas, 200

Brinnin, John Malcom, 149, 150

Brontë, Branwell, 27

Brontë, Charlotte, 66

Bruce, Tammy, 220

Buffett, Jimmy, 203–4

Bukowski, Charles, 232

bullfighting, 131, 132

bullshit, 132, 234

Burns, Robert, 18, 25

Burroughs, William S., xiii, 156, 157, 160, 163–65, 167–69, 196, 202, 207–8

Byron, Allegra, 40

Byron, Clara, 42

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, xv, 24, 29–36, 37, 41, 44–46, 110, 202, 237, 243

Coleridge and, 19

Shelleys and, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44

Byron, Will, 42

Campbell, Alan, 123–24, 125, 127

Camus, Albert, 2, 154, 194

Capote, Truman, 142, 150, 187, 191–98, 199, 211, 228, 244

Mailer and, 191–92, 195

Carson, Edward, 97

Carver, Raymond, 207, 211, 214, 217

Cassady, Neal, 157, 160, 161–62, 165, 183–84

Cathedral
(Carver), 211

Catholicism, 77–78, 89, 162

“Chambre Double, La” (Baudelaire), 76

Chaplin, Charlie, 149

Charters, Ann, 158–59

Cheap Show, The
, 197

Cheever, John, 209–11

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(Byron), 32–33

Chopin, Frédéric, 66

Chouans, Les
(Balzac), 59–60

Christabel
(Coleridge), 41

Church, Norris, 198

City Lights, 157, 165–66

Cladel, Léon, 78

Clairmont, Claire, 39–41

“Clean Well-Lighted Place, A” (Hemingway), 133

Clemm, Maria, 51

Cleverly, Michael, 202

Clinton, Bill, 224

Cobain, Kurt, 168–69, 185, 224

Coca-Cola, 110, 215–16

cocaine, 103–4, 214, 215–16, 221, 226, 227