/lit/ - Literature

When Voltaire was lying on his deathbed, a conscientious soul sent for a priest to come and give him his Last Rites. When the priest arrived, he asked Voltaire, "Will you now repent of your sinful ways, and renounce Satan?"
Voltaire replied to the priest, "Now, now, my good man, this is not the time to be making enemies."

That's brilliant. More literary anecdotes, please!

>>2042401
That's what I was trying to do, change the topic so that for once, just once, quentin's thread wouldn't just be shitposting and trollfuckery.

Everyone please post anecdotes about writing and writers.

>>2042408
I read this in a biography about Dylan Thomas a long while ago (so some of the facts are muddled) but I think he was on a poetry-reading tour of America, and some reporter asked him who he thought the best, living poet was, at the time. Dylan Thomas peevishly replied, "Is it a contest?"

>>2042408
>>2042408

Good on you.

"An apocryphal story regarding Faulkner during his Hollywood years found him with a case of writer's block at the studio. He told Hawks he was having a hard time concentrating and would like to write at home. Hawks was agreeable, and Faulkner left. Several days passed, with no word from the writer. Hawks telephoned Faulkner's hotel and found that Faulkner had checked out several days earlier. It seems Faulkner had spoken quite literally, and had returned home to Mississippi to finish the screenplay.

>>2042421
Love this story about Faulkner.

This won't be of any interest to people who've not read/seen Harold Pinter's "the Caretaker," but Harold Pinter lived in a house/apartment building where one of the tenants invited a homeless guy to stay with said tenant for a month. It gave him the idea for the basic inciting events in the play.

not sure about the truth of the anecdote but judging it is mark twain i believe it.
>After a day at the races in England, a friend told Mark >Twain, “I wish you’d buy me a ticket back to London. I’m >broke.”

>Twain told him he couldn’t afford two tickets but >proposed that his friend sneak aboard the train and >hide under Twain’s seat. Then he bought two tickets >anyway.

>When the train had got under way, the inspector >appeared to collect Twain’s ticket. When Twain gave >him two, he looked about the compartment and said, >“Where’s the other one?”

>Twain pointed under his seat, smiled, and said, “My >friend is a little eccentric.”

From the Wikipedia on Hemingway:

"By the end of the year Pauline, who was pregnant, wanted to move back to America. John Dos Passos recommended Key West, and they left Paris in March 1928. Some time that spring Hemingway suffered a severe injury in their Paris bathroom, when he pulled a skylight down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain. This left him with a prominent forehead scar, subject of numerous legends, which he carried for the rest of his life. When Hemingway was asked about the scar he was reluctant to answer."

> Tolstoy was a great pacifist and was once lecturing on >the need to be nonresistant and nonviolent towards all >creatures. Someone in the audience responded by >asking what should be done if one was attacked in the >woods by a tiger. Tolstoy responded, "Do the best you >can. It doesn't happen very often."

>>2042408
>change the topic so that for once
except you didn't

>>2042435
HOW ARE YOU FUCKING THIS UP SO BAD
GREENTEXT ISN'T HARD
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU

I don't know if this one is true and I don't want to check (I think I read it on here...)

Supposedly, once when Arthur Conan Doyle was bored he sent identical anonymous letters to four friends saying "We've been discovered. Flee."

Three of the friends were puzzled. The fourth disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.

>>2042438
Calm down, it was readable. At least he contributed something to the thread.

>>2042460
Didn't mean to come off as aggressive, just genuinely curious how the fuck that shit could happen.

>>2042464
Either a broken return key, or general incompetence. Maybe they're new and assumed each > would add a line break automatically. Illogical, yeah, but idk.

But even if they had intended to break the lines there, that would still be fucked up because line breaks in those places are weird and not normal.

I think he's either trolling the fuck out of us (Let me just add these in there for shits and giggles!) or he's got some 'splaining to do.

>Byron once gave his publisher, John Murray, a splendidly bound Bible, and the recipient was proud of it until he happened to discover that his friend donor had altered the last verse of the 18th chapter of St. John (Now Barrabas was a robber) so as to read: "Now Barrabas was a publisher."

>>2042483
You're right, and now I'm curious. I hope he comes back to this thread and explains. That'd be nice.

During his life, there were meany "astrologers" publishing predictions, and Jonathan Swift hated them with a passion.

What Swift did was publish a mock almanac that predicted the death of one of the most popular astronomers of the day, and everyone believed it.

The astronomer was ruined and couldn't publish again, because everyone thought it was a wannabe (since the original had died.)

Terrific lulz.

Read more here: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-extraordinary-astrologer-isaac-bickerstaff/

>>2042490
>>2042470
>>2042464
>>2042460
>>2042438

It was my first time using greentext in awhile. I thought I had to use it for ever line break in the comment box.

>>2042491
Sorry, I fucked up. Astrologer, not astronomer, of course.

Oscar Wilde's last words were "Either the curtains go or I do."

I hate this myth.

Wilde died in a hotel room, poor and alone. Nobody saw him die, so whatever his last words were, nobody knows.

More info:
I found some information on this on: [1] Where it sais:
The following clarification was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday October 18 2007. Oscar Wilde did not say, on his deathbed, "Either those curtains go or I do." He is reported to have said something along the lines of "this wallpaper will be the death of me - one of us will have to go", but not on his deathbed.

Not quite a literary figure, but a way to bump the thread.
Teddy Roosevelt was shot once in his way to give a speech. However, the thick speech in his breast pocket prevented him from being seriously injured. He didn't even realize he was shot until he saw the blood. Son of a bitch still gave the speech.

>>2042487
Byron's wonderful for these sort of stories. I love what happened with his university and his pet bear.