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Final chapters : how famous authors died

Available Formats:

  • Publisher:
    Skyhorse Publishing, 2015
    Note: This book was purchased with support from the Government of Canada's Social Development Partnerships Program - Disability Component.

Details:

  • Author: Bernhard, Jim
    Contributor: Recorded Books, Inc.
    Date:
    Created
    2015
    Summary:

    "Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case." -William Saroyan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Famous authors, like everybody else, know that one day they will die. Final Chapters tells the fascinating stories of more than one hundred writers' encounters with death-and their attitudes toward the Grim Reaper: fear, uncertainty, or acceptance. Francis Bacon wrote, "It is as natural to die as to be born," while Socrates told the judges who condemned him, "And now we go our ways, I to die and you to live. Which is better is known to God alone." Death often came in startling ways for these well-known writers. The playwright aeschylus was conked by a turtle falling from the sky. Christopher Marlowe was stabbed in a barroom brawl. MoliEre collapsed while playing the role of a hypochondriac in one of his plays. Edgar Allan Poe was found semicomatose in someone else's clothes shortly before he died. Sherwood Anderson was felled by a toothpick in a martini. Did Dylan Thomas really die of eighteen straight whiskeys' And was it a bottle cap or murder that did in Tennessee Williams' If these authors have lessons for us, the best may be that of Marcus Aurelius: "Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back."

    Subject(s): Authors | Death | Authors--Death
    Original Publisher: New York, Skyhorse Publishing
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9781510700611