Odd Type Writers by Celia Blue Johnson is a delightful discovery! The subtitle says it all. I recommend it for bedtime, the beach, the doctor’s waiting room, the subway commute. . . Well written, lively, each section short and entertaining.
Last week I posted on Why We Write. Consider this book a companion piece to that one. Johnson culled the quirkiest bits and most obsessive behaviors of each author from interviews, websites, biographies, etc. In her own words, “Edgar Allan Poe balanced a cat on his shoulder while he wrote. Agatha Christie munched on apples in her bathtub while concocting murder plots. Victor Hugo shut himself inside and wore nothing but a long, gray, knitted shawl when he was on a tight deadline.” And so much more!
From the Table of Contents
- Rotten Ideas: Friedrich Schiller
- By the Cup: Honoré de Balzac
- Feeling Blue: Alexandre Dumas, père
- House Arrest: Victor Hugo
- A Mysterious Tail: Edgar Allan Poe
- The Traveling Desk: Charles Dickens
- Paper Topography: Edith Wharton
- The Cork Shield: Marcel Proust
- Flea Circus: Colette
- Traffic Jamming: Gertrude Stein
- Tunneling by the Thousands: Jack London
- A Writer’s Easel: Virginia Woolf
- Crayon, Scissors, and Paste: James Joyce
- Leafing Through the Pages; D.H.Lawrence
- Puzzling Assembly: Vladimir Nabokov
- Outstanding Prose: Ernest Hemingway
- Sound Writing: John Steinbeck’Pin It Down: Eudora Welty
- Don’t Get Up: Truman Capote
- Early to Write: Flannery O’Connor
You’ll enjoy these sketches of famous authors whether you’ve read their work or not! Cover to cover, this is a great read!
