Authors Electric

Say we all contain two sides--the Impractical and the Practical--and they're seldom evenly balanced.    And they're never more out of whack than they are with writers. From the get-go the pressure's on to give the P's the upper hand: good grades lead to better schools which pave the way to better homes, cars, marriages, credit scores, job advancement, etc. And the debates grow shorter and shorter between such staid P's and wild writerly I's like sexual adventure, wanderlust, wild living, bucking the Establishment, etc. From Byron to Pushkin to Hemingway to Mailer and on and on and on, wild and crazy role models call to us like Sirens. Self-destructive lifestyles still make for boffo Post Mortem book sales and movie tie-ins. But the publishing industry's changed now. And more than ever IQ and PQ are on everybody's minds. Wild men and women are far less in demand. The powers that be demand higher IQs: media savvy, Facebook presence, fanatical convention at...

Milk Bombs, the girl with the bestest breasts in college, had only one thing in common with the agent I've come to call Cutie. Still, each derailed me for a while with her own spin on this terrible insult: I lived too much in my head....I was too 'literary.' To begin at the beginning of the end, Milk Bombs looked more than a little like this: MB's slice with the knife lacked surgical precision but it cut me to the quick. And it accomplished her purpose of laying me flat. For I'd set out in my sophomore year to out-Byron Byron--nailing every girl in sight while drinking myself into stupors and learning to fight while I learned how to write. I had a weekly column in the student paper and had already written/directed/produced/acted in one play...while pursuing more sexual conquests. With a single swipe she cut me twice, ridiculing my literary and action aspirations. "You're just a Paper Man. Goodbye." So writing was useless in her eyes...and m...

Brawls are fun to enjoy from the bleachers. And the first great literary feud still has a lot to teach us. Meet the two combatants now. In the left corner, Lord Byron (aka George Gordon): Born in 1788. 5'8". Lover, boxer, swimmer, marksman and literary rock star. Drank wine from a human skull and had sex with his half-sister. In the right corner, Robert Southey: Born in 1774. A 6' former rebel who turned coat for a government pension. Became Poet Laureate when Walter Scott declined. Sang prolifically then for his supper. Fight genesis: Motives seem murky. Southey may have seen in Byron the sins he wished he'd been blessed to commit, while Byron saw in Southey the staid bore he feared he'd become. But three factors combined to stir up the big brawl: -- 1818 . Byron took quick playful shots at Southey in the Dedication of Don Juan. Though Lord B's English Bards & Scotch Reviewers had lambasted everyone nine years before, his new dig at Sou...