Writers Between the Covers: The Scandalous Romantic Lives of Legendary Literary Casanovas, Coquettes, and Cads

I'm glad that I didn't listen to the negative reviews and ordered this book, for it makes for great reading. If most of these people were living today, they would probably be treated for sex addiction. I mean, 200 hundred women?? But then, I think Warren Beatty topped that record. Good book.

I have always been fascinated by the private lives of writers, because more often than not, they are more interesting than what they wrote about.This is a good book if you want to find out about the private lives of some of the most fascinating writers that ever lived. As gifted and talented as they were, when it comes to their private lives, they too often lived a messy life, filled with loving the wrong person, in some cases.This book proves when it comes to love, writers are just like everyone else.

This is a great look into the personal lives of artists and authors. Surprising how many were so adventurous - must be the artistic spirit!

My English Professors only touched upon the scandalous lives of these literary lions. This book tells all the dirty little secrets! I began to wonder if it were even possible to be a great writer and have a healthy relationship.

Nothing special: the writing quality is not great, and it seems like the writing struggles to make the content interesting.

Lots on information I didn't pick up in grad school. The men range from opportunists to outright cads and bounders.

By far, this has been one of the most entertaining and enjoyable books I've read this year. It never ceases to fascinate me how some of the most celebrated (and notorious or controversial) writers lived and LOVED. To quote Pat Benatar, "Love is a battlefield." The story cited in this book on the love life of F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald amply bears out that quote. I also found interesting Norman Mailer's outlook on love and his relationships with the many women in his life. He seemed to have this need to fully assert his "machismo" and not be outdone by anyone who upset his ego or whom he felt made him feel inadequate or insecure. Example: “…[Norman Mailer] who in print nicknamed his penis the Retaliator seemed genuinely perplexed about why feminists hated him and once asked Gloria Steinem what women had against him. ‘You might try reading your books someday,’ she replied drily.” -- pp. 58-59."There are also stories on Charles Dickens and his "hidden woman", Richard Wright, T.S. Eliot (who had his first wife committed to an insane asylum), Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, Agatha Christie, and Lord Byron (who was, perhaps, the first famous "glamour boy", who attracted droves of adoring women in Regency Era Britain and in Europe through both his looks and poetry like a latter-day rock star attracts groupies) --- just to mention a few. So, if you want to be entertained, by all means read this book. You'll be happy (and delighted) that you did. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

There’s nothing that strengthens a marriage like spending time with another couple. It’s a bonding experience to dissect their lives afterwards with your spouse and no greater joy than to finish with “thank God we’re not like THEM, honey.”“Writers Between the Covers” is like a 25-lesson course in couples counseling (with 25 sidebars bearing provocative titles such as “Six Degrees of Copulation,” “Romance with Death,” and “The Wit of a Wounded Woman” in case you didn’t get the point). In fact, the book should carry a warning label for singletons who still believe in true love and happily ever after.The roll call of disastrous liaisons is longer than the list of alcoholic writers. Many writers drink, but nearly all of them shack up with someone at some time. “Authors Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon plowed through an ungodly number of biographies and memoirs to bring back these sometimes hellish tales of loving and losing. There’s Simone de Beauvoir, the feminist icon who procured students for Jean-Paul Sarte. There’s Agatha Christie, who was swept away by her true love, only to be dumped when he tired of her (at her death, she still kept his letters and wedding ring near her). Isak Dinesen got the clap from her husband and endured numerous infidelities. Charles Dickens dumped his wife in a public scandal over an actress. And need I add Lord Byron (affairs, incest, abandonment); F. Scott Fitzgerald (spendthrift, drunk, absconder of Zelda’s journal); Norman Mailer (wife abuser, serial betrayer); and Ernest Hemingway (jerk)?Some, like de Beauvoir, made their peace with the beds they made while others like Daphne du Maurier experienced a lifetime of sorrow. Very few succeeded, like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Mostly, it seems like the only success they achieved was to leave behind works of lasting importance. Coincidence?A confession: while writing “Writers Gone Wild,” I had researched some of the same stories. I’m even publishing an annotated version of Christie’s second novel. Envy and suspicion is in my genes, so while reading a review copy of “Writers Between the Covers,” part of me was standing aside, saying, “Show me.” And they did. They told me new stories and filled in the gaps in the familiar tales. Part of it was due to the authors casting a wider net, telling the story, for example, of Mailer’s lifetime of serial infidelities rather than focusing on the time he stabbed his first wife in the back. They had access to new and more recent biographies and memoirs. Plus, their book is devoted solely to love and sex, which made up a few chapters in my book.So if you love reading about the lives of great writers, “Writers Between the Covers” will get you between the sheets (and in the case of James Joyce’s dirty letters to Nora, a bit hot and bothered as well). Just don’t give it to your writer-friend’s new spouse. That would be cruel.