Writer Epidemic---Badness and Weirdness

Miriam, a friend of mine, recommended a book to me called The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So, naturally, on library day I went to get another of his books (one that was short and interesting). I chose The Magician. Apparently this magician is set to be the type that is into some sort of evil, black magic (or magick). I read in the forward by Maugham himself that the book is slightly based on Aleister Crowley, whom he met while in France. He did not like him and did not maintain much of a relationship with him at all. But, this information got me interested. I looked up Mr. Crowley (I knew little of him, but I knew that he was a Satanist or Occultist). What a freak. Apparently he wrote many books, could write identical to Robert Browning and was a sort of a minor poet.

Then I looked up Mr. Maugham. I noticed that in his small biographies that they never state if he was married or not. He was not. He was gay. Let's add him to the list with Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray), Willa Cather (O Pioneers!, My Antonnia), and others.

Here are some unhonorable home-breakers and live-in lovers, among them: George Eliot (Middlemarch, Silas Marner), Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White, The Moonstone), Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities), D. H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterly's Lover, Sons and Lovers), Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo), F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby), Dostoyevsky (who I regret to even record--), and the list goes on and on.

Let's see---Henry James was weird, did not socialize and never married. Jane Austen, The Brontes and their seclusions---Hemmingway.

What is wrong here?

At least Thomas Hardy was supposedly faithful to his wives (the first one died). Elizabeth Gaskell was ok--so was Harriet Beecher Stowe. Can you see this bothers me?

What is up with writers? Are they so creative and ridiculous that they have to do ridiculous things?

I realize that I have blogged about this. More proof that his bugs me.