There no rules when it came to writing, he said. Take a close look at the lives of poets and novelists, and what you wound up with was unalloyed chaos, an infinite jumble of exceptions. That was because writing was a disease, Tom continued, what you might call an infection or influenza of the spirit, and therefore it could strike anyone at any time. Scan the roster of the giants and semi-giants, and you would discover writers who embraced every sexual proclivity, every political bent, and every human attribute – from the loftiest idealism to the most insidious corruption. They were criminals and lawyers, spies and doctors, soldiers and spinsters, travelers and shut-ins.
_ Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies, 2006, 149
Fun to arrange them in cross-temporal couples, using Auster’s characteristics. I’ve matched ‘sexual proclivities’ so that each couple has at least one thing in common, sort of.
Christopher Marlowe and Somerset Maugham
Marcel Proust and Bruce Chatwin
Jean Genet and Henry James
Stendhal and Emily Dickinson
Byron and Beatrix Potter
George Eliot and the Marquis de Sade
D.H. Lawrence and Jane Austen
Rainer Maria Rilke and Germaine Greer
Arnold Bennett and Emily Bronte
Well, you get the idea. No lawyer, though.