Jeffrey Meyers

The Genius and the Goddess (1955) is a novel by Aldous Huxley. It was published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and by Harper & Row in the US. It is the fictional account of John Rivers, a student physicist in the 1920s who was hired out of college as a laboratory assistant to Henry Maartens.

An instinctive and magnificent storyteller, Somerset Maugham was one of the most popular and successful writers of his time. He published seventy-eight books -- including the undisputed classics Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge -- which sold over 40 million copies in his lifetime. Born in Paris to sophisticated parents, Willie Maugham was orphaned at the age of ten and brought up in a small English coastal town by narrow-minded relatives. He was trained as a doctor, but never practiced medicine. His novel Ashenden, based on his own espionage for Britain in World War I, influenced writers from Eric Ambler to John le Carr?. After a failed affair with an actress, he married another man's mistress, but reserved his greatest love for a man who shared his life for nearly thirty years. He traveled the world and spoke several languages. Despite a debilitating stutter, and an acerbic and formal manner, he entertained literary celebrities and royalty at his villa in the south of France. He made a fortune from his writing--the short story "Rain" alone earned him a million dollars--yet true critical recognition, and the esteem of his literary peers, eluded him. The life of Somerset Maugham, as told by acclaimed biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is an intriguing, glamorous, complex, and extraordinary account of one of the twentieth century's most enduring writers.From the Trade Paperback edition.

This brillant father-son biography explores the scandalous life of movie star Errol Flynn and his son's equally doomed and glamorous life as a war photographer in Vietnam. (Review) : Literary critic and biographer Meyers traces the tragic similarities between Hollywood legend Errol Flynn and his son Sean, a freewheeling war photographer who died in the Vietnamese conflict. Errol Flynn's decadent lifestyle is legendary, and semifictional accounts abound, including his own My Wicked, Wick Ways.

Sampling works by the creator of Holmes and Watson, this collection features Doyle's detective stories, horror tales, journalism, historical stories, and the complete text of his science-fiction novel The Poison Belt. Introduction -- Chronology -- From A Study in Scarlet, Part I (1887) -- [Scandal in Bohemia]( "The Los Amigos Fiasco" (1892) -- "The Case of Lady Sannox" (1893) -- "How the Brigadier Came to the Castle of Gloom" (1894) -- "How the Brigadier Slew the Brothers of Ajaccio" (1895) -- From The Stark Munro Letters (1895) -- "The King of the Foxes" (1898) -- "The Brazilian Cat" (1898) -- "The Brown Hand" (1899) -- [Adventure of the Empty House]( [Dancing Men]( From The Crime of the Congo (1909) -- From The Lost World (1912) -- The Poison Belt (1913) -- "Danger!" (1914) -- From A Visit to Three Fronts (1916) -- From The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (1921) -- Bibliography.

"Although artists are nowadays able to be openly gay and to address homosexuality explicitly in their work, this book argues that it was the harsh climate of 1890-1930 that produced the most outstanding explorations of homosexuality. To support his argument, Meyers illuminates the character and creative process of a range of authors of the period, including Wilde, Gide, Proust, E.M. Forster and T.E. Lawrence, and analyses the sexual problems that were sublimated and transcended in their art."--

"Jeffrey Meyers offers in Privileged Moments a window into the work of both creative writers and their biographers. Describing these portraits - of Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey, Ed Dorn, Arthur Miller, Irish Murdoch, V.S. Naipaul, Francis King, and J.F. Powers - Meyers writes, "I want to learn everything about their lives, what they looked like, how they lived, what they said. I was most curious about the creative process, the relation between authors' lives and their art, the public image and the real self."". "Meyers himself becomes the ninth writer encountered in Privileged Moments, displaying the master biographer's sharp eye for telling details. In lively and compelling style, he offers us insights in the writers' lives: their reactions to criticism; how they advanced their careers and achieved fame; how feuds and quarrels started and ended; their struggles with money, illness, marriages, and love affairs."--BOOK JACKET.

Una biografía de Gary Cooper, el lacónico actor que llegó a simbolizar los ideales americanos de confianza en sí mismo, independencia y honestidad en películas clásicas como Solo ante el peligro y Juan Nadie, pero cuya turbulenta vida privada estuvo reñida con frecuencia con su impecable imagen pública. El escritor Jeffrey Meyers, entre cuyas obras se encuentran las afamadas biografías de Bogart, Hemingway y Fizgerald, construye aquí otro extraordinario retrato basado en una estrecha en cooperación con la hija del actor y la de destacados colegas e íntimos amigos como Arlene Dahl, Patricia Neal y Fay Wray, con quienes Meyers mantuvo largas entrevistas. El autor examina cada aspecto de la vida de Cooper, empezando por su infancia en Inglaterra y Montana en donde fue un auténtico cowboy antes de dar el salto a Hollywood para crear algunos de los personajes más característicos de la historia del cine: hombre honestos y desmañados que atraparon la imaginación de toda América con un irresistible aire de simplicidad. Aunque, en privado, callado y solitario, el Cooper de fuera de la pantalla era todo menos sencillo. Era un sofisticado y elegante hombre de mundo, con deseos e ideas acordes con su carisma. El libro, escrupulosamente documentado, no solo sigue la carrera del actor con meticuloso detalle, a la vez que relata sus tormentosos idilios con Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly y Patricia Neal —por nombrar solo algunas de las muchas mujeres de su vida—, sino que también analiza su larga amistad con Ernest Hemingway y arroja una lúcida mirada sobre su controvertida implicación con el Comité de Actividades Antiamericanas y la lista negra de Hollywood. Gary Cooper, el héroe americano es el retrato definitivo de una gran estrella, cuyas contradicciones no hacen más que realizar la genialidad de un hombre que dio vida a algunos de los personajes más inolvidables y perdurables de la Edad Dorada de Hollywood.

For countless millions, Humphrey Bogart's screen performances and real-life persona merged to make him one of the world's most fabled figures - a legend of mythic proportions. Or, as his Sam Spade would have put it - the stuff that dreams are made of. But for his only son, Stephen, eight years old in 1957 when his father died of lung cancer, Humphrey Bogart's giant shadow was a burden he carried until he finally came to understand the private man behind his father's public face. And now, in this candid and insightful biography, Stephen Bogart explores and illuminates Humphrey Bogart's life, work, and relationships as they never have been before. Writing with the encouragement of his famous mother, Lauren Bacall, Stephen calls on his memories, and takes full advantage of the extraordinary access he has had to friends and colleagues of his father. The result is an intimate and personal profile of an enigmatic man whose tough image contrasted with very human ambitions and vulnerabilities. It is also a vastly entertaining book, filled with fascinating stories involving Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, "Swifty" Lazar, John Huston, Stephen Bogart's stepfather, Jason Robards, and many others.

This new biography focuses on the complex Hemingway when fame is hitting full force - the years between A Farewell to Arms and the writing of For Whom The Bell Tolls. In a sympathetic narrative, Michael Reynolds creates a rich map of Hemingway's journey from promising young novelist to literary lion. He gives us the look and feel of the times and the people, as well as the give and take of literary life. These are the years of Hemingway's Esquire essays and war dispatches, the years that produced "Snows of Kilimanjaro" and Green Hills of Africa, years from which emerged the larger-than-life Hemingway. We come away from this book knowing more about what Hemingway wrote and why. We also know more about where we as a people have been, for Hemingway explored every element of his decade with the intensity of a natural historian. Drawing on a wealth of new material and period documents, Reynolds adds a human touch to a writer too often seen only in caricature.

A biography portraying the evolution of the man and the writer from the confident genius of the twenties to the sad wreck of the fifties.

T.E. Shaw, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was one of the most romantic, heroic, and enigmatic figures of his day. The subject of myth and hagiography, he was equally accomplished in several fields--as archaeologist, diplomat, writer, and soldier--and he worked throughout World War I and after in the Middle East in efforts to promote independent Arab states. His autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the greatest works of its kind. The esteemed military historian B.H. Liddell Hart wrote this study of Lawrence in order to pierce the clouds of legend. He discussed Lawrence's Oxford days, his experiences as an intelligence officer in Egypt, and in particular the tactics of guerrilla warfare he practiced so effectively against the large Turkish armies during World War I. Liddell Hart was one of the few to give Lawrence his full justice as both a man and a brilliant soldier. Long out-of-print, this book unravels the many puzzling features of Lawrence's story and restores him to his proper place as one of the twentieth century's heroic, but very human, figures.