Parallel Lives : From Freud and Mann to Arbus and Plath / Jeffrey Meyers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meyers, Jeffrey, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biography--19th century.

Biography.

Biography--20th century.

Intellectual life--History.

Intellectual life.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge, Louisiana : Louisiana State University Press, [2024]

Summary:

Parallel Lives covers the century from the birth of Sigmund Freud in 1856 to the death of Sylvia Plath in 1963. Written by the esteemed biographer and literary critic Jeffrey Meyers, the book includes European, American, and Russian authors and artists, film directors and actors, children and soldiers, friends and lovers, rivals and enemies. Drawing on the bifocal principle of dual composition in Plutarch, these brief lives are arranged in pairs to interact with each other and illuminate their subjects' similarities, characters, and friendships. The linked structure of Parallel Lives allows several major figures-Sigmund Freud, Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway, and Seamus Heaney-to appear in multiple chapters. The most violent friendship ended when Verlaine shot Rimbaud and went to prison, and Rimbaud crawled back from Africa to die miserably in France. The most brilliant friendship broke up when Wilson attacked Nabokov's edition of Alexander Pushkin. The most moving connection was Audrey Hepburn's tender and sympathetic attachment to her soul-sister Anne Frank. Using mirror images reveals a new way to perceive these illustrious men and women. Each chapter shifts the focus back and forth between two subjects, comparing them, changing perspective, reevaluating similarities and contrasts. With vivid details and dramatic events, Meyers emphasizes the backgrounds, intellectual influences, and personality traits of his paired subjects. By examining the complex motives for irrational behavior ranging from deep affection to intense hostility, warm encouragement to bitter rivalry (sometimes together in the same chapter), Parallel Lives offers insights into the dynamics of complementary characters.

Contents:

Sigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler

Freud and Thomas Mann

Anne Frank and Audrey Hepburn

Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine

T.E. Lawrence and André Malraux

Wyndham Lewis and T.S. Eliot

Evelyn Waugh and Robert Byron

Waugh and Randolph Churchill

Robert Frost and Kay Morrison

Edmund Wilson and Scott Fitzgerald

Wilson and Allen Tate

Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov and Balthus

Ernest Hemingway and John Huston

Hemingway and Gary Cooper

Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell

Heaney and Joseph Brodsky

Diane Arbus and Sylvia Plath.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780807182703

0807182702

9780807182697

0807182699

OCLC:

1438669604