Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   1
09
 Literary Eccentricities, 
a.k.a. Portrait of the Artist as a Lunatic
James Joyce was nearly always seen wearing an eye patch, 
which was 
not
  mere  accessorizing:  He  suff ered from glau-
coma throughout adulthood and eventually went completely 
blind.  In  fact,  he  dictated  much  of  his  last  book, 
Finnegan’s 
Wake,
  to  his  research  assistant,  Samuel 
Waiting for Godot
 
Beckett.
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But Joyce sometimes wore fi ve wristwatches on one arm, 
which 
was
 mere eccentric accessorizing. He also asked his 
wife, Nora Barnacle, to sleep with another man so he could 
understand the feeling of being cuckolded, which seems a bit 
odd. (Nora declined.)
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Nineteenth-century French poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire, 
who besides being quirky was addicted to opium, once fa-
mously wrote, “If you would not be the martyred slave of 
time, / Get drunk! . . .” He wasn’t kidding about making the 
most of his time: In his house he kept a clock with no hands 
that bore the inscription “It’s later than you think.” Inci-
dentally, the positively batty Baudelaire also happened 
to  own a pet bat, which he’d captured at (where else?) a 
graveyard.
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Charles Dickens could not sleep unless his bed was aligned in 
a north–south position. Also, he habitually touched certain 
objects three times “for luck.”

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S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
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When he was 29, George Bernard Shaw lost his virginity to a 
widow 15 years his senior. Apparently, it wasn’t all that good, 
because thereafter Shaw rarely, if ever, had intimate physical 
relationships—not even with his wife, to whom he was mar-
ried for 45 years.
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Although 
Peter Pan
 author J. M. Barrie did not like the taste of 
brussels sprouts (as would befi t a boy who never grew up), he 
often ordered them at restaurants. Why? “I cannot resist or-
dering them. Th
  e words are so lovely to say.”
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“Little Mermaid” and “Th
  umbelina” author Hans Christian 
Andersen was so intensely afraid of being buried alive that 
he left a note by his bed each night that read, “I only 
appear
 to 
be dead.” Andersen was right 
to feel anxiety around sleep-
ing, incidentally: In 1875, he 
died as a result of injuries 
sustained falling out of bed.
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Although Emily Dickinson was not quite the utter recluse that 
she is often made out to be, she was unquestionably eccentric: 
She wore white from head to toe, exclusively, for the last sev-
eral years of her life.
For much of his career, Graham 
Greene wrote 500 words a day. 
Exactly. No matter if he was in the 
middle of

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