Scatter Brained

YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART
AND YOU THOUGHT FREUD WAS NUTS
PHOBIAS!
PHILIAS!
UNUSUAL WILLS
to
YOUR BEATIN’ HEART
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
REALLY
 UNBREAK ABLE SPORTS RECORDS
REALLY
 UNBREAK ABLE NONSPORTS RECORDS
MATH NERDS
to
N. BONAPARTE

---

---

109
01
 Your Cheatin’ Heart
LITERATI
Charles Dickens’s wife, Catherine, ended up having a nervous 
breakdown that was probably attributable to postpartum de-
pression. But it may also have been related to her husband’s 
inveterate infi delity, including a possible love aff air  with 
Catherine’s sister Mary (who inspired Little Nell in 
Th
 e Old 
Curiosity Shop
).
✖  ✖  ✖
Dorothy Parker cheated re-
peatedly  on  both  of  her  hus-
bands, and she never really 
made a point of hiding it. For-
give us, but if everyone Doro-
thy Parker knew were laid end 
to  end,  we  wouldn’t  be  at  all 
surprised.
✖  ✖  ✖
William Faulkner’s child-
hood sweetheart, Estelle, di-
vorced her fi rst husband in 
order to marry Faulkner, but he proved to be a poor choice. 
Happily Ever After
Happy marriages are rare in 
the world of letters, but few 
marriages were more blessed 
than that of Mark Twain and 
his wife, Olivia Langdon. The 
two married in 1870, just after 
Twain’s 
The Innocents Abroad
 
made him famous. And until 
Livy’s death 34 years later, the 
Twains remained consistently, 
faithfully in love.

---

110
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
Besides having an aff air with the memorably named Meta 
Carpenter, Faulkner often complained that his wife just 
didn’t 
get
 all the toil and sweat and misery of the authorial 
life. No doubt! All that sitting and writing stuff  down is 
hard work.