They were Gay, Gay, Gay...
Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907), was an English author & playwright. Her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941, Jamaica Inn, & her short stories The Birds, all directed by Alfred Hitcock, & Don't Look Now (directed my Nicholas Roge).
Bruce Chatwin (1940) is admired for his spare style & his innate story-telling abilities in his travel books & novels. He has also been criticised for his fictionalised anecdotes of real people, places, & events. Frequently, the people he wrote about recognised themselves & did not always appreciate his distortions . Chatwin was philosophical about what he saw as an unavoidable dilemma, arguing that his portrayals were not intended to be faithful portraits. Biographer Nicholas Shakespeare argues: "He tells not a half truth, but a truth & a half.”
In 1980, Chatwin contracted HIV. Chatwin told different stories about how he contracted the virus: that he was gang-raped in West Africa, & that he believed he caught the disease from Sam Wagstaff, the lover of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. He was one of the first high profile people in th UK to have the disease. He hid the illness, passing off his symptoms as fungal infections or the effects of the bite of a Chinese bat, a typically exotic story. It was a poorly kept secret. He died at age 49 in the South of France.
No comments:
Post a Comment