Robert Schnakenberg on Secret Lives of Great Authors
Monday, May 19th, 2008
Last month, after reading Whitney (Pop Candy) Matheson’s review of Robert Schnakenberg’s new book, Secret Lives of Great Authors, I tracked down the author to interview him. In addition to discussing the new book, Schnakenberg took questions about the upcoming release of his revised Encyclopedia Shatnerica (about all things William Shatner, set for an August 2008 release) as well as a new Christopher Walken A-to-Z book (set for October 2008 release). But the bulk of this interview covered the book that answers such questions as “Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? Why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels?” My thanks to Schnakenberg for his time.
Tim O’Shea: How often in trying to research facts for Secret Lives did you find out the anecdote was not true?
Robert Schnakenberg: That happened occasionally. Sometimes I’d find a really good anecdote about someone, and then another source would say that it happened to someone else entirely. You know, one book says it happened to Ernest Hemingway, another says it happened to F. Scott Fitzgerald. That happens with quotes a lot. They are always attributed to two or three different people. So you throw those out, or you find the one source that you trust and you go with that. I can’t promise that every anecdote in my book is 100% true—I mean, I wasn’t in the men’s room with Hemingway and Fitzgerald when they compared schlongs—but I can say everything is reliably sourced. Double and triple sourced, in fact, as much as possible.