Introduction xi
Part 1 Folie a Deux
Some Like It Hot: Arthur Miller 3
Three's a Crowd 10
The Love Song of T S. Eliot 12
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do 18
Beautiful and Damned: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald 21
Cougars and Cradle Robbers 30
All War, No Peace: Leo Tolstoy 32
Fight Club 39
Part 2 Bad Boys, Scoundrels, and Rogues
Hell Hath No Fury: Ernest Hemingway 43
Behind Every Successful Man 51
The Alpha Mailer: Norman Mailer 53
Mad About You
by Edgar Allan Poe 61
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Lord Byron 63
Natural-Born Lady-Killers 72
Never Curse Me: Gustave Flaubert 74
Six Degrees of Copulation 81
Go Your Own Way: The Beats 82
If These Walls Could Talk 90
Part 3 The Jay of Sex
Sexistentialism: Simone de Beauvoir 95
The Art of Seduction 104
Web of Lies: Anaïs Nin 106
Lawrence in Lust
by D. H. Lawrence 114
Shock and Awe: Tennessee Williams 116
Talk Dirty to Me
by James Joyce 124
Part 4 Unlucky in Love
Sweet Sorrow: Karen Blixen
by Isak Dinesen 129
Happily Never After
by Carson McCullers 137
House of Secrets: Daphne du Maurier 139
Lonely Heart
by Emily Dickinson 146
Parisian Passion: Edith Wharton 148
The Wit of a Wounded Woman
by Dorothy Parker 155
Part 5 Your Cheating Heart
A Tale of Two Dickenses: Charles Dickens 159
Covert Affairs 166
Turbulent Times: Frederick Douglass 168
Mr. Not So Nice Guy
by Richard Wright 176
Born to Be Wilde: Oscar Wilde 178
The Pursuit of Pleasure 185
Part 6 Paradise Lost
Runaway Romantics: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley 189
Tragic Turns 196
Eclipse of the Heart: Voltaire 198
Eternal Flames 205
A Marriage of Minds: Virginia Woolf 207
Romance with Death
by Sylvia Plath 215
Part 7 This Side of Paradise
Count the Ways: Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 219
How Do I Love Thee? 226
Romantic Suspense: Agatha Christie 228
Awake Ye Muses Nine 236
Delicious Dish: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas 238
First Impressions 245
Come Sail Away: Robert Louis Stevenson 247
You've Got Mail 254
Acknowledgments 57
Notes 259
Select Bibliography 281