Cursed writers in Paris

One of the earliest examples we have of a criminal writer is the provocative fifteenth-century French writer, François Villon, who was also the precursor of other cursed writers like Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine. He spent long periods in prison and was saved from the death penalty in exile. He surrounded himself with the criminal underworld of that time, thieves, murderers, swindlers.

Following the French we have Jean Genet, who rebelled against the society of the time by making crime his religion. He began his first tour to jail when it was only a teenager but already a real thief. Hobo, beggar, male prostitute and openly gay, he is also recognized as one of the best writers of the twentieth century.

The Marxist philosopher from French Algeria, Louis Althusser was diagnosed with manic depression, spending long periods in psychiatric hospitals. He strangled his wife, apparently in a frenzy of madness. Due to the intervention of certain leftist intellectuals he was never sent to jail.

One of the best-known criminal writers is William S. Burroughs, who was a recognized member of the Beat generation, despite his wild character and his countercultural that made him impossible to be classified as an author. Polydrug abuser, but not only addicted to drugs, but to guns, sex, and pedophiles hobbies. He never regretted nor apologized for his crimes. He killed his wife Joan Vollmer by shooting her in the head, in what appears to a drunken simulation of William Tell.

The English writer Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme) planned and executed, along with her friend Pauline, the murder of her mother. She was 16. They killed her mother after hitting 45 times her head with a brick. The young age saved them from being convicted. Juliet changed her name when he moved to the U.S. and turned a crime novels writer.

The French Maurice Sachs was a scammer, thief and known seducer of both sexes. He ended up being a member of Gestapo and according to gossip, it is known that he was lynched and his body, thrown as food for hungry dogs.

Another completely different example is the American prisoner Jack Henry Abbott, who was convicted of murder. While in prison he wrote a letter to the writer Norman Mailer, offering his help to understand how violence was brewed in the U.S. prisons. Mailer wrote “The Executioner’s Song”, which tells the story of an inmate fighting of a man to avoid his death sentence. Mailer was amazed by Abbott`s lucidity and helped him to publish his book “In the Belly of the Beast” and to reduce his sentence. Few weeks after his was released, he killed a waiter stabbing a knife into his chest. He returned to prison and ended up committing suicide in his cell.

The list of criminal writers is much longer, other famous writers fascinated with the art of crime were: Jack Black, Chester Himes, Hugh Collins, Krystian Bala, Álvaro Mutis, Segiusz Piasecki, Alfonso Vidal and José León Sánchez among others.

We have evidence of all their crimes through their own books.

Ara

Paris is a city of literature, in which many literary geniuses of the last century have developed. Rent apartments in Paris and enjoy this city home to the literature.

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Translated by: Hans
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