“One Saturday evening [Kafka’s sister] came home from the shop to find [Kafka] sitting on the sofa, staring blankly in front of him. Aware he had been eating very little, she asked whether he was going to have supper, but he did not answer, and they just stared at each other.”

“On Christmas Day 1915, looking back at his diary, [Kafka] realized that over the past three or four years he could have made thousands of entries all more or less identical with the last one, all complaining ineffectually. But, at thirty-two, he could no longer believe, as he had ten years earlier, that it was within his powers to solve the problems that made life so difficult for him.”

“When a friend tried to compliment him on [The Easter Parade]’s “consistent symbolism” […] Yates was almost aggressively dismissive—as he put it, the book was “autobiography” rather than “allegory”: “Emily Fucking Grimes is me,” he laughed.”

“Yates responded to this latest rejection by calling [Gordon Lish] on the phone and abusively accusing him of favoring only “name” writers; finally he threatened to “get on a plane and shoot [Lish].”

“Many years later, after Cheever had stopped drinking, he often assuaged his melancholy by gorging on cheese and crackers […]”

(Source: 19841979)

“Essentially alone with his misery, Cheever began hoarding pills in the drawer of his bedside table, until one day he blurted out that he was “frightened” while lunching with Don Ettlinger: “I wake up at night and I’m calling out ‘Daddy, Daddy, help me,’ and I’ve never called anybody Daddy in my whole life.” He also told Ettlinger about the pills, which helped; afterward the thought of suicide began to seem “less important,” and he decided to see a psychiatrist.”

(Source: 19841979, via popserial)