Lives of writers and characters

Quite a few well-known writers have had strange, exciting, or adventurous lives. Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver during WWI, after which he did things like bull running in Spain and safaris in Africa; Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) was a gold prospector, worked on the steamboats going up and down the Mississippi, and served in the American Civil War. Jack Kerouac served on sailing vessels before he started the road trips all over the U.S. that he mined for the material of his famous...