Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

My thank to NetGalley and the publisher Rowman & LIttlefield for a copy of this literary study on the lives and death of authors.

To be an artist means that the artist is answerable to a voice. The voice of critics doing there jobs, sometimes nasty, sometimes honest. The voice of editors or others trying to make that thing you labored so long and hard on, shorter, faster better more marketable, more bling making, more an intellectual property that can generate income long after the artist is gone. However it is the interior voices, the ones that never are quiet, the ones that make the artist create, or stop creating. Who make the art ugly and the artists life miserable, no matter if the art is good, or if things seem to be going well. Or cause the artist to end their existence, no matter the damage to those that love the artist.

In Final Drafts, Mark Seinfelt looks at the lives of many writers cut off way too early, by their own actions. The usual suspects are here, Sexton, Plath, Hemingway, but the book shines on the authors of less fame, poets, fiction and nonfiction writers like Trakl, Teasdale and Ross Lockbridge. All had different reasons, money, health, addiction, talent seeming to fade, editors with strange ideas, things that at another time could be ignored, or pushed away. However that voice never goes away, and even the strongest personality can feel its siren call.

Each chapter is a mini memoir of the writer, growing up, great works, feuds, problems, marriages, drinking, richer or poorer. There is a discussion of the works, with occasional examples if the works deal with self destruction or destructive thoughts. Even the history of the era the writer lived in is examined, especially in the authors whose lives have not been covered by numerous biographies.

This is not a book to be skimmed through. Mr. Seinfelt has done a lot of research and thought on each writer. There is no grand unifying theme on why these artists did what they did. What makes sense at the time, might not make sense later. However this is an important book not on just understanding why these artists did what they did, but why people opt for this solution to their problems. A very interesting books with quite a bit of information to think about.