Flavorwire’s listicle of literary couples, while juicy (“I weep for the eight years I spent…worshipping his image with him, and I weep for whatever else I was cheated of due to that time-serving”–Martha Gelhorn on Ernest Hemingway), doesn’t even scratch the surface. Where are Sartre, de Beauvoir, and their detail-sharing open relationship (pro-tip for young existentialists: this rarely works out). What about bisexual addicts & Morocco fetishists Paul and Jane Bowles? Drunk commies Dashiell Hammet and Lillian Hellman? And where are today’s tempestuous writer couples, hurling drinks at Paris Review parties?

Oh, they’re buying luxury brownstones and worrying about how they love their husbands too much. Blech. Today’s offensively private and healthy inter-writer relationships rob us of the gloriously drunken, sexually dysfunctional liter-romances of yore. Why have writers’ relationships gotten so boring?

• Not enough letter writing. Consider this mash-note from Rebecca West to H.G. Wells: “You’ve literally ruined me. I’m burned down to my foundations.” Yikes. While the torrid love lives of today’s writers might be uncovered by future biographers, emails are easy to delete, and lengthy love/”you’ve ruined me” letters are a dying art.  (Though $10 says Franzen’s got some.)
• Gay Pride. Fine, yes, it’s essential that society progress from the shame and judgement that kept gays and lesbians in the closet for centuries. But what about the great literary marriages of convenience? Everybody is so open now, they don’t make fraught, sexless contracts with other similarly tortured writers. And literary gossip suffers.
• Not enough alcoholism. The common denominator in so many of history’s most passionate writer-couplings just isn’t as common these days. Raise a glass to our bygone friend, crippling addiction.
• Psychopharmacology. Many of the “eccentric,” “tortured” writers of yesteryear were probably “mentally ill.” Now that bi-polar, depressed writers can be treated, they might not have such dysfunctional relationships. Or they do, but the pills lessen the risk of scotch throwing and revenge-sonnet writing.

But perhaps there is drama brewing behind those staid Brooklyn walls? One can only hope, for the sake of literature.