Recluses!
Being a true recluse isn't easy in the modern age. Between paparazzi, TV cameras and the rich rewards offered for simple public appearances, most celebrities find it hard to stay out of the public eye. Here are a few famous people who have turned the trick.
The strange ways of HOWARD HUGHES were so famous that a James Bond villain was patterned after him. In the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever, evil billionaire Willard Whyte lives a secretive life atop his Whyte House hotel in Las Vegas. Hughes did the same thing in real life, living in isolation atop the Desert Inn on the Las Vegas strip for much of the 1960s. Always a quirky sort, Hughes turned downright eccentric during his Vegas years, obsessing about germs and reportedly refusing to cut his hair or fingernails. He even declined to appear in person to denounce the false Hughes "autobiography" published by Clifford Irving (although he finally spoke with reporters in a telephone conference). Hughes went unseen for years and then moved to his last seculsion in the Bahamas, dying in 1976.
Author J.D. SALINGER dropped from public view in 1965 after his short story "Hapworth 16, 1924" appeared in the New Yorker. Though Salinger's whereabouts are no secret -- he lives in a remote compound near Cornish, New Hampshire -- his total withdrawal from public life is legendary. He refuses requests for interviews, is hostile to those who seek him out, and has published no new works since 1965. (Persistent rumors of his death appear to be greatly exaggerated.) The reasons for Salinger's reclusiveness, and his intentions of ever publishing again, are unknown.
Unlike Salinger, THOMAS PYNCHON has managed to keep his precise whereabouts a secret. Because Pynchon is known to be married to literary agent Melanie Jackson, he is presumed to live in New York City. (In 1998 a reporter from the Sunday Times of Johannesburg snapped a photo purported to be Pynchon picking up his child at a Manhattan school.) But the author of V and Gravity's Rainbow rejects book tours, interviews and fan requests of all kinds. He continues to publish novels at rare intervals; his last was Mason and Dixon in 1997.
GRETA GARBO's fans don't consider her a true recluse: after all, the once-famous beauty was known to venture out for rare strolls in her Manhattan neighborhood. But Garbo's sudden retirement from film at age 36, and her total disappearance from public life -- refusing all appearances and comment -- made it all too easy to see her as a romantic recluse hiding herself among New York's teeming millions. Her famous line from the 1932 film Grand Hotel -- "I want to be alone" -- turned out to be prescient. Garbo never did return to public life, dying in 1990 after nearly 50 years of solitary retirement.
In 1996 the 18-year-long bombing spree of the Unabomber came to an end with the arrest of anti-technology hermit TED KACZYNSKI. He had been living in a 10 x 12 foot shack in the woods of Montana since 1971, keeping to himself and "living off the land," allegedly inspired by the writings of Thoreau. In 1978 he began sending homemade bombs to universities and airlines, often targeting individuals he considered representatives of modern technology. Over the years his bombs -- handmade without the use of a machine shop -- became more dangerous and eventually deadly. After much legal wrangling over his mental state, in 1998 Kaczynski entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to life in prison.
For a related loop, take a look at these mysterious Disappearing Acts.
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