David Weiss (novelist)

David Weiss (1909 – November 29, 2002) was an American novelist and writer best known for his bestselling 1963 biographical novel Naked Came I about the life of sculptor Auguste Rodin.

David Weiss died on November 29, 2002 at a La Jolla Hospital. The cause was thrombophlebitis and complications from a fall. He was 93.

David Weiss was married to the poet, artist and Group Theatre playwright Stymean Karlen for 53 years, until her death in 1998. Karlen often contributed poetry to Weiss's novels, and the couple lived in New York, London and La Jolla, California. After her death Weiss wrote a biography of his wife, Forever and After.

Although he wrote plays and a couple of contemporary set novels, Weiss's speciality was biographical fiction – particularly of artists, such as Titian and Rembrandt. He wrote two novels about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sacred and Profane (1968) described by Yehudi Menuhin as ‘a very readable book which portrays the human being behind the music, increasing our love of both' and The Assassination of Mozart (1970) a fictitious examination of the mysteries surrounding the composer’s death.

In 1953 Weiss published his first novel, The Guilt Makers, which won the $5,000 Frieder Literary Award for best novel on a Jewish theme published in America. This was followed in 1959 by The Spirit and the Flesh (inspired by the life of the dancer Isadora Duncan) and his most successful book Naked Came I in 1963.

In 1933 he graduated from Temple University and moved to New York, where he became private secretary to Erwin Piscator, then head of the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research; whilst there Weiss did graduate work in dramatics and became an assistant director during the early days of the Actors Studio.

Born in 1909, from an early age Weiss showed an interest in the lives of artists and composers. His father was a painter, and after Weiss was orphaned at the age of four he was raised in Philadelphia by an aunt who owned a Russian restaurant across the street from the Academy of Music.