Jeopardy? Really? (1 Viewer)

Right ON- David!CRB:)

(i was gonna' say Morrison, but-well, youknow...)

Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath... I'm not going for musicians, a bit too easy...How bout' any of those stuffy fucks that worked on the OED?
 
I hear you.

CRB - Freud was a coke head :p

And we're all forgetting Janis Joplin. Who once smashed a bottle of Southern Comfort over Jim Morrison's head.
 
A Clockwork Orange

Yep, I'm mentioned Trakl a while ago.
By chance going through the Anthony Burgess biography by Andrew Biswell I came across this a few minutes ago:
"Apart from work, of which there was obviously a great deal, there was also the drinking to get done. Burgess and Lynne [his wife] would get through a couple of bottles of wine over dinner, and a dozen bottles of Gordon's gin were delivered to the house every week--an astonishing amount considering that they hardly ever entertained visitors. Burgess's rate of gin consumption was not measurably lower than his wife's. When he wasn't drinking gin in the house, or downing pints of beer with double-whiskey chasers at the Etchingham Arms--his habitual den in the village, from which Lynne had been barred after a fist-fight with the landlord--he was devising life-threatening cocktails, such as the Hangman's Blood....which he described to readers of the Guardian in 1966: 'Into a pint beer-glass doubles of the following are poured: gin, whisky, rum, port, and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added, and the whole topped up with champagne or champagne-surrogate. It tastes very smooth, induces a somehow metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover.'"
 
I bought this book, and I'll probably read it one day, but for now I've put it aside after less than two pages, because I think the author (an M.D.) may be out of his mind.

Ring Lardner Jr., obtained from an almanac a list of 187 twentieth century American writers. One third, to the best of his knowledge, were alcoholic, and he said he probably missed some. The rate, he guessed, was at least three times higher than the rate of alcoholism in the general population. (Lardner didn't really know the rate in the general population. Nobody knows. [...] Household surveys cannot be depended upon, because the alcoholics are rarely home when the interviewer knocks on the door. [...])

Then we come to a Jewish laureate, Saul Bellow. Jews, like women, are "protected" against alcoholism, regardless of occupation, for reasons one can only guess at.


Oooookay. His theory is that drinking among writers is an "epidemic," which he apparently intends to prove using speculation and idiocy.

If the book wasn't written by a doctor and didn't have aspirations of proving a scientific theory, it may be interesting, but it's hard to take it seriously when it contains that much crazy shit on the first two pages.
 
thanks for the review. I didn't know the book was that bad. Haven't read it myself. Just liked the title/subject and the cover of the german ed.

Too bad, it seems to be embarrassing. Ah, well ...
 
If the book wasn't written by a doctor and didn't have aspirations of proving a scientific theory, it may be interesting, but it's hard to take it seriously when it contains that much crazy shit on the first two pages.

Maybe he's a Doctor in the same way that Dr. Seuss and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson are Doctors, which is to say, not really a Doctor at all.

Reminds me of an old WKRP in Cincinnati episode where Les Nessman interviews a Doctor who claims to be an expert on child psychology, but it's soon revealed that his entire theory is that "Children, from an adult point of view, are completely insane."
 
HST and Seuss were doctors, but not medical doctors who dominate the title of doctor.

Many great car salesmen are alcoholics too. It could be due to the high intensity of their work. The lofty highs quickly followed by the intense dark lows. I should be a doctor of speculation and guessing.
 
HST and Seuss were doctors, but not medical doctors who dominate the title of doctor.


if you call paying 50 bucks for a mail order certificate stating you are a "doctor of divinity", well, then yea, hst was a doctor ;)

edit: homeless mind beat me to it! except he thought 5 bucks, i thought it 50...
 
Then we come to a Jewish laureate, Saul Bellow. Jews, like women, are "protected" against alcoholism, regardless of occupation, for reasons one can only guess at

Oh, for fuck's sake - what was the context of Bellow's comment here ? I can't believe he would have said something as STOOPID as that.

I refuse to believe the author of "Humboldt's Gift" could have said something like this ! Please...(not that I am accusing you of misquoting, mjp).

Or maybe this "writer" needs an editor like an anchor needs a lifeguard.
 
No, no, Bellow did not say that. Goodwin, the author of the book did. He is commenting on Bellow, explaining why he could never be an alcoholic. You know, because he's a Jew, of course.

I have to say, that was the line that sent me over the edge too, and made me set the book down. Well, that and "...alcoholics are rarely home when the interviewer knocks on the door." Just demonstrates how utterly clueless Goodwin is, and how he is happy to base statements of fact on his own weird fantasies.
 
So which is the aberrition, the subculture. The drinkers or those abstainers? THEY, the unthirsty, crash their cars and wreck their families easily as frequently (and have a miserable time doing it).

Regarding the alcoholic writers; well, writing poetry or prose is one of the few "jobs" you can have where it is possible to drink While you do it. You are generally alone, hidden and wish to feel good...but not so good that you'll leave your chair (everytime).

Anyhow, the drinking doesn't care about your vocation, it cares that its gets regular attention. The participating "life" may or may not be harmed. I'd hate to think where I would have been had I not been sitting quietly in those bars all those years...trouble indeed.
 
oh, I thought that "Jews, like women, are protected"-thing was plain irony.
Like Hank once said, the only person you are allowed to write bad about is the white male hetero.
 
Yeah, I don't think his intention was irony. He explains earlier that women are less likely to become alcoholics, and since they are less likely, in his mind, that means women are immune. It's a weird book. I may have to keep reading it just for the "I can't believe he just said that" factor.
 
thanks baby. unfortunately it was only half-a-joke. but still a nice one.

has anybody mentioned GEORG TRAKL here yet?
i seem to remember we had him on another thread once ...

I wasn't joking either ;).


On the contrary, I think you're allowed to write badly about anyone. Does that take courage, or is "courage" just a lazy word we use when we want to speak well of someone?

PS. I want to be a doctor of something :(

Mrs. Dr. G.
 
I'm late to this thread but I don't think I'm being far fetched to say that there would seem to be a lot of alcoholic writers. My top seven favorite writers would be Buk, Jim Thompson, Nelson Algren, Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Tennesee Williams and Steinbeck. Got at least 5 out and out alcoholics there.

But it would seem a lot of the arts could claim that, I've known mostly musicians my whole life and people think of them as druggies but I've known more than my share of heavy drinkers.
 

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