There is, of course, no shortage of examples of alcoholic characters and
alcoholic behavior in twentieth-century American literature.  Just look
into the recent wave of memoirs.  One early success, Mary Karr's THE
LIAR'S CLUB, is everywhere redolent of her father's whiskey breath.  The
one I most admire and the one I've taught most often is DRINKING: A LOVE
STORY by the late Caroline Knapp (who died much too young, but not from
drinking after all).  

This topic reminds me of George Wedge (U of Kansas), one of the true
founders of Alcohol and Addiction Studies within the "discipline" of
English.  For many years he compiled a bibliography of drinking/drunken
writers and their stories.  (I hope it's gone into the Kansas library.)
Unfortunately, George never published very much of what he knew; but all
of us owe him an intellectual debt.  

Toward the end of his life, George was thinking about the idea that AA
had possibly distorted the early scholarship in the field (including,
for instance, mine!): by subtly introducing an unduly righteous tone
toward unregenerate alcoholic authors as well as the possibly rigid
notion that sobriety goes with superior literary production, in terms of
quantity and quality too.  Perhaps a dubious idea; for some writers
(e.g. Styron) report the virtual necessity of alcohol in their literary
inspiration.  Simply denial?  Just an excuse?  Maybe not?  That's the
direction George would have taken.  Any fellow travelers?  (I once tried
out this approach in a short piece on James Whitcomb Riley, all of whose
best poetry was written under the influence and none of whose sober
poetry has ever been considered worth a damn.)

John W. Crowley, U of Alabama