Being terribly neurotic, I try to steer clear of blatantly alcohol 
and drug related literature for my personal reading.

Nevertheless, there is a section of Ann-Marie Macdonald's Fall on 
your knees (1997) that is particularly memorable for me.  The book is 
an epic story about a poor family in Nova Scotia, beginning in the 
early part of the 20th century.  For one section, a young girl in the 
family becomes an entertainer at a backwoods blind pig during 
prohibition.  Macdonald's ability to describe what seemed to me to be 
a likely much more realistic impression of the rough backwoods 
illegal drinking space altered my perception of illegal drinking 
during prohibition.  Later the story moves to Harlem during the 20s 
and 30s, but the blind pig is my favourite bit.

She's a brilliant writer in any case, but this is especially 
evocative for those of us who are preoccupied, one way or another (or 
in many ways), with alcohol and drugs.

Dan Malleck


At 05:09 PM 2/21/2009, Bradley Kadel wrote:
>Given our round table last month on writers and alcohol, I thought 
>the following from 
><http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/author/brian-mcdonald/>Brian 
>McDonald might be of particular interest.  Be sure to look at the 
>comments, for you'll find many more suggestions of titles wherein 
>alcohol plays a prominent role, as the author's trusty muse or the 
>subject for exploration through characters and places.
>
> 
><http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/under-the-literary-influence/?emc=eta1http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/under-the-literary-influence/?emc=eta1>http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/under-the-literary-influence/?emc=eta1http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/under-the-literary-influence/?emc=eta1
>
>Would it be too much to ask list members for their own favorite 
>authors and titles?
>
>For my part, I don't think anyone in the twentieth century described 
>gritty barroom intoxication better than James Farrell, especially in 
>the last volume of his Studs Lonnigan trilogy. Of course Farrell's 
>writing is quite dark, and certainly the tone of most writers 
>describing drunkenness shifts considerably by the early 1960s. Ideas?
>
>Brad Kadel
>Fayetteville State University
>
>*************************************************
>
>A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That 
>means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness 
>human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, 
>superficial - by this understanding.
>
>Literature can tell us what the world is like.
>
>Literature can give us standards and pass on deep knowledge, 
>incarnated in language, in narrative.
>
>Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those 
>who are not us or ours.
>
>
> From Susan Sontag's acceptance speech on the occasion of being 
> awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels,
>the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
>
>
>
>

Dan Malleck, PhD
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
Editor-in-chief, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An 
Interdisciplinary Journal
http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com

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