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
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
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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