At the top of my list are two by Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge, a magnificent account of a 20 year (?) dry drunk and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which does for co-dependency what Zola did for alcoholism.
Marty Roth
-----Original Message-----
From: Alcohol and Drugs History
Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Vanessa Taylor
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009
11:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Under the Literary
Influence
Dear All
I may have missed this one in the emails so far, but Jean Rhys'
novels come to mind.
Vanessa Taylor
Date:
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:51:00 -0600
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Under the Literary Influence
To: [log in to unmask]
That reminds me, what about Martha Grimes' crime series? Each one is
named after a pub in England, and the story, in part, revolves around
interactions in the pubs.
Gretchen
On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Dubiel, Rich <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
All:
Detective heroes who are recovering
alcoholics (and members of AA): Lawrence Block has the main character Matt
Scudder and James Lee Burke has Dave Robicheaux. Both are prolific authors.
Block’s When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes
sets the stage for Matt Scudder’s joining AA and getting sober. But before the
end of the book he really hammers ‘em back.
(I have a paper on these two
characters on my UWSP Web page.)
Univ. of Wisconsin –Stevens Point
http://www.uwsp.edu/comm/faculty/rdubiel/index.shtm
Rich Dubiel
[log in to unmask]
From: Alcohol
and Drugs Historhttp://www.uwsp.edu/comm/faculty/rdubiel/index.shtmy Society
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Dan Malleck
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
8:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Under the Literary
Influence
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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please notify the sender by e-mail and immediately delete this message and its
contents, and then find someone to blame. Thank you.
--
Gretchen Pierce, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Latin American History
Northern Illinois University
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