From Where I‘m Calling From:
“So she and J.P. saw some movies together. They went to a few dances. But mainly the courtship revolved around their cleaning chimneys together. Before you know it, J.P. says, they’re talking about tying the knot. And after a while they do it, they get married. J.P.’s new father-in-law takes him in as a full partner. In a year or so, Roxy has a kid. She’s quit being a chimney sweep. At any rate, she’s quit doing the work. Pretty soon she has another kid. J.P.’s in his mid-twenties by now. He’s buying a house. He says he was happy with his life. “I was happy with the way things were going,” he says. “I had everything I wanted. I had a wife and kids I loved, and I was doing what I wanted to do with my life.” but for some reason - who knows why we do what we do? - his drinking picks up. For a long time he drinks beer and beer only. Any kind of beer - it didn’t matter. He says he could drink beer twenty-four hours a day. He’d drink beer at night while he watched TV. Sure, once in a while he drank hard stuff. But that was only if they went out on the town, which was not often, or else when they had company over. Then a time comes, he doesn’t know why, when he makes the switch from beer to gin-and-tonic. And he’d have more gin-and-tonic after dinner, sitting in front of the TV. There was always a glass of gin-and-tonic in his hand. He says he actually liked the taste of it. He began stopping off after work drinks before he went home to have more drinks. Then he began missing some dinners. He just wouldn’t show up. Or else he’d show up, but he wouldn’t want anything to eat. He’d filled up on snacks at the bar. Sometimes he’d walk in the door and for no good reason throw his lunch pail across the living room. When Roxy yelled at him, he’d turn around and go out again. He moved his drinking time up to early afternoon, while he was still supposed to be working. He tells me that he was starting off the morning with a couple of drinks. He’d have a belt of the stuff before he brushed his teeth. Then he’d have his coffee. He’d go to work with a thermos bottle of vodka in his lunch pail.”
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Down Among the Big Boys
In Peter McDougall’s television play, Down Among the Big Boys, a man walks in to a bar and asks for a whisky and a half pint please, pal. The whisky is quickly served from the optics, and he downs it in one while the barman pours the half pint. As the barman rings up the drinks, the half pint is in the process of being downed as well. One-sixty four. The man confesses that “Mate, ah canny pey fur this … Ma heid was burstin and a wis desperate. …” The barman steps round the bar – by now everyone else there is watching – and, after a pause for expected violence, rips the jacket off the man: “When you can pay for your drink, you can have your jacket back.” At which point another customer shouts, “Ho, mate. Ah’ll have a large vodka then, eh?” and throws his denim jacket over the bar.
Friday, March 26, 2010
A Country For Old Men
William McIlvanney (in Surviving the Shipwreck) recounts the following:
“It’s just after 11:30 on a dull weekday morning. Mick Murphy, alias Beef, alias several other people he claims to be, stands at the bar contemplating the remaining two-thirds of his pint of McEwan’s. Already pushing 70, Mick has good reason to regret the way age arranges its remorseless ambushes. His gammy leg is giving him severe trouble and he’s due in Kilmarnock Infirmary at noon. The possibility of amputation makes it seem like High Noon. What remains for a man in the bleakness of such moments? Mick finds it. He glances at the clock and says to the manager, ‘Joe, keep yer eye on that pint. Ah’m goin’ up tae get ma leg aff.”
I don’t know Mick Murphy (or rather I didn’t, since he eventually “died a two-legged death,” which - and maybe it's just me - would seem to undermine somewhat the anecdote above) but I know the pub McIlvanney eulogizes as “the resort of people with the true grain of character still showing through them in a time of plastic personalities,” and not only didn’t think much of it but couldn't stand the place. This might have been something of a first at the time but, having by now been many times around that particular block, I have come across many pubs I didn’t like, well hidden as they were among the many more I did like.
McIlvanney admits it doesn’t look much, having been “by-passed by the recent juggernaut of bad taste that has hit so many pubs and moved on,” notes that “the most significant furnishings are people,” and presents a few cameos to illustrate the point: the man who talks to the water-bottle; the “incomprehensibility in stereo” of Jimmy and Danny; the electrician who is writing the life of Cervantes; and the brickie who quotes from the updated Scottish version of Candide that he is writing. And, well, that's about it, apart from Mabel, who works at the bar and doubles as a bouncer, and the stranger who thinks he's Henry VIII ("I had terrible trouble with that Ann Boleyn").
He could go on, “but if you don’t get the picture by now, you never will, at least not from me.” The picture “is that this is how a pub can sometimes be, not a plastic factory for liquefying money but a place where people can prospect casual conversation for mutual nuggets of unexpected gold, explore small dreams, admit who they are or pretend to be who they’re not and know it won’t be used against them.”
As I say, I know the G________ (at the foot of B______ Street, near the J _____ Bridge, as the old Russians might have put it). And I’ve had a drink or two – enjoyable enough – with several of the people mentioned above. I didn’t mind drinking there, but it really is a watering hole of last resort. It’s the last pub in the town you grew up in, the town you left and only occasionally forget that you couldn’t wait to escape, and by last pub I don't mean the last pub standing but the last one you would go into.
This is not to knock McIlvanney’s estimate of the place (which might well be different, for various reasons, were he not writing a book that sells in stores around the corner from it). I appreciate the anecdotes, “the benign eccentricity of many people … gathered over the years into an unofficial history of ordinary lives.” But imagine the bleakness (as you come in soaked through with the rain and cold to the bone) of a pub with no fire, no gantry, no covered bulbs, no actual wood, no actual air, no larger a crowd on Saturday night than on Tuesday morning, and, save for Mabel, no women. It’s not that bleak, of course: it’s much bleaker.
I would guess that McIlvanney is letting his nostalgia talk here. And my own nostalgia is stirred elsewhere. So, keep yer eye on that pint. Ah’m away up tae get ma heid aff.
“It’s just after 11:30 on a dull weekday morning. Mick Murphy, alias Beef, alias several other people he claims to be, stands at the bar contemplating the remaining two-thirds of his pint of McEwan’s. Already pushing 70, Mick has good reason to regret the way age arranges its remorseless ambushes. His gammy leg is giving him severe trouble and he’s due in Kilmarnock Infirmary at noon. The possibility of amputation makes it seem like High Noon. What remains for a man in the bleakness of such moments? Mick finds it. He glances at the clock and says to the manager, ‘Joe, keep yer eye on that pint. Ah’m goin’ up tae get ma leg aff.”
I don’t know Mick Murphy (or rather I didn’t, since he eventually “died a two-legged death,” which - and maybe it's just me - would seem to undermine somewhat the anecdote above) but I know the pub McIlvanney eulogizes as “the resort of people with the true grain of character still showing through them in a time of plastic personalities,” and not only didn’t think much of it but couldn't stand the place. This might have been something of a first at the time but, having by now been many times around that particular block, I have come across many pubs I didn’t like, well hidden as they were among the many more I did like.
McIlvanney admits it doesn’t look much, having been “by-passed by the recent juggernaut of bad taste that has hit so many pubs and moved on,” notes that “the most significant furnishings are people,” and presents a few cameos to illustrate the point: the man who talks to the water-bottle; the “incomprehensibility in stereo” of Jimmy and Danny; the electrician who is writing the life of Cervantes; and the brickie who quotes from the updated Scottish version of Candide that he is writing. And, well, that's about it, apart from Mabel, who works at the bar and doubles as a bouncer, and the stranger who thinks he's Henry VIII ("I had terrible trouble with that Ann Boleyn").
He could go on, “but if you don’t get the picture by now, you never will, at least not from me.” The picture “is that this is how a pub can sometimes be, not a plastic factory for liquefying money but a place where people can prospect casual conversation for mutual nuggets of unexpected gold, explore small dreams, admit who they are or pretend to be who they’re not and know it won’t be used against them.”
As I say, I know the G________ (at the foot of B______ Street, near the J _____ Bridge, as the old Russians might have put it). And I’ve had a drink or two – enjoyable enough – with several of the people mentioned above. I didn’t mind drinking there, but it really is a watering hole of last resort. It’s the last pub in the town you grew up in, the town you left and only occasionally forget that you couldn’t wait to escape, and by last pub I don't mean the last pub standing but the last one you would go into.
This is not to knock McIlvanney’s estimate of the place (which might well be different, for various reasons, were he not writing a book that sells in stores around the corner from it). I appreciate the anecdotes, “the benign eccentricity of many people … gathered over the years into an unofficial history of ordinary lives.” But imagine the bleakness (as you come in soaked through with the rain and cold to the bone) of a pub with no fire, no gantry, no covered bulbs, no actual wood, no actual air, no larger a crowd on Saturday night than on Tuesday morning, and, save for Mabel, no women. It’s not that bleak, of course: it’s much bleaker.
I would guess that McIlvanney is letting his nostalgia talk here. And my own nostalgia is stirred elsewhere. So, keep yer eye on that pint. Ah’m away up tae get ma heid aff.
The Most Illiberal Vice
Gibbon, citing Tacitus, Plutarch, and Jean-Baptiste Dubos, on “the state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians, in the time of the Emperor Decius:”
“Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterward of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however (as has since been executed with so much success), to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by arms was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents. The Tuscan who betrayed his country to the Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy by the prospect of the rich fruits and delicious wines, the productions of a happier climate. And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy. Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous, of our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.”
Beer corrupted into a semblance of wine “sufficient for the gross purpose of German debauchery” even as the lucky few “sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication” is good, and at last we have a historian willing to pronounce that drunkenness was – and presumably is – capable of “occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.” Cleopatra’s nose, my arse! Offended Germans might find consolation in the fact that Decius’ reign was short of three years long.
“Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterward of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however (as has since been executed with so much success), to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by arms was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents. The Tuscan who betrayed his country to the Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy by the prospect of the rich fruits and delicious wines, the productions of a happier climate. And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy. Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous, of our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.”
Beer corrupted into a semblance of wine “sufficient for the gross purpose of German debauchery” even as the lucky few “sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication” is good, and at last we have a historian willing to pronounce that drunkenness was – and presumably is – capable of “occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.” Cleopatra’s nose, my arse! Offended Germans might find consolation in the fact that Decius’ reign was short of three years long.
Death By Whiskey
Jefferson said that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” The death, by whiskey, of a Missouri slave gave the Supreme Court of that state occasion to show how little the minds of its Justices had progressed by 1850.
Skinner et al vs. Hughes, penned by the Honorable William B. Napton, discussed the liability of a person selling intoxicating liquors to a slave without permission from his “master, owner, or overseer” and the principal-agency relationship between a sales clerk and store owner. Liability, as the Court discussed, was based not on remote and consequential damages resulting from an act, but those which are its natural and proximate consequences.
It is surprising to read of death as the natural consequence of the sale of a bottle of whiskey. It is unsurprising – but no less horrific – to read the following:
“The sale of whisky to the negro was unlawful, but that does not constitute the source of responsibility. The defendants might have sold the negro a rope, with which he immediately went out and hanged himself. The distinction between such a sale and a sale of intoxicating liquors is obvious. The former, though a breach of law, was not likely to be attended with injurious consequences, without a concurrence of circumstances and co-operation of acts on the part of the slave, not to be expected in the usual course of events. The latter is like placing noxious food within the reach of domestic animals.”
Skinner et al vs. Hughes, penned by the Honorable William B. Napton, discussed the liability of a person selling intoxicating liquors to a slave without permission from his “master, owner, or overseer” and the principal-agency relationship between a sales clerk and store owner. Liability, as the Court discussed, was based not on remote and consequential damages resulting from an act, but those which are its natural and proximate consequences.
It is surprising to read of death as the natural consequence of the sale of a bottle of whiskey. It is unsurprising – but no less horrific – to read the following:
“The sale of whisky to the negro was unlawful, but that does not constitute the source of responsibility. The defendants might have sold the negro a rope, with which he immediately went out and hanged himself. The distinction between such a sale and a sale of intoxicating liquors is obvious. The former, though a breach of law, was not likely to be attended with injurious consequences, without a concurrence of circumstances and co-operation of acts on the part of the slave, not to be expected in the usual course of events. The latter is like placing noxious food within the reach of domestic animals.”
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Bite Me
Laurence Monroe Klauber was the authority on rattlesnakes and proved it in 1956 with the publication of the monumental Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence On Mankind. This monster came in two volumes and ran to over fifteen hundred pages and could deservedly be known in the herpetology trade as Rattlesnakes, by God. And unless you are in the trade, if there’s anything you want to know about rattlesnakes that does not appear in the book you should probably put it aside and consult a psychiatrist instead.
Most readers (now as then, no doubt) are most interested in knowing just how nasty rattlesnakes are - how well-endowed of fang, how deadly the bite, how quickly the unattended victim will drop dead, and so on. Klauber acknowledges this in his preface, stoically but not grudgingly (there’s nothing grudging about fifteen hundred pages on rattlesnakes). In fact, he is more than happy to indulge such curiosity. Much more. Several hundred pages are devoted to the poison apparatus and biting mechanism of rattlesnakes, as well as some of the things you should and shouldn't do if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having sat on one.
Widespread familiarity with just how dangerous rattlesnake bites were coincided with the widespread invasion of rattlesnake territory, which, in North America, coincided in turn with the invasion of Native American lands. In the eighteenth century, it was thought that various herbs “wrought certain immediate cures” for such bites, but these were “known to the Indians, who sometimes would, but sometimes would not, divulge them to the white man” (depending, perhaps, on whether the white man had come in peace or with horns and cloven hooves). When such cures failed, “the cause was usually attributed by them [i.e., “the Indians”] to some infringement of ceremonial detail, for their treatments often had a mystical basis. The whites were more likely to cite some botanical misidentification.” The situation was not a pleasant one until a more reliable “cure” was proffered, and then the situation, for some, was a very pleasant one indeed, since that “cure” was whiskey, and lots of it.
Throughout the nineteenth century alcohol was routinely “administered” not as a stimulant but as a specific antidote for rattlesnake bite. Alcohol was thought to seek out the venom in the body, be it in the blood or tissues, and destroy or neutralize it. Two corollaries of the theory were, first, that a person showing snake-bite symptoms was obviously "insufficiently supplied with alcohol" and, second, a snake-bite victim "could not become drunk, regardless of the quantity of whiskey imbibed, until that quantity was more than the amount required to neutralize the venom in his system." It was common belief that rattlesnake venom was harmless to a person in a state of intoxication. It was perhaps advisable, therefore, to have a few shots before venturing forth after breakfast and, if actually bitten, you had to get paraletic lest you get paralyzed. And this was received medical opinion. Oh Happy Days.
The quantities of liquor reportedly taken were formidable. One and a half quarts of whiskey for a young girl, two quarts of corn whiskey in twelve hours for a grown man, one half pint of bourbon every five minutes until a quart had been taken, seven quarts of brandy and whiskey in four days, and one quart of brandy and one and a half gallons of whiskey in thirty six hours are reported in the (rudimentary) medical literature. In the latter case, Klauber notes, “The doctor reported (seriously) that the patient was seen next day looking for another rattlesnake to bit him.”
How the theory of direct antidotal effect gained credence among doctors and laymen alike remains a bit of a mystery “since there were no tests to substantiate it.” The proposition, rather, “had its validation in the uncertainties that have authenticated all the folklore remedies of the past - the cure of cases that required no treatment, that recovered despite the treatment rather than with its help.” Because of this, whiskey was used very generally and in large quantities throughout the United States, and it is claimed “the rattler, more than any other cause, made the High Plains country a hard liquor area.” A survey of snake bites in 1908 concluded that alcohol in large doses only added alcohol poisoning to snake poisoning, and it was evident that the party would soon come to an end. The decline of whiskey as a cure began in earnest shortly afterwards, and, when antivenin and an effective incision-suction program became available in the 1920s, it was practically eliminated from methods approved by killjoy physicians. It is estimated that, until this happened, acute alcoholism accounted for five percent of the fatalities attributed to snake bites.
There were other ways to treat rattlesnake bites. Though few were as persistent as the alcohol cure, many were further removed from medical science. Some involved messing around with actual rattlesnakes to varyingly useless degrees: binding a piece of the rattlesnake’s skin to the wound, but only after killing and burning the snake; swallowing the rattler’s heart while fresh, or dried and pulverized and taken in wine and beer; or having the victim grab the snake by the head and tail, and biting it in the middle, whereupon the poison in the person’s mouth will kill the snake and cure the bite (a method that not only doesn’t work but also has the unfortunate side-effect of inviting a few more bites). Another treatment was what is known, for good reason, as “the split-chicken treatment,” where “a live chicken is split and the bleeding flesh is immediately applied to the snake bite as a poultice.” Needless to say, Klauber notes, “not the slightest benefit has ever been shown to result from this cruel method.” Still other folklore treatments survived from “the Old World,” evidencing the slow pace not only of medicine but of human evolution: the saliva of a fasting man; a poultice of melted cheese; eggs in various forms; treatments involving various kinds of excrement; and, last but not least, the scrapings of a crocodile tooth, which begs the question, What is the cure for a crocodile bite?
Most readers (now as then, no doubt) are most interested in knowing just how nasty rattlesnakes are - how well-endowed of fang, how deadly the bite, how quickly the unattended victim will drop dead, and so on. Klauber acknowledges this in his preface, stoically but not grudgingly (there’s nothing grudging about fifteen hundred pages on rattlesnakes). In fact, he is more than happy to indulge such curiosity. Much more. Several hundred pages are devoted to the poison apparatus and biting mechanism of rattlesnakes, as well as some of the things you should and shouldn't do if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having sat on one.
Widespread familiarity with just how dangerous rattlesnake bites were coincided with the widespread invasion of rattlesnake territory, which, in North America, coincided in turn with the invasion of Native American lands. In the eighteenth century, it was thought that various herbs “wrought certain immediate cures” for such bites, but these were “known to the Indians, who sometimes would, but sometimes would not, divulge them to the white man” (depending, perhaps, on whether the white man had come in peace or with horns and cloven hooves). When such cures failed, “the cause was usually attributed by them [i.e., “the Indians”] to some infringement of ceremonial detail, for their treatments often had a mystical basis. The whites were more likely to cite some botanical misidentification.” The situation was not a pleasant one until a more reliable “cure” was proffered, and then the situation, for some, was a very pleasant one indeed, since that “cure” was whiskey, and lots of it.
Throughout the nineteenth century alcohol was routinely “administered” not as a stimulant but as a specific antidote for rattlesnake bite. Alcohol was thought to seek out the venom in the body, be it in the blood or tissues, and destroy or neutralize it. Two corollaries of the theory were, first, that a person showing snake-bite symptoms was obviously "insufficiently supplied with alcohol" and, second, a snake-bite victim "could not become drunk, regardless of the quantity of whiskey imbibed, until that quantity was more than the amount required to neutralize the venom in his system." It was common belief that rattlesnake venom was harmless to a person in a state of intoxication. It was perhaps advisable, therefore, to have a few shots before venturing forth after breakfast and, if actually bitten, you had to get paraletic lest you get paralyzed. And this was received medical opinion. Oh Happy Days.
The quantities of liquor reportedly taken were formidable. One and a half quarts of whiskey for a young girl, two quarts of corn whiskey in twelve hours for a grown man, one half pint of bourbon every five minutes until a quart had been taken, seven quarts of brandy and whiskey in four days, and one quart of brandy and one and a half gallons of whiskey in thirty six hours are reported in the (rudimentary) medical literature. In the latter case, Klauber notes, “The doctor reported (seriously) that the patient was seen next day looking for another rattlesnake to bit him.”
How the theory of direct antidotal effect gained credence among doctors and laymen alike remains a bit of a mystery “since there were no tests to substantiate it.” The proposition, rather, “had its validation in the uncertainties that have authenticated all the folklore remedies of the past - the cure of cases that required no treatment, that recovered despite the treatment rather than with its help.” Because of this, whiskey was used very generally and in large quantities throughout the United States, and it is claimed “the rattler, more than any other cause, made the High Plains country a hard liquor area.” A survey of snake bites in 1908 concluded that alcohol in large doses only added alcohol poisoning to snake poisoning, and it was evident that the party would soon come to an end. The decline of whiskey as a cure began in earnest shortly afterwards, and, when antivenin and an effective incision-suction program became available in the 1920s, it was practically eliminated from methods approved by killjoy physicians. It is estimated that, until this happened, acute alcoholism accounted for five percent of the fatalities attributed to snake bites.
There were other ways to treat rattlesnake bites. Though few were as persistent as the alcohol cure, many were further removed from medical science. Some involved messing around with actual rattlesnakes to varyingly useless degrees: binding a piece of the rattlesnake’s skin to the wound, but only after killing and burning the snake; swallowing the rattler’s heart while fresh, or dried and pulverized and taken in wine and beer; or having the victim grab the snake by the head and tail, and biting it in the middle, whereupon the poison in the person’s mouth will kill the snake and cure the bite (a method that not only doesn’t work but also has the unfortunate side-effect of inviting a few more bites). Another treatment was what is known, for good reason, as “the split-chicken treatment,” where “a live chicken is split and the bleeding flesh is immediately applied to the snake bite as a poultice.” Needless to say, Klauber notes, “not the slightest benefit has ever been shown to result from this cruel method.” Still other folklore treatments survived from “the Old World,” evidencing the slow pace not only of medicine but of human evolution: the saliva of a fasting man; a poultice of melted cheese; eggs in various forms; treatments involving various kinds of excrement; and, last but not least, the scrapings of a crocodile tooth, which begs the question, What is the cure for a crocodile bite?
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Gantry
“The Red Lion scavenged a lean life from the takings of the public bar … Like alcohol for a terminal alcoholic, the bar was both the means of the hotel’s survival and the guarantee that it couldn’t survive much longer. It seemed helplessly set in its ways, making no attempt to adapt itself to a changing situation … There was a long wooden counter. There were some wooden tables and wooden chairs set out across a wide expanse of fraying carpet. There was, dominating a room that could feel as large as a church when empty, the big gantry like an organ for the evocation of pagan moods.”
McIlvanney, The Big Man
“As large as a church when empty” I doubt. “Church,” I imagine, is arrived at via an inspired look at the gantry, and is an apt thought to reach – there’s plenty of room for reverence; for the other-worldly hush when the choir, the faithful, and the visitors are elsewhere; for rituals, incantations, stepping inwards and away from the spinning brightness outside towards the thick near-colors (sepias, silvery transparencies) bottled along dark, dusted shelves - but “as large as” is forced. It’s not that kind of church. The gantry, however, is perfect: “like an organ for the evocation of pagan moods.”
McIlvanney, The Big Man
“As large as a church when empty” I doubt. “Church,” I imagine, is arrived at via an inspired look at the gantry, and is an apt thought to reach – there’s plenty of room for reverence; for the other-worldly hush when the choir, the faithful, and the visitors are elsewhere; for rituals, incantations, stepping inwards and away from the spinning brightness outside towards the thick near-colors (sepias, silvery transparencies) bottled along dark, dusted shelves - but “as large as” is forced. It’s not that kind of church. The gantry, however, is perfect: “like an organ for the evocation of pagan moods.”
The Cryptic Dipsomaniac
Across
Jog in Denmark, getting stewed (5)
Inside, blushing, is the sot (4)
Capone’s company takes first part of vacation for drink (7)
Gain nothing for inebriate (4)
Regal drink? (5)
Blind pig, say, without effort (9)
Final commands for closing rounds (4,6)
Bozo mixed last of ale for grog (5)
Canine temper shows overindulgence (12)
Evidence of ethanol (5)
US ensign for dry stout? (8)
Twin entertains with rosé (4)
Divine drink inducing trance (5)
Type of x-rays initially used in deification for medical treatment (14)
Down
Snug and tipsy (5)
Hike got Bob guide to recovery (3,3,4)
Caused being tanked? (6)
Stabs in the dark with aromatic liqueur (8)
Community home serves refreshments (6,5)
Choke, snort, and mix over ice (2,3,5)
Discover recovery by sortie (8)
Graduate student? Send to community (10)
Her gripe? Who to turn it over to (6,5)
Loaded, if tight, initially (3)
Albion? It is an offering (8)
Con cabbie for cocktail (11)
One attempt has no mixer (4)
Boxer’s coat, say, for morning after (4,2,3,3)
Jog in Denmark, getting stewed (5)
Inside, blushing, is the sot (4)
Capone’s company takes first part of vacation for drink (7)
Gain nothing for inebriate (4)
Regal drink? (5)
Blind pig, say, without effort (9)
Final commands for closing rounds (4,6)
Bozo mixed last of ale for grog (5)
Canine temper shows overindulgence (12)
Evidence of ethanol (5)
US ensign for dry stout? (8)
Twin entertains with rosé (4)
Divine drink inducing trance (5)
Type of x-rays initially used in deification for medical treatment (14)
Down
Snug and tipsy (5)
Hike got Bob guide to recovery (3,3,4)
Caused being tanked? (6)
Stabs in the dark with aromatic liqueur (8)
Community home serves refreshments (6,5)
Choke, snort, and mix over ice (2,3,5)
Discover recovery by sortie (8)
Graduate student? Send to community (10)
Her gripe? Who to turn it over to (6,5)
Loaded, if tight, initially (3)
Albion? It is an offering (8)
Con cabbie for cocktail (11)
One attempt has no mixer (4)
Boxer’s coat, say, for morning after (4,2,3,3)
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Buckner Trawick's Shakespeare
Buckner B. Trawick did the research on Shakespeare and Alcohol:
Words for drink appear two hundred and fifty-four times; there are eleven variants of the word drunkard, which itself appears nineteen times, including sponge, beast, Sir John Sack and Sugar, maltworm, tosspot, draught, sink, sewer, night brawler, fool, and slave of drink); and there are seven adjectival synonyms, including malmsey-nose, bottle-ale, ale-wash’d, intoxicates [intoxicated], swine-drunk, fluster’d, and reeling-ripe.
The word wine and its twelve varieties occur sixty-two times; ale and beer, twenty times; and the ‘hard liquors’ (aqua-vitae and cordial) fifteen.
“One is tempted to infer that Shakespeare’s characters as a whole (and perhaps his audience and himself) were about eight times as familiar with wine as with beer and still less familiar with distilled drinks.”
No. One isn't. Rather, one is tempted to infer that Mr. Trawick is taking all this a bit too far.
Words for drink appear two hundred and fifty-four times; there are eleven variants of the word drunkard, which itself appears nineteen times, including sponge, beast, Sir John Sack and Sugar, maltworm, tosspot, draught, sink, sewer, night brawler, fool, and slave of drink); and there are seven adjectival synonyms, including malmsey-nose, bottle-ale, ale-wash’d, intoxicates [intoxicated], swine-drunk, fluster’d, and reeling-ripe.
The word wine and its twelve varieties occur sixty-two times; ale and beer, twenty times; and the ‘hard liquors’ (aqua-vitae and cordial) fifteen.
“One is tempted to infer that Shakespeare’s characters as a whole (and perhaps his audience and himself) were about eight times as familiar with wine as with beer and still less familiar with distilled drinks.”
No. One isn't. Rather, one is tempted to infer that Mr. Trawick is taking all this a bit too far.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Casablanca
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, I walked into all of them. I remember every detail: the Germans wore gray … I remember every day, but mostly I remember the last one, the wild finish, the guy on a station platform in the rain with a comical look in his face because his insides have been kicked out. My thoughts would bring a penny, and I guess that’s all they’re worth. I’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of my life. But I’ll always have Paris.
It’s hard to think of a film with more clichés, reel to reel, than Casablanca. You could close your eyes and hit the fast-forward button and, unless you’ve made it all the way to the end, the very end, no more than a moment will pass after you play it again, as it were, before you come across another line (familiar from earlier viewings of Casablanca, from similar lines in other films, from what you might devise if you were making it up yourself) which, if digested on its own, would make you want to throw up. Every character, too, is lifted from wardrobe along with the tuxedos, trench coats, uniforms, and hats, rescued from shadow theater only by the strength (or star quality) of the performances.
I love it, and have always been suspicious of those who don’t.
Umberto Eco liked Casablanca but had to wonder why, since “aesthetically speaking (or by any strict critical standards) [it] is a very mediocre film. It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects.” The “cast of formidable hams” is not enough to explain why it works: “the characters are stock figures, either all good or all bad;” and the film is a “tangle of Eternal Archetypes” and themes (Unhappy Love, Flight, the Triumph of Purity, Redemption, and enough Sacrifice to beat the band; “an orgy of sacrificial appetites”). “[U]sually to make a story a single archetypal situation is enough. More than enough … But Casablanca is not satisfied with that: it uses them all.”
The reason for this is, in part, how the film was made - on the run, the tuppenceworth of everyone involved considered, dismissed, and reconsidered, with weekly rewrites of rewrites: “all those moments of inspired direction that wring bursts of applause for their unexpected boldness actually represent decisions taken out of desperation.” But what accounts “for the success of this chain of accidents?” For Eco, “this dance of eternal myths” is surrounded by “historical myths, or rather the myths of the movies, duly served up again” (Bogart as the Ambiguous Adventurer, the Lovelorn Ascetic, the Redeemed Drunkard; Bergman as the Enigmatic Woman, Femme Fatale) and this results in “the resonance of intertextuality [which] plays upon the spectator … Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control.”
Sometimes going to an A.A. meeting is like going to see Casablanca again. The script has stitch marks, discussions are improvised daily around bare-bone storyboards, and monologues rest at readymade phrases and are occasionally knitted whole from them. Archetypes abound, and grand themes of suffering, acceptance, spiritual awakening, and redemption play out, layer upon layer, with occasional flashbacks to prequels and hopes for sequels. (Quotidian stressors and humble pleasures are laid forth as well, of course, and don’t always have to be rounded off with a nod to a Step, or a paean to the pleasures of A.A. membership, but usually are.) As with Casablanca, if you recorded an AA meeting, you could close your eyes and hit the fast forward button … Easy does it; live and let live; first things first; one is too many, a thousand is not enough; sick and tired of being sick and tired; face everything and recover; this too shall pass; put the plug in the jug; poor me, poor me, pour me a drink; does anyone have a burning desire, or a cliché we missed?
The Serenity Prayer is La Marsellaise.
“Two clichés make us laugh,” Eco writes, not of an AA meeting, but Casablanca again. “A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion … Just as the height of pain may encounter sensual pleasure, and the height of perversion border on mystical energy, so too the height of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime.” A.A. (as another cliché has it) is a simple program for complicated people, and it’s easy to leave after two clichés, but it gets harder to leave after a hundred. The fellowship is invaluable, but even the language becomes stubbornly resonant after a while. It all holds together: somehow the elements combine, the drama unfolds and you’re caught up in it - in part because you’re in it - and that resonance of intertextuality has you spellbound, and right to the end you don’t know if Ilsa is going to leave with Victor or with Rick.
It’s hard to think of a film with more clichés, reel to reel, than Casablanca. You could close your eyes and hit the fast-forward button and, unless you’ve made it all the way to the end, the very end, no more than a moment will pass after you play it again, as it were, before you come across another line (familiar from earlier viewings of Casablanca, from similar lines in other films, from what you might devise if you were making it up yourself) which, if digested on its own, would make you want to throw up. Every character, too, is lifted from wardrobe along with the tuxedos, trench coats, uniforms, and hats, rescued from shadow theater only by the strength (or star quality) of the performances.
I love it, and have always been suspicious of those who don’t.
Umberto Eco liked Casablanca but had to wonder why, since “aesthetically speaking (or by any strict critical standards) [it] is a very mediocre film. It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects.” The “cast of formidable hams” is not enough to explain why it works: “the characters are stock figures, either all good or all bad;” and the film is a “tangle of Eternal Archetypes” and themes (Unhappy Love, Flight, the Triumph of Purity, Redemption, and enough Sacrifice to beat the band; “an orgy of sacrificial appetites”). “[U]sually to make a story a single archetypal situation is enough. More than enough … But Casablanca is not satisfied with that: it uses them all.”
The reason for this is, in part, how the film was made - on the run, the tuppenceworth of everyone involved considered, dismissed, and reconsidered, with weekly rewrites of rewrites: “all those moments of inspired direction that wring bursts of applause for their unexpected boldness actually represent decisions taken out of desperation.” But what accounts “for the success of this chain of accidents?” For Eco, “this dance of eternal myths” is surrounded by “historical myths, or rather the myths of the movies, duly served up again” (Bogart as the Ambiguous Adventurer, the Lovelorn Ascetic, the Redeemed Drunkard; Bergman as the Enigmatic Woman, Femme Fatale) and this results in “the resonance of intertextuality [which] plays upon the spectator … Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control.”
Sometimes going to an A.A. meeting is like going to see Casablanca again. The script has stitch marks, discussions are improvised daily around bare-bone storyboards, and monologues rest at readymade phrases and are occasionally knitted whole from them. Archetypes abound, and grand themes of suffering, acceptance, spiritual awakening, and redemption play out, layer upon layer, with occasional flashbacks to prequels and hopes for sequels. (Quotidian stressors and humble pleasures are laid forth as well, of course, and don’t always have to be rounded off with a nod to a Step, or a paean to the pleasures of A.A. membership, but usually are.) As with Casablanca, if you recorded an AA meeting, you could close your eyes and hit the fast forward button … Easy does it; live and let live; first things first; one is too many, a thousand is not enough; sick and tired of being sick and tired; face everything and recover; this too shall pass; put the plug in the jug; poor me, poor me, pour me a drink; does anyone have a burning desire, or a cliché we missed?
The Serenity Prayer is La Marsellaise.
“Two clichés make us laugh,” Eco writes, not of an AA meeting, but Casablanca again. “A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion … Just as the height of pain may encounter sensual pleasure, and the height of perversion border on mystical energy, so too the height of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime.” A.A. (as another cliché has it) is a simple program for complicated people, and it’s easy to leave after two clichés, but it gets harder to leave after a hundred. The fellowship is invaluable, but even the language becomes stubbornly resonant after a while. It all holds together: somehow the elements combine, the drama unfolds and you’re caught up in it - in part because you’re in it - and that resonance of intertextuality has you spellbound, and right to the end you don’t know if Ilsa is going to leave with Victor or with Rick.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Inordinate Concupiscence
In the Summa Theologica, colloquially known as the Summa of All Fears, Aquinas inquired whether drunkenness was a sin and, if so, whether it was a mortal sin. It all depends. Drunkenness as the “the defect itself of a man resulting from his drinking much wine, the consequence being that he loses the use of reason” is not a sin at all but a “penal defect resulting from a fault.” This is only the beginning of the inquiry, of course, because drunkenness may also denote “the act by which a man incurs this defect,” and this act can happen in two ways: by accident (“though the wine being too strong, without the drinker being cognizant of this”) or with all deliberation (“from inordinate concupiscence and use of wine”).
In short, if you have no reason to be aware you’re drinking the hard stuff, or if someone spikes your drink, you’re in the clear, but if you drink to get drunk it’s a sin. It is, in fact, “comprised under gluttony as a species under its genus.”
So is it a venial (forgivable) or a mortal (dead soul) one? Again, it depends, this time on whether the drinker “perceives the drink to be immoderate, but without knowing it to be intoxicating,” in which case it’s venial, or whether the drinker is “well aware that the drink is immoderate and intoxicating, and yet he would rather be drunk than abstain from drink,” in which case you might want to get to a priest before taking any further risks.
This is a distinction with a big difference. Unless remitted by prayer, contrition, fervent communion, and other pious works, venial sin “lessens the fervor of charity,” “displeases God,” and obliges the sinner “to temporal punishment in either this life or in Purgatory.” Forgiveness of mortal sin, on the other hand, is a matter of greater urgency: absent a conversion of heart through the Sacrament of Confession to reinstate the grace obtained through the Sacrament of Baptism, the penalty is suffering which “may be inflicted in this life through the medium of medicinal punishments, calamities, sickness, temporal evils, which tend to withdraw from sin; or it may be inflicted in the life to come.” The suffering is twofold: the pain of loss (pæna damni) and the pain of sense (pæna sensus). Neither is likely to be much fun. As the Catholic Encyclopedia succinctly states: “One mortal sin suffices to incur punishment. (See HELL.)”
Purgatory is for the just, those who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of a temporal punishment for sin and need cleansing by suffering before admission to heaven. The Ancient Greeks might still be there, and, while the processing prescribed is painful, you get to graduate, so one can picture it as a kind of university. Think of it (albeit as your feet are fried) as taking a course in Aquinas. In Hell, however, “the torments of the damned shall last forever and ever (Revelation 14:11, 19:3; 20:10)” And it’s all Hieronymus Bosch, third panel, all the time.
Over a period of twenty years, I moved with all due speed from the occasional penal defect to unabated inordinate concupiscence. And now I’m trying to get out from under the genus. An agnostic, perhaps, here I am in a kind of purgatory after all, reading Aquinas.
In short, if you have no reason to be aware you’re drinking the hard stuff, or if someone spikes your drink, you’re in the clear, but if you drink to get drunk it’s a sin. It is, in fact, “comprised under gluttony as a species under its genus.”
So is it a venial (forgivable) or a mortal (dead soul) one? Again, it depends, this time on whether the drinker “perceives the drink to be immoderate, but without knowing it to be intoxicating,” in which case it’s venial, or whether the drinker is “well aware that the drink is immoderate and intoxicating, and yet he would rather be drunk than abstain from drink,” in which case you might want to get to a priest before taking any further risks.
This is a distinction with a big difference. Unless remitted by prayer, contrition, fervent communion, and other pious works, venial sin “lessens the fervor of charity,” “displeases God,” and obliges the sinner “to temporal punishment in either this life or in Purgatory.” Forgiveness of mortal sin, on the other hand, is a matter of greater urgency: absent a conversion of heart through the Sacrament of Confession to reinstate the grace obtained through the Sacrament of Baptism, the penalty is suffering which “may be inflicted in this life through the medium of medicinal punishments, calamities, sickness, temporal evils, which tend to withdraw from sin; or it may be inflicted in the life to come.” The suffering is twofold: the pain of loss (pæna damni) and the pain of sense (pæna sensus). Neither is likely to be much fun. As the Catholic Encyclopedia succinctly states: “One mortal sin suffices to incur punishment. (See HELL.)”
Purgatory is for the just, those who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of a temporal punishment for sin and need cleansing by suffering before admission to heaven. The Ancient Greeks might still be there, and, while the processing prescribed is painful, you get to graduate, so one can picture it as a kind of university. Think of it (albeit as your feet are fried) as taking a course in Aquinas. In Hell, however, “the torments of the damned shall last forever and ever (Revelation 14:11, 19:3; 20:10)” And it’s all Hieronymus Bosch, third panel, all the time.
Over a period of twenty years, I moved with all due speed from the occasional penal defect to unabated inordinate concupiscence. And now I’m trying to get out from under the genus. An agnostic, perhaps, here I am in a kind of purgatory after all, reading Aquinas.
Playboy Nation
Kurt Vonnegut, interviewed by Playboy, and then by himself:
P: Is there any religion you consider superior to any other?
V: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Playboy (Jul. 20, 1973)
“What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say Jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.”
The Nation (Dec. 31, 1983)
P: Is there any religion you consider superior to any other?
V: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Playboy (Jul. 20, 1973)
“What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say Jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.”
The Nation (Dec. 31, 1983)
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Dodgy Prefrontal Cortices
I have a dodgy prefrontal cortex, a gammy PFC. Researchers have believed for some time that this state of affairs contributes to impulsive behavior and lack of control over drinking. Recent findings suggest that PFC neuron N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors are particularly sensitive to alcohol concentrations typical of a night on the booze, and that alcohol’s alteration of NMDA receptor function may inhibit normal PFC function.
“The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that helps us decide whether we should take actions or not,” said John J. Woodward, a professor in the department of neurosciences and the Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs at the Medical University of South Carolina. “It weighs the relative risks and benefits of our behavior and normally protects us from risky or dangerous actions like provoking altercations with Neanderthals, or sleeping with any number of unattractive and equally PNC-impaired people on a first-come, first-served basis.” [1]
Woodward, also the corresponding author for the study, explained the operation of ion channels, which act as gates in the neuron membrane that let ions into and out of the cells when appropriate. “We reasoned that alcohol may affect one or more of these ion channel gates, leading to alterations in the function of the prefrontal cortex ... and that this may contribute to an individual's inability to control their drinking,” he said. “This may help to explain why many alcoholics who are ordinarily even reluctant to use public toilets are suddenly happy to have found the nearest tree.” [2]
David Lovinger, chief of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said that targeting the NMDA receptor with pharmacological agents might be an effective strategy for treating problems of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, particularly if future research could identify the specific subtype of NMDA affected by alcohol. He expressed surprise at the record number of unsolicited volunteers eager to participate in the study and be injected with alcohol. “Obviously we had to make do with the Sprague-Dawley rats, since the research involved quickly removing and slicing subject brains to record electrical activity,” Lovinger said. “But it was quite moving to see the number of people who said they didn’t care.” [3]
1. John J. Woodward did not say the latter part of this statement.
2. Nor this.
3. David Lovinger did not say this.
“The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that helps us decide whether we should take actions or not,” said John J. Woodward, a professor in the department of neurosciences and the Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs at the Medical University of South Carolina. “It weighs the relative risks and benefits of our behavior and normally protects us from risky or dangerous actions like provoking altercations with Neanderthals, or sleeping with any number of unattractive and equally PNC-impaired people on a first-come, first-served basis.” [1]
Woodward, also the corresponding author for the study, explained the operation of ion channels, which act as gates in the neuron membrane that let ions into and out of the cells when appropriate. “We reasoned that alcohol may affect one or more of these ion channel gates, leading to alterations in the function of the prefrontal cortex ... and that this may contribute to an individual's inability to control their drinking,” he said. “This may help to explain why many alcoholics who are ordinarily even reluctant to use public toilets are suddenly happy to have found the nearest tree.” [2]
David Lovinger, chief of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said that targeting the NMDA receptor with pharmacological agents might be an effective strategy for treating problems of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, particularly if future research could identify the specific subtype of NMDA affected by alcohol. He expressed surprise at the record number of unsolicited volunteers eager to participate in the study and be injected with alcohol. “Obviously we had to make do with the Sprague-Dawley rats, since the research involved quickly removing and slicing subject brains to record electrical activity,” Lovinger said. “But it was quite moving to see the number of people who said they didn’t care.” [3]
1. John J. Woodward did not say the latter part of this statement.
2. Nor this.
3. David Lovinger did not say this.
Causation
He finds himself in the Anacostia River, soaked to the bones, carried along by its current, now going under, and now coming up for air.
Earlier, he left a busy house for no particular reason that he can remember. There was a girl he walked home, part way; fortunately, pleasantly, this took him close to the library, where he picked a book from the shelf to borrow; and, near the library, he bought cigarettes at a corner store.
He walked for hours that seemed like days, along familiar streets and then through streets he wasn’t sure he’d heard of much less walked along. It was one of those days with all the seasons in it. So he kept on walking.
He met a woman he knew, and walked with her for a while. They spoke of what had happened since they had last met, and shared stories about people the other didn’t know.
In a museum, they looked at paintings, as children ran from gallery to gallery as noisily as they could. There were lonely landscapes, crowded city streets, portraits of severe and smug or defeated people, and others of a happier character – contented women in colorful dresses, confident men looking the artist straight in the eye, landscapes you wouldn’t mind walking through.
He arranged to meet the woman later, and walked alone to a bar near the gallery, hoping to read the book, but there were too many revelers there, and the music was loud, so he waked on to another some distance away, just as it began to snow. The snow was wet and soft and felt good on the skin, in his hair. Smoking, he exhaled, and in the cold air didn’t know when to stop exhaling. And when he reached the second bar, the noise was just people talking, so he stayed a little while and read.
In the street again, he marveled at how fresh and foreign it all looked in the snow – modest buildings suddenly ornate, the trees taking on darker greens and browns in contrast with the snow, walls like marble. He imagined others from long ago in his past looking at what he was looking at, as though seeing through his eyes, and seeing the beauty with which he had somehow managed to surround himself.
Eventually, he came upon a bar he knew well. It felt like an accident, arriving there, but maybe he was headed that way all along. It was warm and quiet and the bartender let him drink as much as he liked for next to nothing. There was some music he listened to, a magazine he read, some small talk with the bartender, but mostly he was content to drink and turn the pages of the book or watch the snow fall through the windows.
Then he remembered his appointment and headed out into the snow. He was late already. The snow was now deep and drifting and there were no taxis or buses running. No one else was out walking in this weather. He called the woman to let her know he would be late (maybe he hoped she would come and pick him up) but there was no answer.
It was hard going in the snow, but he was in a hurry, now. The snow was almost up to his waist. He couldn’t tell where the roads were, where sidewalks started.
And then, mid-stride, he fell, feet first, down a drain - which was gaping because of summer swelling of the road, because the road had not been re-laid, because the drain had been cast and set right where it was a hundred years ago – and which, in any case, he could never have seen in the snow, being so distracted, walking so carelessly.
Water carried him along - past garbage and rats, through sewage - but quickly so that he wasn’t concerned about the filth, only about not finding a foothold, and being flushed along helplessly.
The river is cold and fast-moving. He knows he has to get out fast. Slowly, and already at half-strength he works his way towards the bank. A man dressed for the weather and with a hat shaped like a bell watches his struggle and makes his way towards him, extending his hand out from the very edge of the bank.
The thoughts, such as they were, of people he had met, the day he had passed, the habits he had adopted, how he had got from one place to another, rushed over the man in the river like cold water as though they were the thoughts of the river itself.
The man in the bell hat seems to know these thoughts, for he says, “I will help you out, if you can tell me how you got here.”
Earlier, he left a busy house for no particular reason that he can remember. There was a girl he walked home, part way; fortunately, pleasantly, this took him close to the library, where he picked a book from the shelf to borrow; and, near the library, he bought cigarettes at a corner store.
He walked for hours that seemed like days, along familiar streets and then through streets he wasn’t sure he’d heard of much less walked along. It was one of those days with all the seasons in it. So he kept on walking.
He met a woman he knew, and walked with her for a while. They spoke of what had happened since they had last met, and shared stories about people the other didn’t know.
In a museum, they looked at paintings, as children ran from gallery to gallery as noisily as they could. There were lonely landscapes, crowded city streets, portraits of severe and smug or defeated people, and others of a happier character – contented women in colorful dresses, confident men looking the artist straight in the eye, landscapes you wouldn’t mind walking through.
He arranged to meet the woman later, and walked alone to a bar near the gallery, hoping to read the book, but there were too many revelers there, and the music was loud, so he waked on to another some distance away, just as it began to snow. The snow was wet and soft and felt good on the skin, in his hair. Smoking, he exhaled, and in the cold air didn’t know when to stop exhaling. And when he reached the second bar, the noise was just people talking, so he stayed a little while and read.
In the street again, he marveled at how fresh and foreign it all looked in the snow – modest buildings suddenly ornate, the trees taking on darker greens and browns in contrast with the snow, walls like marble. He imagined others from long ago in his past looking at what he was looking at, as though seeing through his eyes, and seeing the beauty with which he had somehow managed to surround himself.
Eventually, he came upon a bar he knew well. It felt like an accident, arriving there, but maybe he was headed that way all along. It was warm and quiet and the bartender let him drink as much as he liked for next to nothing. There was some music he listened to, a magazine he read, some small talk with the bartender, but mostly he was content to drink and turn the pages of the book or watch the snow fall through the windows.
Then he remembered his appointment and headed out into the snow. He was late already. The snow was now deep and drifting and there were no taxis or buses running. No one else was out walking in this weather. He called the woman to let her know he would be late (maybe he hoped she would come and pick him up) but there was no answer.
It was hard going in the snow, but he was in a hurry, now. The snow was almost up to his waist. He couldn’t tell where the roads were, where sidewalks started.
And then, mid-stride, he fell, feet first, down a drain - which was gaping because of summer swelling of the road, because the road had not been re-laid, because the drain had been cast and set right where it was a hundred years ago – and which, in any case, he could never have seen in the snow, being so distracted, walking so carelessly.
Water carried him along - past garbage and rats, through sewage - but quickly so that he wasn’t concerned about the filth, only about not finding a foothold, and being flushed along helplessly.
The river is cold and fast-moving. He knows he has to get out fast. Slowly, and already at half-strength he works his way towards the bank. A man dressed for the weather and with a hat shaped like a bell watches his struggle and makes his way towards him, extending his hand out from the very edge of the bank.
The thoughts, such as they were, of people he had met, the day he had passed, the habits he had adopted, how he had got from one place to another, rushed over the man in the river like cold water as though they were the thoughts of the river itself.
The man in the bell hat seems to know these thoughts, for he says, “I will help you out, if you can tell me how you got here.”
The Stool of Repentance
“Temperance,” wrote Walter Steuart in 1770, “is the golden mids between abstinence and intemperance; for attaining whereof, when we are sufficiently strengthened and refreshed with our ordinary diets, we should abstain betwixt them, and if we will not suffer ourselves to be thus rationally bounded, I cannot see how we can otherwise eschew the evil of being tempted to excess in drinking, both from the specious pretences and solicitations of our own voluptuous tempers, and the enticement and example of others; and if we transgress the bound above proposed, we cannot but fall into temptation … ”[1] Fair enough.
Historically, getting drunk in Scotland could be expensive, shameful, and dangerous (the latter is still true in certain parts of the country, if for different reasons). King and Church each worked hard to forestall temptation and punish those who succumbed to it. James VI, before he became a James I, and correctly known as James VI & I (His Majesties?), passed laws approving this “manner of bounding,” discharging “all haunting of taverns and ale-houses after ten hours at night, or any time of the day, excepting time of travel, or for ordinary refreshments, under the pain of being punished as drunkards.” If one denied the accusation of drunkenness, and claimed the reason for staggering about and rambling on about Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Jacobus was simply some illness or “giddiness of the head,” such defenses, “though they may be true, yet are not relevant to defend the accused against the punishment of drunkenness …” Nor is it “to be thought hard” that the tippler is to be treated as a drunkard, “seeing it is a common observation, that tipplers are harder to be reclaimed than drunkards themselves.”
Fines for haunting taverns were “to be applied as the fines for other immoralities.“ A later Act of Parliament provided a hierarchy of fines for the hierarchy in the populus: noblemen could expect to pay 20 pounds, gentlemen, heretors, or burgesses 10 merks (a merk being 13 and 1/3 shillings, or 2/3 of one pound); servants 20 shillings, and so on, until, ominously, you got to the poor, who comprised the majority of the population and were “to be punished in their persons.” As for other crimes, drunkenness could be a defense for those committed in drink but only for those who are rarely drunk (inter ebrios). The habitually drunk (ebriosos) “should be most severely punished, both for their drunkenness, and for the crimes occasioned by it; and such as know they are subject to extravagancies in their drink, merit as little.” No such distinction was made between those who would indulge, rarely or habitually, in a toast to their drinking buddies: the drinking of healths was “Satan’s Snare” and, therefore, quite forbidden. Slainte Mhath!
There was more in store at the Kirk, which combined public exposure and repentance rather like a modern tabloid press and obligatory visit to a rehab center. Public repentance was not uncommon anywhere in Europe at the time, but the Kirk elaborated on the auto-da-fé and sackcloth. The penitent would be dressed in a white sheet (black for the fornicator), legs bared, and taken to sit on a new item of Kirk furniture, the Stool of Repentance. Such a stool was elsewhere familiar only in the Reformed Church of Hungary and Transylvania. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that evidence of the novelty of this artifact is shown by “the English traveler who in 1598 turned up for worship at St. Giles High Kirk in Edinburgh and made for what he thought looked like an honorable and conveniently empty seat. The unfortunate gentleman thus provided sustained merriment of the assembled congregation before he eventually fled.” (The “sustained merriment” is likely the main reason the anecdote survives. There were few recorded laughs in the Old Kirk.)
The ritual (MacCulloch again) “was designed to provide a theater of forgiveness that would bring an offender back into the fold of the community from outside, a drama that often assumed the form of a serial in several episodes over successive Sundays.” He would be brought through the streets from the Kirk prison and taken to the front of the Church to perch on the stool, in his sheet, holding, like the painted saint with his instrument of martyrdom, a symbol of the act to be repented. (The participant in a violent quarrel, for example, would hold a knife or sword. MacCulloch doesn’t mention which symbol the drunkard would earn - an empty pint glass, perhaps, a handful of unpaid bills, or simply a vomit-stained sackcloth.) “Once at the stool, the penitent must make a speech of repentance and it should be sincere. The congregation was the judge as to whether the tears were real …” Forgiveness and absolution was in the congregation’s gift and even the clergy were subject to it. Further penalties would result from an unsatisfactory performance, while a positive verdict was followed by a handshake or a kiss and a hearty welcome back to fellowship.
The Stool of Repentance assisted with the staging of the soap opera, but it is not certain that it proved much of a deterrent. The “immoralities” of some certainly survived the ordeal intact: “In 1589, the Kirk of Edinburgh publicly disciplined and witnessed the repentance of Francis, earl of Bothwell for the crimes of murder and treason. It followed the ceremony with a spirited sermon on the sins of the nobility from one of Edinburgh’s chief ministers in front of Bothwell and the rest of the Scottish noblemen present. Bothwell did rather take the shine off the day’s proceedings by raping the daughter of the late early of Gowrie after he had left St. Giles Kirk…”
[1] Collections and Observations Concerning the Worship, Discipline and Government of the Church of Scotland (1770).
Historically, getting drunk in Scotland could be expensive, shameful, and dangerous (the latter is still true in certain parts of the country, if for different reasons). King and Church each worked hard to forestall temptation and punish those who succumbed to it. James VI, before he became a James I, and correctly known as James VI & I (His Majesties?), passed laws approving this “manner of bounding,” discharging “all haunting of taverns and ale-houses after ten hours at night, or any time of the day, excepting time of travel, or for ordinary refreshments, under the pain of being punished as drunkards.” If one denied the accusation of drunkenness, and claimed the reason for staggering about and rambling on about Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Jacobus was simply some illness or “giddiness of the head,” such defenses, “though they may be true, yet are not relevant to defend the accused against the punishment of drunkenness …” Nor is it “to be thought hard” that the tippler is to be treated as a drunkard, “seeing it is a common observation, that tipplers are harder to be reclaimed than drunkards themselves.”
Fines for haunting taverns were “to be applied as the fines for other immoralities.“ A later Act of Parliament provided a hierarchy of fines for the hierarchy in the populus: noblemen could expect to pay 20 pounds, gentlemen, heretors, or burgesses 10 merks (a merk being 13 and 1/3 shillings, or 2/3 of one pound); servants 20 shillings, and so on, until, ominously, you got to the poor, who comprised the majority of the population and were “to be punished in their persons.” As for other crimes, drunkenness could be a defense for those committed in drink but only for those who are rarely drunk (inter ebrios). The habitually drunk (ebriosos) “should be most severely punished, both for their drunkenness, and for the crimes occasioned by it; and such as know they are subject to extravagancies in their drink, merit as little.” No such distinction was made between those who would indulge, rarely or habitually, in a toast to their drinking buddies: the drinking of healths was “Satan’s Snare” and, therefore, quite forbidden. Slainte Mhath!
There was more in store at the Kirk, which combined public exposure and repentance rather like a modern tabloid press and obligatory visit to a rehab center. Public repentance was not uncommon anywhere in Europe at the time, but the Kirk elaborated on the auto-da-fé and sackcloth. The penitent would be dressed in a white sheet (black for the fornicator), legs bared, and taken to sit on a new item of Kirk furniture, the Stool of Repentance. Such a stool was elsewhere familiar only in the Reformed Church of Hungary and Transylvania. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that evidence of the novelty of this artifact is shown by “the English traveler who in 1598 turned up for worship at St. Giles High Kirk in Edinburgh and made for what he thought looked like an honorable and conveniently empty seat. The unfortunate gentleman thus provided sustained merriment of the assembled congregation before he eventually fled.” (The “sustained merriment” is likely the main reason the anecdote survives. There were few recorded laughs in the Old Kirk.)
The ritual (MacCulloch again) “was designed to provide a theater of forgiveness that would bring an offender back into the fold of the community from outside, a drama that often assumed the form of a serial in several episodes over successive Sundays.” He would be brought through the streets from the Kirk prison and taken to the front of the Church to perch on the stool, in his sheet, holding, like the painted saint with his instrument of martyrdom, a symbol of the act to be repented. (The participant in a violent quarrel, for example, would hold a knife or sword. MacCulloch doesn’t mention which symbol the drunkard would earn - an empty pint glass, perhaps, a handful of unpaid bills, or simply a vomit-stained sackcloth.) “Once at the stool, the penitent must make a speech of repentance and it should be sincere. The congregation was the judge as to whether the tears were real …” Forgiveness and absolution was in the congregation’s gift and even the clergy were subject to it. Further penalties would result from an unsatisfactory performance, while a positive verdict was followed by a handshake or a kiss and a hearty welcome back to fellowship.
The Stool of Repentance assisted with the staging of the soap opera, but it is not certain that it proved much of a deterrent. The “immoralities” of some certainly survived the ordeal intact: “In 1589, the Kirk of Edinburgh publicly disciplined and witnessed the repentance of Francis, earl of Bothwell for the crimes of murder and treason. It followed the ceremony with a spirited sermon on the sins of the nobility from one of Edinburgh’s chief ministers in front of Bothwell and the rest of the Scottish noblemen present. Bothwell did rather take the shine off the day’s proceedings by raping the daughter of the late early of Gowrie after he had left St. Giles Kirk…”
[1] Collections and Observations Concerning the Worship, Discipline and Government of the Church of Scotland (1770).
Friday, March 12, 2010
Warning: Warnings
Drinks companies in the U.K. have been warned about warnings they may be forced to put on alcohol labels. The reason for the warning is that the warnings were supposed to be in place two years ago, pursuant to a protocol agreed to three years ago. Consumers are supposed to be advised on the number of alcohol units in bottles or cans and the recommended maximum daily intake, as well as not to drink if pregnant or trying to conceive. Additionally, each drinker is to be told to know his or her limits, drink responsibly, or enjoy responsibly.
One problem with the protocol is that it is voluntary, and has been voluntarily ignored by industry. A second problem is that it is anemic, and the warnings don’t work. The warnings should, in fact, come with a warning.
A recent Australian study found that young drinkers use alcohol-content labels to maximize the amount of alcohol they can get for the lowest price. As is the case in the U.K. (admittedly still a hypothetical case), the Australian regulations are designed to encourage responsible drinking, and in a sense they do, in that they facilitate economically responsible benders. The study, which identified a high awareness of standard drink labeling, also found that the labeling was consulted to help choose drinks that would get people drunk in the shortest possible time. One wit on a U.S. website (“the Happy Hour Hero”) reporting on the study began, “Sadly, the U.S. doesn’t require alcohol content labels on beer, only spirits, so to get drunk quickly and cheaply off suds one has to do research before hitting the convenience store.”
No doubt there are pregnant women, or women who are trying to conceive, or who are not trying to conceive but getting into positions where conception is a distinct possibility, who do not know that alcohol can cause birth defects or for whom a timely reminder comes in handy. No doubt, also, there are drivers or operators of heavy machinery forgetful of the impairment caused by alcohol. So, by all means use the most convenient and effective means to send these reminders, although, in the case of drunk drivers (never having met one who didn’t know about the impairment-alcohol relationship), advising that drunk driving will treated like murder waiting to happen might send a crisper message.
As for the rest of it, one is reminded of Garnet Bowen in I Like It Here:
“[Bowen] had added to Barbara [his wife] that beer was cheaper while sharing with gin and Burgundy the property of making him drunk. This last factor had received insufficient acclaim. He thought to himself now that if he ever went into the brewing business his posters would have written across the top ‘Bowen’s Beer,’ and then underneath that in the middle a picture of [his mother-in-law] drinking a lot of it and falling about, and then across the bottom in bold or salient lettering the words ‘Makes You Drunk.’
Not just for me, then, or the youth of Australia, is that the point.
One problem with the protocol is that it is voluntary, and has been voluntarily ignored by industry. A second problem is that it is anemic, and the warnings don’t work. The warnings should, in fact, come with a warning.
A recent Australian study found that young drinkers use alcohol-content labels to maximize the amount of alcohol they can get for the lowest price. As is the case in the U.K. (admittedly still a hypothetical case), the Australian regulations are designed to encourage responsible drinking, and in a sense they do, in that they facilitate economically responsible benders. The study, which identified a high awareness of standard drink labeling, also found that the labeling was consulted to help choose drinks that would get people drunk in the shortest possible time. One wit on a U.S. website (“the Happy Hour Hero”) reporting on the study began, “Sadly, the U.S. doesn’t require alcohol content labels on beer, only spirits, so to get drunk quickly and cheaply off suds one has to do research before hitting the convenience store.”
No doubt there are pregnant women, or women who are trying to conceive, or who are not trying to conceive but getting into positions where conception is a distinct possibility, who do not know that alcohol can cause birth defects or for whom a timely reminder comes in handy. No doubt, also, there are drivers or operators of heavy machinery forgetful of the impairment caused by alcohol. So, by all means use the most convenient and effective means to send these reminders, although, in the case of drunk drivers (never having met one who didn’t know about the impairment-alcohol relationship), advising that drunk driving will treated like murder waiting to happen might send a crisper message.
As for the rest of it, one is reminded of Garnet Bowen in I Like It Here:
“[Bowen] had added to Barbara [his wife] that beer was cheaper while sharing with gin and Burgundy the property of making him drunk. This last factor had received insufficient acclaim. He thought to himself now that if he ever went into the brewing business his posters would have written across the top ‘Bowen’s Beer,’ and then underneath that in the middle a picture of [his mother-in-law] drinking a lot of it and falling about, and then across the bottom in bold or salient lettering the words ‘Makes You Drunk.’
Not just for me, then, or the youth of Australia, is that the point.
No Doubt
I doubt I’m an alcoholic. This is true since it means that I don’t doubt I’m an alcoholic. The usage, common in sixteenth century English dialect and quite archaic across most of the English-speaking world, is still alive and kicking in Scotland, where “to doubt” can mean either “to doubt” or “to expect (esp. something unwelcome), suspect.” “I doubt it” can only mean “I doubt it” while “I doubt it’s true” can mean “I doubt it’s true” or “I expect that’s true.” So, I doubt I’m right, then. I doubt I’m an alcoholic.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Demon Drink Redux
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the happy-go-lucky Peter Binsfeld – bishop, theologian, witch hunter, and author of De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum – assigned a particular devil to each of the mortal sins. Lucifer got the big one, Pride (superbia). Reigning over drunkards and other gluttons was Beelzebub. Imagine, as you drink too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, too daintily, or too wildly, the Lord of the Flies at your shoulder. It’s enough to put you off your pint.
La Sobriedad
Sobriety is not much less than all I know about it. It is a relatively vertical state of affairs, for sure. But it’s no surprise when someone suggests there’s more to it than I think.
The first suggestion is that sobriety is not just not drinking. That should have been obvious, for drunkenness is not just drinking. But a dull bulb sizzles on, anyway, and flickers further when the person who suggests there is more to sobriety adds that he is working on the quality, if you please, of his.
Thus a modest confidence is greatly increased in modesty. I turned to the OED. The first definition:
“sobriety/n. LME [(O) Fr. Sobriété or L sobrietas, f. sobrius SOBER a. see – ITY.] 1 The quality of being sober or moderate; avoidance of excess; spec. moderation in drinking alcohol.”
That sobriety is “the quality of being sober” is fine as far as it goes, which is nowhere. No doubt it’s true, and as helpful as knowing that drunkenness is the quality of being drunk. So my new-found authority on sobriety is working on the quality of the quality of being sober, which doesn’t tell us much.
The “avoidance of excess, specifically moderation in drinking alcohol” is better inasmuch as it at least mentions alcohol, but the alcoholic has to sniff. The avoidance of excess and moderation in drinking alcohol might be what “sobriety” means to those for whom “the quality of being sober” comes naturally, but it is not what it means to alcoholics. Nor is it what it means to those for whom “the quality of being sober” comes with a partner or friend who is an alcoholic. In both cases “I’ve only had four” means “the quality of being nuts.”
So opening the OED - to the entry between Sobranye (“The Parliament or national assembly of Bulgaria”) and sobriquet (“An epithet, a nickname”) - is like opening a can of worms for the alcoholic. Not only does he (or she) not really know what sober means, now he (or she) has to recognize that he (or she) no longer confidently speaks his (or her) own language. One man’s “avoidance of excess" is another man's poison. Or woman’s.
This is a turn up for the books.
And switching languages won’t help. The Spanish Royal Academy fares no better than the Oxford lexicographers: “sobriedad. (Del lat. sobrietas, -ātis). 1. f. Cualidad de sobrio.” Indeed.
None of this is to blame the sober wordsmiths, although that’s always tempting: what do they know of sobriety, after all, who only sobriety know? What do they know of the vertical who have only ever been upright? Well, a little more, you might suggest, than those who only drunkenness know, those who have lain down the full length of the horizontal and refused to get up.
It’s not the scholars’ fault that the alcoholic, armed with a few foreign phrases and a list of bars the length of his arm, embarked abroad and came back with half a new language and having forgotten half the old one.
Regardless, it is a bit like getting lost in translation. This causes rather obvious difficulties for the alcoholic who would communicate with the outside world (with “earth people” or “civilians”).
But there is advantage, too: the recovering alcoholic is an explorer here, and sobriety is not simply new to him in a way that is familiar to others; it is a new thing altogether, and he or she is its poet. Or he (or she) would be were it not for those clever, cagey bastards at the OED, who hedge their bets on sobriety with the following second meaning:
LME 2 Staidness, seriousness, soundness of judgment: M16.
This is much better. Staidness (the quality of being settled in faith or purpose, or settled in character and conduct, dignified, serious) is good, seriousness (the quality of having, involving, expressing, or arising from earnest purposes, being sedate in disposition or intention, responsible, not reckless, etc.) perhaps less so. But “soundness of judgment” is excellent. “Soundness of judgment” sounds a lot like sanity, and sanity sounds a lot like the quality sought by the knowing, powerless drunk.
There’s more, of course, but it’s not a bad hasty first draft for the revised edition:
sobriety/n. EAA 1 A relatively vertical state of affairs. MAA 2 Not not drinking. MAA 3 Soundness of judgment, sanity, spec. soundness of judgment and sanity regarding alcohol and alcoholism; 4 LAA A work in progress.
The first suggestion is that sobriety is not just not drinking. That should have been obvious, for drunkenness is not just drinking. But a dull bulb sizzles on, anyway, and flickers further when the person who suggests there is more to sobriety adds that he is working on the quality, if you please, of his.
Thus a modest confidence is greatly increased in modesty. I turned to the OED. The first definition:
“sobriety/n. LME [(O) Fr. Sobriété or L sobrietas, f. sobrius SOBER a. see – ITY.] 1 The quality of being sober or moderate; avoidance of excess; spec. moderation in drinking alcohol.”
That sobriety is “the quality of being sober” is fine as far as it goes, which is nowhere. No doubt it’s true, and as helpful as knowing that drunkenness is the quality of being drunk. So my new-found authority on sobriety is working on the quality of the quality of being sober, which doesn’t tell us much.
The “avoidance of excess, specifically moderation in drinking alcohol” is better inasmuch as it at least mentions alcohol, but the alcoholic has to sniff. The avoidance of excess and moderation in drinking alcohol might be what “sobriety” means to those for whom “the quality of being sober” comes naturally, but it is not what it means to alcoholics. Nor is it what it means to those for whom “the quality of being sober” comes with a partner or friend who is an alcoholic. In both cases “I’ve only had four” means “the quality of being nuts.”
So opening the OED - to the entry between Sobranye (“The Parliament or national assembly of Bulgaria”) and sobriquet (“An epithet, a nickname”) - is like opening a can of worms for the alcoholic. Not only does he (or she) not really know what sober means, now he (or she) has to recognize that he (or she) no longer confidently speaks his (or her) own language. One man’s “avoidance of excess" is another man's poison. Or woman’s.
This is a turn up for the books.
And switching languages won’t help. The Spanish Royal Academy fares no better than the Oxford lexicographers: “sobriedad. (Del lat. sobrietas, -ātis). 1. f. Cualidad de sobrio.” Indeed.
None of this is to blame the sober wordsmiths, although that’s always tempting: what do they know of sobriety, after all, who only sobriety know? What do they know of the vertical who have only ever been upright? Well, a little more, you might suggest, than those who only drunkenness know, those who have lain down the full length of the horizontal and refused to get up.
It’s not the scholars’ fault that the alcoholic, armed with a few foreign phrases and a list of bars the length of his arm, embarked abroad and came back with half a new language and having forgotten half the old one.
Regardless, it is a bit like getting lost in translation. This causes rather obvious difficulties for the alcoholic who would communicate with the outside world (with “earth people” or “civilians”).
But there is advantage, too: the recovering alcoholic is an explorer here, and sobriety is not simply new to him in a way that is familiar to others; it is a new thing altogether, and he or she is its poet. Or he (or she) would be were it not for those clever, cagey bastards at the OED, who hedge their bets on sobriety with the following second meaning:
LME 2 Staidness, seriousness, soundness of judgment: M16.
This is much better. Staidness (the quality of being settled in faith or purpose, or settled in character and conduct, dignified, serious) is good, seriousness (the quality of having, involving, expressing, or arising from earnest purposes, being sedate in disposition or intention, responsible, not reckless, etc.) perhaps less so. But “soundness of judgment” is excellent. “Soundness of judgment” sounds a lot like sanity, and sanity sounds a lot like the quality sought by the knowing, powerless drunk.
There’s more, of course, but it’s not a bad hasty first draft for the revised edition:
sobriety/n. EAA 1 A relatively vertical state of affairs. MAA 2 Not not drinking. MAA 3 Soundness of judgment, sanity, spec. soundness of judgment and sanity regarding alcohol and alcoholism; 4 LAA A work in progress.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Exercises on Drunkenness
In November, 1876, the Episcopal Church Congress met in Boston. The Closing Day’s Exercises included a morning session devoted to “The Prevention and Cure of Drunkenness.” The arguments back and forth were reported by the New York Times the next day as follows:
“Dr. Tyler commended enforced abstinence as the principle method of any value. Dr. Hartt thought the punishment of drunkenness by making it a crime, would prove more effectual. Mr. Newton opposed the ordinary plan of temperance organization, and suggested the formation of Church temperance societies similar to those in the English Church. Dr. Huntingdon spoke in favor of total abstinence.
“Hon E. H. Derby, of Boston, suggested combating intemperance by educating the ignorant. D. Banks McKenzie, Superintendent of the Appleton Temporary Home, said he would have the drunkard treated as a sick man rather than as a criminal. J. W. Creamer, of New York, spoke of the importance of improving the condition of the poor. Making their homes happy, said he, would strike at the root of the evil of intemperance. Rev. Thomas H. Gallandet thought that judicious excise laws, with special reference to hours of selling and the purity of liquors, would do much to limit the vice. Rev. Dr. Schereschewsky, Bishop of China, believed that the spirit was to be found in the Church which would be potent to overcome intemperance. Rev. Thomas F. Fates appealed to the clergy to do their share. Right Rev. A.C. Gerrity, Bishop of Northern Texas, was the last speaker of the morning. He believed the Church was the great reformatory institution of the age. He called for good homes and good places of common resort as the best means of reform for drinking men.”
Enforced abstinence and criminalization, the proposals of Tyler and Huntingdon and Hartt, doctors one and all, had their day in the sun, and withered. Mr. Newton’s temperance societies evolved from massive, diurnal beasts of the plains to nocturnal scurriers, like small mammals you never see and have to be reminded are never more than twenty feet away. The judicious use of excise laws can only go so far in a capitalist society, and “educating the ignorant” or “improving the condition of the poor” smack of socialism itself and, as such, are non-starters. The Bishop of Texas’ belief that the Church was the great reformatory institution of the age reflects reality the way a black hole reflects light.
Superintendent McKenzie’s notion of treating the drunkard as a sick man rather than a criminal, however, is wrong only in limiting diagnosis and treatment to the male of the species. And the Reverend Dr. Schereschewsky’s belief that the spirit powerful enough to overcome intemperance was to be found in the Church has come true, for many, although it is unlikely that the Reverend was thinking of the basement.
“Dr. Tyler commended enforced abstinence as the principle method of any value. Dr. Hartt thought the punishment of drunkenness by making it a crime, would prove more effectual. Mr. Newton opposed the ordinary plan of temperance organization, and suggested the formation of Church temperance societies similar to those in the English Church. Dr. Huntingdon spoke in favor of total abstinence.
“Hon E. H. Derby, of Boston, suggested combating intemperance by educating the ignorant. D. Banks McKenzie, Superintendent of the Appleton Temporary Home, said he would have the drunkard treated as a sick man rather than as a criminal. J. W. Creamer, of New York, spoke of the importance of improving the condition of the poor. Making their homes happy, said he, would strike at the root of the evil of intemperance. Rev. Thomas H. Gallandet thought that judicious excise laws, with special reference to hours of selling and the purity of liquors, would do much to limit the vice. Rev. Dr. Schereschewsky, Bishop of China, believed that the spirit was to be found in the Church which would be potent to overcome intemperance. Rev. Thomas F. Fates appealed to the clergy to do their share. Right Rev. A.C. Gerrity, Bishop of Northern Texas, was the last speaker of the morning. He believed the Church was the great reformatory institution of the age. He called for good homes and good places of common resort as the best means of reform for drinking men.”
Enforced abstinence and criminalization, the proposals of Tyler and Huntingdon and Hartt, doctors one and all, had their day in the sun, and withered. Mr. Newton’s temperance societies evolved from massive, diurnal beasts of the plains to nocturnal scurriers, like small mammals you never see and have to be reminded are never more than twenty feet away. The judicious use of excise laws can only go so far in a capitalist society, and “educating the ignorant” or “improving the condition of the poor” smack of socialism itself and, as such, are non-starters. The Bishop of Texas’ belief that the Church was the great reformatory institution of the age reflects reality the way a black hole reflects light.
Superintendent McKenzie’s notion of treating the drunkard as a sick man rather than a criminal, however, is wrong only in limiting diagnosis and treatment to the male of the species. And the Reverend Dr. Schereschewsky’s belief that the spirit powerful enough to overcome intemperance was to be found in the Church has come true, for many, although it is unlikely that the Reverend was thinking of the basement.
What They Did
What did they do with the drunken sailor?
They slung him in the long boat until he was sober; kept him there and made him bale her; pulled out the plug and wet him over; took him, shook him, tried to wake him; triced him up a running bowline; gave him a taste of the bosun’s rope end; gave him a dose of salt and water; stuck on his back a mustard plaster; shaved his belly with a rusty razor; sent him up the crow’s nest till he fell down; tied him to the taffrail when she was yardarm under; put him in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him; soaked him in oil till he sprouted flippers; put him in the guard room till he was sober; put him in bed with the captain’s daughter; took the Baby and called it Bo’sun; turned him over and drove him windward; put him in the scuffs until the horse bit on him; and heaved him by the leg and with a rung consoled him. That’s what they did with the drunken sailor.
Well, they did have a lot of time on their hands. And the captain’s daughter, should that sound the odd one out, was usually made of knotted thongs of cotton cord and designed to slash the skin with its nine tails.
They slung him in the long boat until he was sober; kept him there and made him bale her; pulled out the plug and wet him over; took him, shook him, tried to wake him; triced him up a running bowline; gave him a taste of the bosun’s rope end; gave him a dose of salt and water; stuck on his back a mustard plaster; shaved his belly with a rusty razor; sent him up the crow’s nest till he fell down; tied him to the taffrail when she was yardarm under; put him in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him; soaked him in oil till he sprouted flippers; put him in the guard room till he was sober; put him in bed with the captain’s daughter; took the Baby and called it Bo’sun; turned him over and drove him windward; put him in the scuffs until the horse bit on him; and heaved him by the leg and with a rung consoled him. That’s what they did with the drunken sailor.
Well, they did have a lot of time on their hands. And the captain’s daughter, should that sound the odd one out, was usually made of knotted thongs of cotton cord and designed to slash the skin with its nine tails.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Forgetful of Returning
For all its fame, the episode in The Odyssey that gave us the Lotus Eaters - or Lotos Eaters - is remarkably short, a mere twenty-two lines of loose iambic pentameter in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, a single paragraph (two hundred and sixty-one words) in the S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang prose edition. Fitzgerald gets us in and out as follows:
“Nine days I drifted on the teeming sea
before dangerous high winds. Upon the tenth
we came to the coastline of the Lotos Eaters,
who live upon that flower. We landed there
to take on water. All ships’ companies
mustered alongside for the mid-day meal.
Then I sent out two picked men and a runner
to learn what race of men that land sustained.
They fell in, soon enough, with Lotos Eaters,
who showed no will to do us harm, only
offering the sweet Lotos to our friends –
but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos,
never cared to report, nor to return:
they longed to stay forever, browsing on
that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland.
I drove them, all three wailing, to the ships
tied them down under their rowing benches,
and called the rest: “All hands aboard;
come, clear the beach and no one taste
the Lotos, or you lose your hope of home.”
Filing in to their places by the rowlocks
my oarsmen dipped their long oars in the surf,
and we moved out again on our sea faring.”
This captures the tale in full, although Butcher and Lang are better on the reluctance of the men to return (“weeping, and sore against their will”) and on Odysseus’ reasons for urging the rest of his crew to make speed – “lest haply any should eat of the lotus and be forgetful of returning.”
Tennyson takes the tale and runs with it, having all the mariners eat the Lotos leaves and get proactive with their addiction, resolving to stay in that happy land and, in chorus, going through all the reasons for doing so. Having made up their minds upon hearing the sweet and soporific music, they question why man is the only creature bound by labor; positively submit to hedonism and the life of continuous dreaming; reason that their families have probably forgotten them anyway, and that their homes have fallen apart, and so determine to “let what is broken so remain;” and compare this new-found life of abandon, even, to the life of the Gods:
“Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”
Herodotus places the Lotos Eaters along the coast of Libya, between the Gindanes and the Machlyans (who also make use of the lotos, “but less than those above mentioned”). (The Gindanes have their own marked custom: the women “wear each of them a number of anklets made of the skins of animals, for the following reason, as it is said:—for every man who has commerce with her she binds on an anklet, and the woman who has most is esteemed the best, since she has been loved by the greatest number of men.” But that’s another story.) In The Histories (Book IV (Melpomene)), the Lotos Eaters not only existed once upon a time, but still did, and still lived on lotus leaves alone, which is perhaps one reason why Thucydides famously complained, “He’s making this up.” The older historian makes no mention of the “forgetfulness” (the "high," or "buzz," to use the historian's terms of art) but does note that alcohol was a dietary variant:
“In a peninsula which stands out into the sea from the land of these Gindanes dwell the Lotophagoi, who live by eating the fruit of the lotos only. Now the fruit of the lotos is in size like that of the mastich-tree, and in flavor it resembles that of the date-palm. Of this fruit the Lotophagoi even make for themselves wine.”
Maybe the episode is so short because it has such a simple lesson: browse on that “native bloom” and lose all “hope of home.” In that regard, the scouts and the herald were lucky, in having, in Odysseus, a ready-made higher power, although even then it wasn’t easy, the cure being sore against their will. But Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, with all the excuses they can muster, sound more like the Lotos Eaters I know.
“Nine days I drifted on the teeming sea
before dangerous high winds. Upon the tenth
we came to the coastline of the Lotos Eaters,
who live upon that flower. We landed there
to take on water. All ships’ companies
mustered alongside for the mid-day meal.
Then I sent out two picked men and a runner
to learn what race of men that land sustained.
They fell in, soon enough, with Lotos Eaters,
who showed no will to do us harm, only
offering the sweet Lotos to our friends –
but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos,
never cared to report, nor to return:
they longed to stay forever, browsing on
that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland.
I drove them, all three wailing, to the ships
tied them down under their rowing benches,
and called the rest: “All hands aboard;
come, clear the beach and no one taste
the Lotos, or you lose your hope of home.”
Filing in to their places by the rowlocks
my oarsmen dipped their long oars in the surf,
and we moved out again on our sea faring.”
This captures the tale in full, although Butcher and Lang are better on the reluctance of the men to return (“weeping, and sore against their will”) and on Odysseus’ reasons for urging the rest of his crew to make speed – “lest haply any should eat of the lotus and be forgetful of returning.”
Tennyson takes the tale and runs with it, having all the mariners eat the Lotos leaves and get proactive with their addiction, resolving to stay in that happy land and, in chorus, going through all the reasons for doing so. Having made up their minds upon hearing the sweet and soporific music, they question why man is the only creature bound by labor; positively submit to hedonism and the life of continuous dreaming; reason that their families have probably forgotten them anyway, and that their homes have fallen apart, and so determine to “let what is broken so remain;” and compare this new-found life of abandon, even, to the life of the Gods:
“Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”
Herodotus places the Lotos Eaters along the coast of Libya, between the Gindanes and the Machlyans (who also make use of the lotos, “but less than those above mentioned”). (The Gindanes have their own marked custom: the women “wear each of them a number of anklets made of the skins of animals, for the following reason, as it is said:—for every man who has commerce with her she binds on an anklet, and the woman who has most is esteemed the best, since she has been loved by the greatest number of men.” But that’s another story.) In The Histories (Book IV (Melpomene)), the Lotos Eaters not only existed once upon a time, but still did, and still lived on lotus leaves alone, which is perhaps one reason why Thucydides famously complained, “He’s making this up.” The older historian makes no mention of the “forgetfulness” (the "high," or "buzz," to use the historian's terms of art) but does note that alcohol was a dietary variant:
“In a peninsula which stands out into the sea from the land of these Gindanes dwell the Lotophagoi, who live by eating the fruit of the lotos only. Now the fruit of the lotos is in size like that of the mastich-tree, and in flavor it resembles that of the date-palm. Of this fruit the Lotophagoi even make for themselves wine.”
Maybe the episode is so short because it has such a simple lesson: browse on that “native bloom” and lose all “hope of home.” In that regard, the scouts and the herald were lucky, in having, in Odysseus, a ready-made higher power, although even then it wasn’t easy, the cure being sore against their will. But Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, with all the excuses they can muster, sound more like the Lotos Eaters I know.
DWI
More Amis, More Information
“Down on Calchalk Street he climbed into the Maestro with a sense of prospective novelty. Six nights earlier, at 3:30 A.M., as he drove back from Holland Park Avenue after delivering the Los Angeles Times to Gwyn’s doorstep, Richard had been successfully charged with drunken driving. This was not a complicated case. He had in fact crashed the car into a police station. Others of us might find so thorough a solecism embarrassing, but Richard was pleased about that part of it because at least it speeded the whole thing up. No hanging around while they radioed in for the Breathalyzer. No being asked to accompany them to the police station…Nor for the moment did he particularly regret being so bounteously over the limit. At least he couldn’t remember anything – except the sudden contrast: there you are comfortably driving along, a little lost, perhaps, and with your left hand over your left eye; then the next thing you know you’re bouncing up the steps to the police station. And smashing into its half-glass doors. As he drove, now, down Ladbroke Grove toward Holland Park, feeling self-consciously sober and clandestine, Richard remembered what he said, when the three rozzers came crunching out to greet him. No, this was not a complicated case. He rolled down the window and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Officer, but the thing is I’m incredibly drunk.’ That, too, got things moving.”
“Down on Calchalk Street he climbed into the Maestro with a sense of prospective novelty. Six nights earlier, at 3:30 A.M., as he drove back from Holland Park Avenue after delivering the Los Angeles Times to Gwyn’s doorstep, Richard had been successfully charged with drunken driving. This was not a complicated case. He had in fact crashed the car into a police station. Others of us might find so thorough a solecism embarrassing, but Richard was pleased about that part of it because at least it speeded the whole thing up. No hanging around while they radioed in for the Breathalyzer. No being asked to accompany them to the police station…Nor for the moment did he particularly regret being so bounteously over the limit. At least he couldn’t remember anything – except the sudden contrast: there you are comfortably driving along, a little lost, perhaps, and with your left hand over your left eye; then the next thing you know you’re bouncing up the steps to the police station. And smashing into its half-glass doors. As he drove, now, down Ladbroke Grove toward Holland Park, feeling self-consciously sober and clandestine, Richard remembered what he said, when the three rozzers came crunching out to greet him. No, this was not a complicated case. He rolled down the window and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Officer, but the thing is I’m incredibly drunk.’ That, too, got things moving.”
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Demon Drink
William McGonagall’s lack of literary talent was sublime. So it’s not surprising that he has his defenders. The world’s worst poet, according to almost anyone who has read him, he was also, according to Stephen Pile, “so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius” (The Book of Heroic Failures). There’s something to that argument. Gord Bambrick (The Real McGonagall: A Re-introduction to the Great McGonagall) starts the chase well enough – McGonagall’s “unique style of versification breaks the laws of rhythm, rhyme and common sense in a manner that has eluded his thousands of imitators for more than a century” – but loses the trail completely by contending that McGonagall was a clever satirist profiting from shrewdly bad performance art.
McGonagall wasn’t a music hall act ahead of his time. Much rarer, he was just a timelessly bad poet, the “foremost poet of banal pomposity, excruciating scansion and rhymes of such numbing impact they could give you cauliflower ears just from silent reading” (William McIlvanney). McGonagall himself (The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Poet and Tragedian, Knight of the White Elephant of Burma) says he was the lucky recipient of “divine inspiration,” and describes the moment he heard the voice telling him to “write, write” as follows: “I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself—‘I know nothing about poetry.’” And indeed he did.
I hope this is true. A canny comedian is not a bad thing, but an absurdly awful poet is a national treasure. Here he is on The Demon Drink:
Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer;
Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer.
What hast thou done to society, let me think?
I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink.
Thou causeth the mother to neglect her child,
Also the father to act as he were wild,
So that he neglects his loving wife and family dear,
By spending his earnings foolishly on whisky, rum and beer.
And after spending his earnings foolishly he beats his wife-
The man that promised to protect her during life-
And so the man would if there was no drink in society,
For seldom a man beats his wife in a state of sobriety.
And if he does, perhaps he finds his wife fou',
Then that causes, no doubt, a great hullaballo;
When he finds his wife drunk he begins to frown,
And in a fury of passion he knocks her down.
And in that knock down she fractures her head,
And perhaps the poor wife she is killed dead,
Whereas, if there was no strong drink to be got,
To be killed wouldn't have been the poor wife's lot.
Then the unfortunate husband is arrested and cast into jail,
And sadly his fate he does bewail;
And he curses the hour that ever was born,
And paces his cell up and down very forlorn.
And when the day of his trial draws near,
No doubt for the murdering of his wife he drops a tear,
And he exclaims, "Oh, thou demon Drink, through thee I must die,"
And on the scaffold he warns the people from drink to fly,
Because whenever a father or a mother takes to drink,
Step by step on in crime they do sink,
Until their children loses all affection for them,
And in justice we cannot their children condemn.
The man that gets drunk is little else than a fool,
And is in the habit, no doubt, of advocating for Home Rule;
But the best Home Rule for him, as far as I can understand,
Is the abolition of strong drink from the land.
And the men that get drunk in general wants Home Rule;
But such men, I rather think, should keep their heads cool,
And try and learn more sense, I most earnestlty do pray,
And help to get strong drink abolished without delay.
If drink was abolished how many peaceful homes would there be,
Just, for instance in the beautiful town of Dundee;
then this world would be heaven, whereas it's a hell,
An the people would have more peace in it to dwell
Alas! strong drink makes men and women fanatics,
And helps to fill our prisons and lunatics;
And if there was no strong drink such cases wouldn't be,
Which would be a very glad sight for all christians to see.
O admit, a man may be a very good man,
But in my opinion he cannot be a true Christian
As long as he partakes of strong drink,
The more that he may differently think.
But no matter what he thinks, I say nay,
For by taking it he helps to lead his brither astray,
Whereas, if he didn't drink, he would help to reform society,
And we would soon do away with all inebriety.
Then, for the sake of society and the Church of God,
Let each one try to abolish it at home and abroad;
Then poverty and crime would decrease and be at a stand,
And Christ's Kingdom would soon be established throughout the land.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, pause and think,
And try to abolish the foul fiend, Drink.
Let such doctrine be taught in church and school,
That the abolition of strong drink is the only Home Rule.
Postscript: McGonagall campaigned for temperance, which may go some way towards explaining the hostility he experienced from publicans: “Well, I must say,” he writes, “that the first man who threw peas at me was a publican …”
McGonagall wasn’t a music hall act ahead of his time. Much rarer, he was just a timelessly bad poet, the “foremost poet of banal pomposity, excruciating scansion and rhymes of such numbing impact they could give you cauliflower ears just from silent reading” (William McIlvanney). McGonagall himself (The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Poet and Tragedian, Knight of the White Elephant of Burma) says he was the lucky recipient of “divine inspiration,” and describes the moment he heard the voice telling him to “write, write” as follows: “I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself—‘I know nothing about poetry.’” And indeed he did.
I hope this is true. A canny comedian is not a bad thing, but an absurdly awful poet is a national treasure. Here he is on The Demon Drink:
Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer;
Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer.
What hast thou done to society, let me think?
I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink.
Thou causeth the mother to neglect her child,
Also the father to act as he were wild,
So that he neglects his loving wife and family dear,
By spending his earnings foolishly on whisky, rum and beer.
And after spending his earnings foolishly he beats his wife-
The man that promised to protect her during life-
And so the man would if there was no drink in society,
For seldom a man beats his wife in a state of sobriety.
And if he does, perhaps he finds his wife fou',
Then that causes, no doubt, a great hullaballo;
When he finds his wife drunk he begins to frown,
And in a fury of passion he knocks her down.
And in that knock down she fractures her head,
And perhaps the poor wife she is killed dead,
Whereas, if there was no strong drink to be got,
To be killed wouldn't have been the poor wife's lot.
Then the unfortunate husband is arrested and cast into jail,
And sadly his fate he does bewail;
And he curses the hour that ever was born,
And paces his cell up and down very forlorn.
And when the day of his trial draws near,
No doubt for the murdering of his wife he drops a tear,
And he exclaims, "Oh, thou demon Drink, through thee I must die,"
And on the scaffold he warns the people from drink to fly,
Because whenever a father or a mother takes to drink,
Step by step on in crime they do sink,
Until their children loses all affection for them,
And in justice we cannot their children condemn.
The man that gets drunk is little else than a fool,
And is in the habit, no doubt, of advocating for Home Rule;
But the best Home Rule for him, as far as I can understand,
Is the abolition of strong drink from the land.
And the men that get drunk in general wants Home Rule;
But such men, I rather think, should keep their heads cool,
And try and learn more sense, I most earnestlty do pray,
And help to get strong drink abolished without delay.
If drink was abolished how many peaceful homes would there be,
Just, for instance in the beautiful town of Dundee;
then this world would be heaven, whereas it's a hell,
An the people would have more peace in it to dwell
Alas! strong drink makes men and women fanatics,
And helps to fill our prisons and lunatics;
And if there was no strong drink such cases wouldn't be,
Which would be a very glad sight for all christians to see.
O admit, a man may be a very good man,
But in my opinion he cannot be a true Christian
As long as he partakes of strong drink,
The more that he may differently think.
But no matter what he thinks, I say nay,
For by taking it he helps to lead his brither astray,
Whereas, if he didn't drink, he would help to reform society,
And we would soon do away with all inebriety.
Then, for the sake of society and the Church of God,
Let each one try to abolish it at home and abroad;
Then poverty and crime would decrease and be at a stand,
And Christ's Kingdom would soon be established throughout the land.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, pause and think,
And try to abolish the foul fiend, Drink.
Let such doctrine be taught in church and school,
That the abolition of strong drink is the only Home Rule.
Postscript: McGonagall campaigned for temperance, which may go some way towards explaining the hostility he experienced from publicans: “Well, I must say,” he writes, “that the first man who threw peas at me was a publican …”
In The Rye
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I drank, what my lousy drunks were like, and how my insecurities were occupied and all before they had me smashed every night, and all that Charles Bukowski kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)