Drinking, or alcoholic drinking, is hard work. It takes real dedication. Carver was the first I heard say it, and it was intriguing, since, if I had thought about it all, I might have concluded that nothing was lazier than drinking, and wouldn’t have imagined anything hard in laziness.
Now, up close, I hear many people say it. Sometimes it’s about hiding bottles, lying to spouses, playing shell games with colleagues, the downstream slide home from the bar, or the upstream walk to the liquor store. Other times, it might be about responsibilities silting up while a drinker is otherwise occupied.
Either way, “Drinking is hard work” is met with subtle nods of acknowledgment. It’s like a line of poetry everyone knows. The thing is, though, so is “Nothing is easier than drinking.”
Not drinking has the same resistance to measure. I’ve never heard an alcoholic say it was actually easy. Some people do say that they are “recovered.” They are no doubt lucky to feel that way. But I have no idea what it means. Alcoholism might well be a disease, but it’s not chicken pox.
(The literature does speak of recovery, of course: even those who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, if they have the capacity to be honest, are advised that they can recover. But it’s still not chicken pox.)
I couldn’t say whether I find not drinking easy or hard. I dread the double-shift work of “not drinking,” the obsession of it, “not drinking” as a condition. That feels like an elephant trap. On the other hand, simply pouring energy into other obsessions, spending no time at all with the thought of not drinking, feels like the trap for a larger elephant.
“Be drunk,” says Baudelaire.
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
Yeah. Right. And what happens when you run out of virtue and poetry?
Monday, April 26, 2010
A Sort of Insanity
In the first chapter of Demian, Emil Sinclair describes two worlds of his youth. In the first “were straight lines and paths that led into the future … duty and guilt, evil conscience and confession, pardon and good resolution, love and adoration … To this world our future had to belong; it had to be crystal clear, beautiful and well-ordered.” In the other there were “ghost stories and the breath of scandal … a gaily colored flood of monstrous, tempting, terrible enigmatical goings-on, the slaughter-house and prison, drunken men and scolding women … tales of burglaries, murders, suicides …” Emil finds it wonderful that there is one world of “peace, order and repose” and no less wonderful “that there were other things … sinister and violent ...” The rub is that soon the youth can’t keep the worlds apart, and as he succumbs to theft in one and deception in the other, he notes:
“My life at that time was a sort of insanity. I was shy, and lived in torment like a ghost in the midst of the well-ordered peace of our house.”
“My life at that time was a sort of insanity. I was shy, and lived in torment like a ghost in the midst of the well-ordered peace of our house.”
Dead Souls
Nabokov says of Gogol:
“The peripheral characters of his novel are engendered by the subordinate clauses of its various metaphors, comparisons and lyrical outbursts. We are faced by the remarkable phenomenon of mere forms of speech directly giving rise to live creatures."
'A drowning man, it is said, will catch at the smallest chip of wood because at the moment he has not the presence of mind to reflect that hardly even a fly could hope to ride astride that chip, whereas he weighs almost a hundred and fifty pounds if not a good two hundred.'
“Who is that unfortunate bather, steadily and uncannily growing, fattening himself on the marrow of a metaphor? We shall never know – but he almost managed to gain a footing.”
Gogol had the Russian panorama to paint – following Chichikov on his mysterious journey (an awesome premise) to buy up all the “dead souls” he can find – and so moved on.
I stood at a bar day after day and let one subordinate clause after another outgrow the metaphor and wreck the narrative, which begs two questions: were the subordinate clauses, one after another, cumulative only like so many fireworks, all there was of metaphor?; and what the hell was that story, anyway?
“The peripheral characters of his novel are engendered by the subordinate clauses of its various metaphors, comparisons and lyrical outbursts. We are faced by the remarkable phenomenon of mere forms of speech directly giving rise to live creatures."
'A drowning man, it is said, will catch at the smallest chip of wood because at the moment he has not the presence of mind to reflect that hardly even a fly could hope to ride astride that chip, whereas he weighs almost a hundred and fifty pounds if not a good two hundred.'
“Who is that unfortunate bather, steadily and uncannily growing, fattening himself on the marrow of a metaphor? We shall never know – but he almost managed to gain a footing.”
Gogol had the Russian panorama to paint – following Chichikov on his mysterious journey (an awesome premise) to buy up all the “dead souls” he can find – and so moved on.
I stood at a bar day after day and let one subordinate clause after another outgrow the metaphor and wreck the narrative, which begs two questions: were the subordinate clauses, one after another, cumulative only like so many fireworks, all there was of metaphor?; and what the hell was that story, anyway?
The Absurd Hero
Sisyphus is more than a name in The Iliad, but not much more – “There is a city Ephyre in the heart of Argos, pasture land of horses, and there dwelt Sisyphus that was craftiest of men …” And that’s about it. In The Odyssey, he fares a little better, occupying several lines of verse, just enough for Odysseus to witness his torment in the Land of the Dead. Along with Tityos and Tantalus, who were also tormented in Hades for their faults, he is an early exemplar of the soon-to-be-popular proposition that everyone might suffer in the afterlife for his or her sins. (So why wait?). Tityos, Homer tells us, had raped Zeus’s mistress, Lētṓ, but Sisyphus and Tantalus are punished without word of their wrongs.
Camus picks up on the “humanity” of Sisyphus, borrowing from “other traditions” the description of Sisyphus’ return from Hades to chastise his wife for obeying his instructions, so contrary to human love, in casting his body into the middle of the public square, as well as the small matter of his refusal to go back to Hades once he had enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea. But it is his unspeakable punishment, “in which the whole being is exerted towards accomplishing nothing,” which makes him – “you will have already grasped,” Camus says generously – “the absurd hero.”
In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus asks how a life that has no meaning can best be lived, and considers the possibility of suicide – the “one truly serious philosophical problem” – in the context of “an absurd sensitivity” with its infirmity, ignorance, irrationality, nostalgia, and conflation of truth and falsehood. Reason is not much help here, and religion is worse than useless, but not to worry: suicide is an act of bad faith, an attempt to simply a problem by avoiding it, and “even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism.” And thank goodness for that.
Camus concludes his essay with the bold metaphor of Sisyphus, the absurd hero who has won himself an appalling penalty. It is tempting to say that Camus begins to craft the metaphor as follows: “The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaseless alcoholism.” But, given that his hero comprehends his fate – “If the myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious” – perhaps it would better begin, “The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaseless sobriety.”
Camus picks up on the “humanity” of Sisyphus, borrowing from “other traditions” the description of Sisyphus’ return from Hades to chastise his wife for obeying his instructions, so contrary to human love, in casting his body into the middle of the public square, as well as the small matter of his refusal to go back to Hades once he had enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea. But it is his unspeakable punishment, “in which the whole being is exerted towards accomplishing nothing,” which makes him – “you will have already grasped,” Camus says generously – “the absurd hero.”
In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus asks how a life that has no meaning can best be lived, and considers the possibility of suicide – the “one truly serious philosophical problem” – in the context of “an absurd sensitivity” with its infirmity, ignorance, irrationality, nostalgia, and conflation of truth and falsehood. Reason is not much help here, and religion is worse than useless, but not to worry: suicide is an act of bad faith, an attempt to simply a problem by avoiding it, and “even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism.” And thank goodness for that.
Camus concludes his essay with the bold metaphor of Sisyphus, the absurd hero who has won himself an appalling penalty. It is tempting to say that Camus begins to craft the metaphor as follows: “The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaseless alcoholism.” But, given that his hero comprehends his fate – “If the myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious” – perhaps it would better begin, “The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaseless sobriety.”
Death and Taxes, 2010
Benjamin Franklin was speaking of the United States Constitution and its promise of permanency when he added that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The alcoholic has additional certainty on both accounts.
Taxes conjured up by the sober souls at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau are fixed dollar amounts per unit of beverage. Beer is taxed at $18 a barrel (31 gallons) or $0.05 per 12 ounce can. Taxes on wine depend on alcohol content, ranging from $1.07 per wine gallon ($0.21 per 750 ml bottle) for wine with 14% alcohol or less to $3.15 per gallon (0.62 per bottle) for wine with up to 24% alcohol. The scale for distilled spirits slides according to percentage proof: 100 proof liquor (50% alcohol) is taxed at $13.50 per proof gallon and this tax is adjusted, depending on the percentage of alcohol in the product.
In addition, there is the state sales tax which, as of February 1, 2010, depending on where you happen to be, might be zero (Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon), 8.25% (California), or something in between (everywhere else). And then there are the specific state taxes on spirits, table wine, and beer. The only real common denominator here is that all states tax by the gallon.
If you only drank on credit cards, or in the highly improbable event that you have perfect recall, you can work out quite easily the additional sums you reserved for alcohol. At the national level, alcohol taxes accounted for 0.5 percent of federal revenues, down from over 5 percent in 1950, so even the heaviest drinkers might be surprised to find that it’s a relatively small part of the account, although the account itself, for some, might as well be the size of the federal budget.
That tab aside, and certainty applying to the darker part of Franklin’s formulation, how much has been paid towards that other inevitable levy?
Taxes conjured up by the sober souls at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau are fixed dollar amounts per unit of beverage. Beer is taxed at $18 a barrel (31 gallons) or $0.05 per 12 ounce can. Taxes on wine depend on alcohol content, ranging from $1.07 per wine gallon ($0.21 per 750 ml bottle) for wine with 14% alcohol or less to $3.15 per gallon (0.62 per bottle) for wine with up to 24% alcohol. The scale for distilled spirits slides according to percentage proof: 100 proof liquor (50% alcohol) is taxed at $13.50 per proof gallon and this tax is adjusted, depending on the percentage of alcohol in the product.
In addition, there is the state sales tax which, as of February 1, 2010, depending on where you happen to be, might be zero (Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon), 8.25% (California), or something in between (everywhere else). And then there are the specific state taxes on spirits, table wine, and beer. The only real common denominator here is that all states tax by the gallon.
If you only drank on credit cards, or in the highly improbable event that you have perfect recall, you can work out quite easily the additional sums you reserved for alcohol. At the national level, alcohol taxes accounted for 0.5 percent of federal revenues, down from over 5 percent in 1950, so even the heaviest drinkers might be surprised to find that it’s a relatively small part of the account, although the account itself, for some, might as well be the size of the federal budget.
That tab aside, and certainty applying to the darker part of Franklin’s formulation, how much has been paid towards that other inevitable levy?
L’esprit de l’escalier
Borges, discussing translations of The Thousand and One Nights, prefers the Spanish adjective milyunanochesco to milyunaochero (“too Argentine”) and milyunanocturno (“overly variant”). It’s more than tempting to imagine that Borges made up all three in order to prefer one over the others. In any case, when someone asked me about the years I had spent between one meeting and another, that liquid phase between first thinking I might want to stop drinking and knowing I had to, I wish I’d had milyunanochesco – “thousand-and-one-nights-esque” – on hand.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Long With This Whistle
In 1897 (Burns and His Times), J.O. Mitchell, LL.D., wisely noted, “I cannot recall any allusion by Burns to water as a drink …” Milk is mentioned only in connection with porridge, tea as a cause of war, a source of taxation, and as a beverage for “leddies.” Coffee and chocolate were around but not common enough to merit a poet’s attention. “Of strong drink,” however, “we have more than enough.”
Port receives modest attention, and brandy (which “Twins monie a poor, doylt, drucken hash/O’ half his days”) does not stand the patriotism test, as the drinking of it sends “auld Scotland’s cash” to its worst enemies. Claret features as the weapon of choice in the battle for ‘The Whistle,’ a real-life bacchanalian contest between Captain Riddle, Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxweltown, and Mr. Ferguson of Craigdarroch for possession of an ebony whistle brought to Scotland from Denmark specifically, it seems, as a trophy for drinking bouts, and blown by Norwegians until finally the match was met:
Till Robert, the Lord of the Cairn and the Scaur,
Unmatch'd at the bottle, unconquer'd in war,
He drank his poor godship as deep as the sea,
No tide of the Baltic e'er drunker than he.
“Six bottles a-piece had well wore out the night” before the drinking got competitive, but claret – like port and brandy – is an exception to the general rule that drink is beer or whisky.
An interesting observation by Mitchell on whisky, however, was that, a century before he was writing, it was not yet “fully naturalized” in the parts of the country in which it took strong root: “The poisonous exotic came down on us from the Highlands – the cruel avenger of the wrongs of the Celt.” In Burns, therefore, it appears as “a Highland gill,” “Usquebae,” “Ferintosh,” or “that dear Kilbagie.” And it was in beer – the “penny wheep,” the “tippeny,” the “nappy,” the “yill,” the “reaming swatsh” – that comradely pledges were made:
An’ surely ye’ll be your pint stowp,
An’ surely I’ll be mine.
“Burns represents alcohol as the great resource in sorrow, and, indeed, at all times and on all occasions, sorrowful or joyous, at kirk or at market, among all sorts and conditions of men, rich or poor, lay or clerical, in moderation or not - mostly not.”
From his late-nineteenth-century vantage, and his reading of Burns, Mitchell reasons that, while “the general abuse of strong drink” was not any worse a century before, it is nevertheless clear “that drunkenness was rife then where it would not now be tolerated.” He is talking about the drinking bouts among the gentry, for ebony whistles and such, for which a man of “rank” “who should join such an orgie … would [by Mitchell’s pleasant time] be expelled from society.” With Burns boasting of having been “bitch fou’ ‘mang godly priests,” he is also talking about the alcoholic habits of the ministers of religion, and the example set to the likes of Tam O’ Shanter, who “at the Lord’s house, e’en on Sunday/ … drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.”
“Our lairds took to drinking last century,” Mitchell continues, “because the rise in rents found them with no better way of spending their money than on the pleasures of the table.” By 1837, better pleasures, apparently, had appeared. Mitchell cites with great approval the facts of “the most notable political demonstration ever held in Scotland” in January of that year: “though port and sherry wines were served out without limit from 1,217 cut-glass decanters, yet no more than two or three out of the 3,293 noblemen and gentlemen were tipsy, and these two or three were got quietly away.” The pleasures of the working classes would parallel this development: “With the growth of higher tastes their drinking is on the wane, and it will die out in the one class as it has died out in the other.”
Mitchell is an admirable opponent of imposing higher tastes, or at least removing lower ones, by the tyrannical route: “Coercion to save grown men from making fools of themselves, or from reaping the fruits of their folly … often fails of its immediate end, and it never fails to curtail harmless liberty, and to weaken the selfreliance which has been the making of us.” But he’s not much of a prophet. Burns was far nearer the mark:
I sing of a whistle, a whistle of worth,
I sing of a whistle, the pride of the North,
Was brought to the court of our good Scottish king,
And long with this whistle all Scotland shall ring.
Port receives modest attention, and brandy (which “Twins monie a poor, doylt, drucken hash/O’ half his days”) does not stand the patriotism test, as the drinking of it sends “auld Scotland’s cash” to its worst enemies. Claret features as the weapon of choice in the battle for ‘The Whistle,’ a real-life bacchanalian contest between Captain Riddle, Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxweltown, and Mr. Ferguson of Craigdarroch for possession of an ebony whistle brought to Scotland from Denmark specifically, it seems, as a trophy for drinking bouts, and blown by Norwegians until finally the match was met:
Till Robert, the Lord of the Cairn and the Scaur,
Unmatch'd at the bottle, unconquer'd in war,
He drank his poor godship as deep as the sea,
No tide of the Baltic e'er drunker than he.
“Six bottles a-piece had well wore out the night” before the drinking got competitive, but claret – like port and brandy – is an exception to the general rule that drink is beer or whisky.
An interesting observation by Mitchell on whisky, however, was that, a century before he was writing, it was not yet “fully naturalized” in the parts of the country in which it took strong root: “The poisonous exotic came down on us from the Highlands – the cruel avenger of the wrongs of the Celt.” In Burns, therefore, it appears as “a Highland gill,” “Usquebae,” “Ferintosh,” or “that dear Kilbagie.” And it was in beer – the “penny wheep,” the “tippeny,” the “nappy,” the “yill,” the “reaming swatsh” – that comradely pledges were made:
An’ surely ye’ll be your pint stowp,
An’ surely I’ll be mine.
“Burns represents alcohol as the great resource in sorrow, and, indeed, at all times and on all occasions, sorrowful or joyous, at kirk or at market, among all sorts and conditions of men, rich or poor, lay or clerical, in moderation or not - mostly not.”
From his late-nineteenth-century vantage, and his reading of Burns, Mitchell reasons that, while “the general abuse of strong drink” was not any worse a century before, it is nevertheless clear “that drunkenness was rife then where it would not now be tolerated.” He is talking about the drinking bouts among the gentry, for ebony whistles and such, for which a man of “rank” “who should join such an orgie … would [by Mitchell’s pleasant time] be expelled from society.” With Burns boasting of having been “bitch fou’ ‘mang godly priests,” he is also talking about the alcoholic habits of the ministers of religion, and the example set to the likes of Tam O’ Shanter, who “at the Lord’s house, e’en on Sunday/ … drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.”
“Our lairds took to drinking last century,” Mitchell continues, “because the rise in rents found them with no better way of spending their money than on the pleasures of the table.” By 1837, better pleasures, apparently, had appeared. Mitchell cites with great approval the facts of “the most notable political demonstration ever held in Scotland” in January of that year: “though port and sherry wines were served out without limit from 1,217 cut-glass decanters, yet no more than two or three out of the 3,293 noblemen and gentlemen were tipsy, and these two or three were got quietly away.” The pleasures of the working classes would parallel this development: “With the growth of higher tastes their drinking is on the wane, and it will die out in the one class as it has died out in the other.”
Mitchell is an admirable opponent of imposing higher tastes, or at least removing lower ones, by the tyrannical route: “Coercion to save grown men from making fools of themselves, or from reaping the fruits of their folly … often fails of its immediate end, and it never fails to curtail harmless liberty, and to weaken the selfreliance which has been the making of us.” But he’s not much of a prophet. Burns was far nearer the mark:
I sing of a whistle, a whistle of worth,
I sing of a whistle, the pride of the North,
Was brought to the court of our good Scottish king,
And long with this whistle all Scotland shall ring.
Step The First
This loss that you might beggingly contest
Is all too deeply known by its rewards
For you to right or be the beggar less,
No matter what you fight to find in words.
Sam Capodini
Is all too deeply known by its rewards
For you to right or be the beggar less,
No matter what you fight to find in words.
Sam Capodini
Monday, April 19, 2010
Rat-Catching
Among the myriad delights of Robert Sullivan’s Rats is the following piece of wisdom imparted by George Ladd, proprietor of the Bonzai de Bug company, and rat-catcher extraordinaire:
“They had a rat in a fancy-ass building on the Upper West Side, and we couldn’t even think about traps or bait or anything. We had to get ’em, period. So I went to the store and I bought Hershey’s bars, nuts - they love nuts - anchovies, beer. They drink beer and they like it, but they drink a lot and then they can’t throw up.” Deploying his materials in the fancy-ass building, George caught the rat on the first night.
A study in 2002 at the Department of Psychology at the University of Sidney, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, tested the consequences of beer consumption in rats, and reported “acute anxiolytic and ataxic effects and withdrawal-induced anxiety.” Specific findings included:
“Rats drinking 4.5% beer approached a predatory cue significantly more than those given near-beer, indicating an anxiolytic effect. In experiment 2, rats drinking 4.5% beer displayed less anxiety-like behaviour in the elevated plus maze and emergence tests but not in the social interaction test. Rats given 4.5% beer fell off the rotarod significantly faster than rats given near-beer, indicating an ataxic effect. Rats previously given 4.5% beer drank significantly less near-beer the following day, suggesting a moderate aversion the day after beer consumption. In experiment 3, rats denied access to 4.5% beer showed significantly less social interaction and took longer to emerge into an open field than controls.”
The results proved for the first time that rats “will consume beer at levels that produce clear effects on anxiety and on motor-co-ordination.” George Ladd may have known this from experience, but in addition to any anxiety paralysis or the rat’s inability to scuttle and chew gum at the same time, the success of the Bonzai de Bug plan also depended on a large wooden board covered with glue.
“They had a rat in a fancy-ass building on the Upper West Side, and we couldn’t even think about traps or bait or anything. We had to get ’em, period. So I went to the store and I bought Hershey’s bars, nuts - they love nuts - anchovies, beer. They drink beer and they like it, but they drink a lot and then they can’t throw up.” Deploying his materials in the fancy-ass building, George caught the rat on the first night.
A study in 2002 at the Department of Psychology at the University of Sidney, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, tested the consequences of beer consumption in rats, and reported “acute anxiolytic and ataxic effects and withdrawal-induced anxiety.” Specific findings included:
“Rats drinking 4.5% beer approached a predatory cue significantly more than those given near-beer, indicating an anxiolytic effect. In experiment 2, rats drinking 4.5% beer displayed less anxiety-like behaviour in the elevated plus maze and emergence tests but not in the social interaction test. Rats given 4.5% beer fell off the rotarod significantly faster than rats given near-beer, indicating an ataxic effect. Rats previously given 4.5% beer drank significantly less near-beer the following day, suggesting a moderate aversion the day after beer consumption. In experiment 3, rats denied access to 4.5% beer showed significantly less social interaction and took longer to emerge into an open field than controls.”
The results proved for the first time that rats “will consume beer at levels that produce clear effects on anxiety and on motor-co-ordination.” George Ladd may have known this from experience, but in addition to any anxiety paralysis or the rat’s inability to scuttle and chew gum at the same time, the success of the Bonzai de Bug plan also depended on a large wooden board covered with glue.
Not The Same Man At All
The Philip Marlowe perspective:
"If the rules mean anything at all anymore, they mean you don’t pick a roomful of people as the spot to threaten a man and hit him across the face with a glove when your wife is standing right beside you and you are practically accusing her of a little double time. For a man still shaky from a hard bout with the hard stuff Wade had done all right. He had done more than all right. Of course I hadn’t seen him drunk. I didn’t know what he would be like drunk. I didn’t even know that he was an alcoholic. There’s a big difference. A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before."
Chandler, The Long Goodbye
"If the rules mean anything at all anymore, they mean you don’t pick a roomful of people as the spot to threaten a man and hit him across the face with a glove when your wife is standing right beside you and you are practically accusing her of a little double time. For a man still shaky from a hard bout with the hard stuff Wade had done all right. He had done more than all right. Of course I hadn’t seen him drunk. I didn’t know what he would be like drunk. I didn’t even know that he was an alcoholic. There’s a big difference. A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before."
Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Monday, April 12, 2010
After Kafka
Fellowship
We are twelve friends. One day we came out of a house one after the other: first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, or rather he glided through the gate like a little ball of quicksilver, then came the third, then the fourth, and so on. Finally we all stood in a row. People began to notice us, they pointed us out and said: Those twelve just came out of that house. Since then we have been living together; it would be a peaceful life if it weren’t for a thirteenth one continually trying to interfere. He doesn’t do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm enough; why does he intrude where he is not wanted? We don’t know him and don’t want him to join us. There was a time, of course, when the twelve of us did not know one another, either; and it could be said that we still don’t know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the twelve of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with this thirteenth one. In any case, we are twelve and do not want to be thirteen. And what is the point of this continual being together anyhow? It is also pointless for the twelve of us, but here we are together and will remain together; a new combination, however, we do not want, just because of our experiences. But how is one to make all this clear to the thirteenth one? Long explanations would almost amount to accepting him in our circle, so we prefer not to explain and not to accept him. No matter how he pouts his lips we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes.
We are twelve friends. One day we came out of a house one after the other: first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, or rather he glided through the gate like a little ball of quicksilver, then came the third, then the fourth, and so on. Finally we all stood in a row. People began to notice us, they pointed us out and said: Those twelve just came out of that house. Since then we have been living together; it would be a peaceful life if it weren’t for a thirteenth one continually trying to interfere. He doesn’t do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm enough; why does he intrude where he is not wanted? We don’t know him and don’t want him to join us. There was a time, of course, when the twelve of us did not know one another, either; and it could be said that we still don’t know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the twelve of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with this thirteenth one. In any case, we are twelve and do not want to be thirteen. And what is the point of this continual being together anyhow? It is also pointless for the twelve of us, but here we are together and will remain together; a new combination, however, we do not want, just because of our experiences. But how is one to make all this clear to the thirteenth one? Long explanations would almost amount to accepting him in our circle, so we prefer not to explain and not to accept him. No matter how he pouts his lips we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
The Heirs of Anacreon
Henri Estienne, Parisian printer and classical scholar, published the Anacreontea in 1554, believing himself to be recovering a lost poet, Anacreon, long considered doomed to hearsay and a few fragments. In fact, Anacreon remains doomed to hearsay and a few fragments, and some of the poems in the Anacreontea were likely written as late as the eight or ninth century CE. The earliest poems in the collection, however, could possibly be assigned to as early as the third century BCE (still three hundred years after Anacreon wrote). These were no mere forgeries: Anacreon had been venerated by Horace, and the Anacreontea proved that he had many imitators. Not quite the simple “drinking songs” they are often claimed to be, they are, nevertheless, songs, and the recurrent themes include the joys of love and wine:
Fruitful earth drinks up the rain;
Trees from earth drink that again;
The sea drinks the air, the sun
Drinks the sea, and him the moon
Is it reason then, d’ye think
I should thirst when all else drink?
Anacreon lives on in the style of verse – Anacreontics (the seven-syllable line)– that bears his name. He lived on for a while, too, in The Anacreontic Society, a social club of "Peers, Commoners, Aldermen, Gentlemen, Proctors, Actors, and Polite Tradesmen" dedicated to “mirth and music, wit and wine.” The members of the club would call up the poet as their presiding figure pledging themselves as ‘Sons of Anacreon’ with a group recitation of The Anacreontic Song. The music for the song was written by John Stafford Smith, a society member, who also wrote the music to which The Star-Spangled Banner was set. In fact, it was the same music. Thus the tune that accompanies “O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave/O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” originally accompanied:
And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine
This doesn’t prove anything, of course – but it’s something to take to the ball game.
Fruitful earth drinks up the rain;
Trees from earth drink that again;
The sea drinks the air, the sun
Drinks the sea, and him the moon
Is it reason then, d’ye think
I should thirst when all else drink?
Anacreon lives on in the style of verse – Anacreontics (the seven-syllable line)– that bears his name. He lived on for a while, too, in The Anacreontic Society, a social club of "Peers, Commoners, Aldermen, Gentlemen, Proctors, Actors, and Polite Tradesmen" dedicated to “mirth and music, wit and wine.” The members of the club would call up the poet as their presiding figure pledging themselves as ‘Sons of Anacreon’ with a group recitation of The Anacreontic Song. The music for the song was written by John Stafford Smith, a society member, who also wrote the music to which The Star-Spangled Banner was set. In fact, it was the same music. Thus the tune that accompanies “O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave/O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” originally accompanied:
And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine
This doesn’t prove anything, of course – but it’s something to take to the ball game.
One of Three
Henry Nelson Coleridge thought highly enough of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write down just about every word the latter said to him (Table Talk). Henry Nelson may have had a lot to thank the other Coleridge for – he was his nephew, his first and frequent editor, and married to his daughter – but he appears to have found nothing that was said unworthy of notation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was wise in many matters, but pontificated on everything. Maybe he felt he had to, since his nephew was following him around with pen and paper.
September 2, 1833, is a typical evening at the table, and this, on Greek particles, is a typical example of the talk: “It is worth particular notice how the style of Greek oratory, so full, in the times of political independence, of connective particles, some of passion, some of sensation only, and escaping the classification of mere grammatical logic, became, in the hands of the declaimers and philosophers of the Alexandrian era, and still later, entirely deprived of this peculiarity.” Also pronounced upon this long September night are Propertius (“I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high admiration …”); Tibullus (“ … is rather insipid to me”); Lucan (“I think Satius a truer poet than Lucan, though he is very extravagant sometimes); Silias Italicus (“I am ashamed to say I have never read …”); and the Characteristic Temperament of Nations:
“The English affect stimulant nourishment – beef and beer. The French, excitants, irritants – nitrous oxide, alcohol, champagne. The Austrians, sedatives – hyoscyamus. The Russians, narcotics – opium, tobacco, and beng.”
This is strongly opinionated learning you might want to leaf through in the corner chair, but, as table talk, it’s insufferable. For God’s sake, Samuel, pass the stimulant nourishment!
Coleridge’s preferred “stimulant nourishment” - there’s no other mention of beer or beef in Table Talk - was laudanum, an opium-alcohol tincture. He wasn’t alone in the preference: Thomas de Quincey had written the book on it (Confessions of an English Opium Eater); Keats, Byron, and Shelley (“I never part from this”) merely begin a long list of other poets with the inclination; and laudanum use was common enough among the laboring poor to be considered a working class habit. (Its medicinal properties exempted it from taxes imposed on alcohol, and this, along with the happy expansion of the British Empire into India, made it cheap - cheaper, in fact, than gin).
Kubla Khan was allegedly written as Coleridge woke from a laudanum-induced dream, and, famously, it remained “a fragment” as the writing was interrupted by a “Person of Porlock,” most likely Coleridge’s doctor, delivering more laudanum. For The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he went through four pints a week.
“There was a ship,” quoth he, and off the Ancient Mariner goes, holding the Wedding Guest from his purpose by means of a story which he “cannot choose but hear.” The Wedding Guest, caught by the Mariner’s glittering eye, is impatient, bemused, frightened, then terrified of the tale told by the “plagued” old man who shot the albatross and, for his sins, had it hung around his neck.
Wordsworth, after the poem had been poorly received, gloated: over the author’s objections, he was happy to support re-publication, but happier still to note its “great defects,” chief among them “that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural …” He also didn’t like the fact that the Mariner “does not act, but is continually acted upon,” the arbitrary nature of the events in the poem, and the “laboriously accumulated” imagery. (“On the other hand, Samuel, I like your use of the word “quoth” and thought the title particularly strong.”)
Charles Lamb was more generous, and addressed the following rebuke to Wordsworth: “For me I was never so affected with any human tale ... I totally differ from your idea that the Mariner should have had a character and a profession … [He] undergoes such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was— like the state of a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone.”
This sounds like an opportune vehicle for a metaphor on alcoholism: “such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory …” But that wasn’t my drunk. The Mariner might not act so much as be acted upon, but he did at least get to shoot an albatross and carry it around his neck; he witnessed Death and Nightmare Life-In-Death (“Who thicks man’s blood with cold”) casting dice for the souls of his shipmates; and even when his ship was held “[a]s idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean,” the Mariner stood, in fact, on a real ship in a real ocean. My drunk was more the painted boat and water.
There’s a metaphor here, nevertheless. It’s right there at the beginning:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?’
It is curious that Wordsworth and Lamb are both only concerned with the character of the Mariner, at least in this regard: whenever I have heard the Ancient Mariner used metaphorically, it is the perspective of the Wedding-Guest, the man detained from his purpose, which has been invoked. Of the bore, the pontificator, anyone or anything that slowed or obstructed your way to somewhere else, you might say it was Ancient Mariner time. It was the amusement, the inconvenience, the horror, or the absurdity of being waylaid. And drinking did have that characteristic. The plan was to go somewhere else. I got held up.
Of the Wedding-Guest (me, you, the reader), the critics have nothing to say, although, at the end, it is he who is the "sadder and wiser man." The Mariner even offers a reason why this Wedding Guest was stopped while the other two passed on to the festivities:
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
The moment that my face he saw. Straight away, perhaps, I showed my appetites. I had the face for it.
September 2, 1833, is a typical evening at the table, and this, on Greek particles, is a typical example of the talk: “It is worth particular notice how the style of Greek oratory, so full, in the times of political independence, of connective particles, some of passion, some of sensation only, and escaping the classification of mere grammatical logic, became, in the hands of the declaimers and philosophers of the Alexandrian era, and still later, entirely deprived of this peculiarity.” Also pronounced upon this long September night are Propertius (“I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high admiration …”); Tibullus (“ … is rather insipid to me”); Lucan (“I think Satius a truer poet than Lucan, though he is very extravagant sometimes); Silias Italicus (“I am ashamed to say I have never read …”); and the Characteristic Temperament of Nations:
“The English affect stimulant nourishment – beef and beer. The French, excitants, irritants – nitrous oxide, alcohol, champagne. The Austrians, sedatives – hyoscyamus. The Russians, narcotics – opium, tobacco, and beng.”
This is strongly opinionated learning you might want to leaf through in the corner chair, but, as table talk, it’s insufferable. For God’s sake, Samuel, pass the stimulant nourishment!
Coleridge’s preferred “stimulant nourishment” - there’s no other mention of beer or beef in Table Talk - was laudanum, an opium-alcohol tincture. He wasn’t alone in the preference: Thomas de Quincey had written the book on it (Confessions of an English Opium Eater); Keats, Byron, and Shelley (“I never part from this”) merely begin a long list of other poets with the inclination; and laudanum use was common enough among the laboring poor to be considered a working class habit. (Its medicinal properties exempted it from taxes imposed on alcohol, and this, along with the happy expansion of the British Empire into India, made it cheap - cheaper, in fact, than gin).
Kubla Khan was allegedly written as Coleridge woke from a laudanum-induced dream, and, famously, it remained “a fragment” as the writing was interrupted by a “Person of Porlock,” most likely Coleridge’s doctor, delivering more laudanum. For The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he went through four pints a week.
“There was a ship,” quoth he, and off the Ancient Mariner goes, holding the Wedding Guest from his purpose by means of a story which he “cannot choose but hear.” The Wedding Guest, caught by the Mariner’s glittering eye, is impatient, bemused, frightened, then terrified of the tale told by the “plagued” old man who shot the albatross and, for his sins, had it hung around his neck.
Wordsworth, after the poem had been poorly received, gloated: over the author’s objections, he was happy to support re-publication, but happier still to note its “great defects,” chief among them “that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural …” He also didn’t like the fact that the Mariner “does not act, but is continually acted upon,” the arbitrary nature of the events in the poem, and the “laboriously accumulated” imagery. (“On the other hand, Samuel, I like your use of the word “quoth” and thought the title particularly strong.”)
Charles Lamb was more generous, and addressed the following rebuke to Wordsworth: “For me I was never so affected with any human tale ... I totally differ from your idea that the Mariner should have had a character and a profession … [He] undergoes such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was— like the state of a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone.”
This sounds like an opportune vehicle for a metaphor on alcoholism: “such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory …” But that wasn’t my drunk. The Mariner might not act so much as be acted upon, but he did at least get to shoot an albatross and carry it around his neck; he witnessed Death and Nightmare Life-In-Death (“Who thicks man’s blood with cold”) casting dice for the souls of his shipmates; and even when his ship was held “[a]s idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean,” the Mariner stood, in fact, on a real ship in a real ocean. My drunk was more the painted boat and water.
There’s a metaphor here, nevertheless. It’s right there at the beginning:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?’
It is curious that Wordsworth and Lamb are both only concerned with the character of the Mariner, at least in this regard: whenever I have heard the Ancient Mariner used metaphorically, it is the perspective of the Wedding-Guest, the man detained from his purpose, which has been invoked. Of the bore, the pontificator, anyone or anything that slowed or obstructed your way to somewhere else, you might say it was Ancient Mariner time. It was the amusement, the inconvenience, the horror, or the absurdity of being waylaid. And drinking did have that characteristic. The plan was to go somewhere else. I got held up.
Of the Wedding-Guest (me, you, the reader), the critics have nothing to say, although, at the end, it is he who is the "sadder and wiser man." The Mariner even offers a reason why this Wedding Guest was stopped while the other two passed on to the festivities:
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
The moment that my face he saw. Straight away, perhaps, I showed my appetites. I had the face for it.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
As Good As Dead
In 1883, Doctor T.S. Clouston lectured at the University of Edinburgh on The Effects of the Excessive Use of Alcohol On the Mental Functions of the Brain:
“We know as a statistical fact that from fifteen to twenty per cent. of the actual insanity of the country is produced by the excessive use of alcohol. In that case, as we have about one person to every three hundred in the population insane, it follows that one person in every two thousand of our people, counting men, women, and children, become insane, and deprived of their reason, of their power of action, of their power of enjoyment, and of their personal liberty from this cause. This makes about 17,500 persons at any given time in the British Empire who are so incapacitated by reason of mental alienation, produced through the excessive and continuous use of alcohol. These people are as good as dead while they are insane; they do no work for the world or in the world, and all that makes life worth having for them, they are deprived of …”
It is unclear whether Doctor Clouston’s figures refer to British people in the British Empire or about one quarter of the world’s population. Either way, the numbers hardly seem alarming, unless, as good as dead anyway, he was proposing to round them up ... Then again, the numbers cited were only “those so well known as to be available for statistics,” which is to say “registered persons who have been so ill as to have been sent to asylums through the excessive use of alcohol.”
The sun never set on the British Empire. Apparently the bars never closed either.
“We know as a statistical fact that from fifteen to twenty per cent. of the actual insanity of the country is produced by the excessive use of alcohol. In that case, as we have about one person to every three hundred in the population insane, it follows that one person in every two thousand of our people, counting men, women, and children, become insane, and deprived of their reason, of their power of action, of their power of enjoyment, and of their personal liberty from this cause. This makes about 17,500 persons at any given time in the British Empire who are so incapacitated by reason of mental alienation, produced through the excessive and continuous use of alcohol. These people are as good as dead while they are insane; they do no work for the world or in the world, and all that makes life worth having for them, they are deprived of …”
It is unclear whether Doctor Clouston’s figures refer to British people in the British Empire or about one quarter of the world’s population. Either way, the numbers hardly seem alarming, unless, as good as dead anyway, he was proposing to round them up ... Then again, the numbers cited were only “those so well known as to be available for statistics,” which is to say “registered persons who have been so ill as to have been sent to asylums through the excessive use of alcohol.”
The sun never set on the British Empire. Apparently the bars never closed either.
Comrades In This Planting
More on the demon drink, from Alex Gustafson, The Foundation of Death, A Study of the Drink-Question (1887), citing Dr. J. Hamburger and Colin de Plancy on Jewish and “Mussalman” traditions, respectively, and the difference between a lamb and a peacock:
Hamburger: “As Noah was occupied planting the vine, Satan drew near. ‘What do you plant there?’ he asked. ‘A vine,’ said Noah. ‘Of what kind ?’ ‘Its fruit is sweet,’ replied Noah,’ whether fresh or dried, and it also gives wine which rejoices the heart of man.’ ‘So ! Let us be comrades in this planting,’ said Satan. ‘So be it,’ answered Noah. Satan then went away and returned with a lamb, a lion, a pig, and an ape, which he killed one after another so that the vine should be drenched with their blood. Then turning to Noah he said, ‘These are the signs of the power of wine. We see man before he has taken wine as innocent as the lamb; but soon after enjoying it, he is subjected to various changes. The temperate enjoyment of wine makes him brave as a lion, the intemperate use of it turns him into a pig.’”
Colin de Plancy: “When Ham had set out the vine, Satan brought and poured upon it a peacock's blood. When its leaves began to appear he poured over them the blood of an ape; when the grapes began to form he watered them with the blood of a lion, and upon the ripe fruit he spilled the blood of a pig. The vine thus nurtured with the blood of these four animals has acquired these properties: the first glass of wine animates the drinker so that his vivacity is great and his colour heightened; in this condition he resembles the peacock. When the fumes of the liquor rise to his head, he becomes as gay and full of antics as an ape. When he has become drunken he rages as the lion, and in the height of this condition he falls and grovels like the pig sprawling out in heavy slumber.”
Hamburger: “As Noah was occupied planting the vine, Satan drew near. ‘What do you plant there?’ he asked. ‘A vine,’ said Noah. ‘Of what kind ?’ ‘Its fruit is sweet,’ replied Noah,’ whether fresh or dried, and it also gives wine which rejoices the heart of man.’ ‘So ! Let us be comrades in this planting,’ said Satan. ‘So be it,’ answered Noah. Satan then went away and returned with a lamb, a lion, a pig, and an ape, which he killed one after another so that the vine should be drenched with their blood. Then turning to Noah he said, ‘These are the signs of the power of wine. We see man before he has taken wine as innocent as the lamb; but soon after enjoying it, he is subjected to various changes. The temperate enjoyment of wine makes him brave as a lion, the intemperate use of it turns him into a pig.’”
Colin de Plancy: “When Ham had set out the vine, Satan brought and poured upon it a peacock's blood. When its leaves began to appear he poured over them the blood of an ape; when the grapes began to form he watered them with the blood of a lion, and upon the ripe fruit he spilled the blood of a pig. The vine thus nurtured with the blood of these four animals has acquired these properties: the first glass of wine animates the drinker so that his vivacity is great and his colour heightened; in this condition he resembles the peacock. When the fumes of the liquor rise to his head, he becomes as gay and full of antics as an ape. When he has become drunken he rages as the lion, and in the height of this condition he falls and grovels like the pig sprawling out in heavy slumber.”
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
In the Alcoholic Sense
Carver and Cheever found themselves teaching together for the fall semester at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This was in 1973, when each was at his peak – not of writing, but of drinking. Whose bright idea was this?
“I used to feel that the classical libation was very much part of life,” Cheever said later. “I drank very happily until I found that I was an alcoholic. I never wrote when I had been drinking. But then there were fewer and fewer days that I could write.”
It's perfectly possible that there were no writing days at all in the fall of 1973. The writers met their classes, Carver says, “in a manner of speaking,” but neither removed the cover on his typewriter.
The introduction was auspicious, in the alcoholic sense: Cheever (“a pleasant little man in a tweed jacket, flannel trousers, and penny loafers”) arrived at the door to Carver’s room holding out a glass, saying, “Pardon me. I’m John Cheever. Could I borrow some Scotch?”
When in residence, they drank mainly in Cheever’s room, because Cheever was afraid of getting mugged in the hallway.
Cheever didn’t have a car, so Carver took him to the state-run liquor store twice a week. Cheever noted in his journal that Carver was “a very kind man,” perhaps for this very reason.
A tire on Carver’s car had an “aneurism,” and once they drove on a flat tire.
Another day, a cold one, Carver found Cheever pacing in the lobby well before they had arranged to meet, wearing loafers without socks. They got to the store as “the clerk was just unlocking the front door [and] John got out of the front door before I could get it properly parked. By the time I got inside the store, he was already at the checkout stand with a half-gallon of Scotch.”
Carol Sklenicka, a biographer of Carver’s, notes, “The Carver-Cheever trips to the liquor store seem to be the most vivid image others have of those two together.” This makes sense, in the alcoholic sense of sense.
“I used to feel that the classical libation was very much part of life,” Cheever said later. “I drank very happily until I found that I was an alcoholic. I never wrote when I had been drinking. But then there were fewer and fewer days that I could write.”
It's perfectly possible that there were no writing days at all in the fall of 1973. The writers met their classes, Carver says, “in a manner of speaking,” but neither removed the cover on his typewriter.
The introduction was auspicious, in the alcoholic sense: Cheever (“a pleasant little man in a tweed jacket, flannel trousers, and penny loafers”) arrived at the door to Carver’s room holding out a glass, saying, “Pardon me. I’m John Cheever. Could I borrow some Scotch?”
When in residence, they drank mainly in Cheever’s room, because Cheever was afraid of getting mugged in the hallway.
Cheever didn’t have a car, so Carver took him to the state-run liquor store twice a week. Cheever noted in his journal that Carver was “a very kind man,” perhaps for this very reason.
A tire on Carver’s car had an “aneurism,” and once they drove on a flat tire.
Another day, a cold one, Carver found Cheever pacing in the lobby well before they had arranged to meet, wearing loafers without socks. They got to the store as “the clerk was just unlocking the front door [and] John got out of the front door before I could get it properly parked. By the time I got inside the store, he was already at the checkout stand with a half-gallon of Scotch.”
Carol Sklenicka, a biographer of Carver’s, notes, “The Carver-Cheever trips to the liquor store seem to be the most vivid image others have of those two together.” This makes sense, in the alcoholic sense of sense.
Barrel Fever
Benjamin Franklin’s The Drinkers Dictionary, actually a thesaurus, contained several hundred words for drinkers, drinking, and intoxication – his head is full of bees; he’s cherubimical; he’s killed his dog; he’s got a brass eye; he’s got the glanders; he’s double-tongu’d; he’s half seas over; the King is his cousin, to mention a few.
My name is Anon., and I am a killer of dogs.
For what we now call alcoholism, however, there was only the word drunkenness.
The Washingtonians, an early society of alcoholics founded in Baltimore in 1840, referred to themselves as confirmed drinkers, drunkards, hard cases, inveterate cases, sots, tipplers, and inebriates.
My name is Anon., and I am a hard case.
The Swedish physician Magnus Huss – Alcoholismus Chronicus: A Contribution to the Study of Dyscrasias Based on my Personal Experience and the Experience of Others – sought to correct and replace the German term "methylism" with the new term “alcoholism.” This was half-way through the nineteenth century, but it wouldn’t catch on until the next one.
Dr. Norman S. Kerr, the English-speaking world’s addiction expert at the time, contended that the focal point of the compulsion was “the state of intoxication” rather than “the intoxicating agent.” In his 1865 book Inebriety, he made the pitch for intoxication mania or narcomania.
My name is Anon., and I am a narcomaniac.
Alcoholism would win out, but, in the interim, inebriety and dipsomania were the terms most frequently used. Others included habitual drunkenness, ebriosity, the liquor habit, and barrel fever.
Alcoholics, before they were alcoholics, were drunks, boozers, rumsuckers, stiffs, rummies, souses, and winos.
My name is Anon., and I am a rumsucker.
My name is Anon., and I am a killer of dogs.
For what we now call alcoholism, however, there was only the word drunkenness.
The Washingtonians, an early society of alcoholics founded in Baltimore in 1840, referred to themselves as confirmed drinkers, drunkards, hard cases, inveterate cases, sots, tipplers, and inebriates.
My name is Anon., and I am a hard case.
The Swedish physician Magnus Huss – Alcoholismus Chronicus: A Contribution to the Study of Dyscrasias Based on my Personal Experience and the Experience of Others – sought to correct and replace the German term "methylism" with the new term “alcoholism.” This was half-way through the nineteenth century, but it wouldn’t catch on until the next one.
Dr. Norman S. Kerr, the English-speaking world’s addiction expert at the time, contended that the focal point of the compulsion was “the state of intoxication” rather than “the intoxicating agent.” In his 1865 book Inebriety, he made the pitch for intoxication mania or narcomania.
My name is Anon., and I am a narcomaniac.
Alcoholism would win out, but, in the interim, inebriety and dipsomania were the terms most frequently used. Others included habitual drunkenness, ebriosity, the liquor habit, and barrel fever.
Alcoholics, before they were alcoholics, were drunks, boozers, rumsuckers, stiffs, rummies, souses, and winos.
My name is Anon., and I am a rumsucker.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Emily Dickinson, Drunk
The bar closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If this the Happy Hour unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Blackouts are all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
It yet remains to see
If this the Happy Hour unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Blackouts are all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Dead Poet Society
Roughly twenty-four hours before he was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital in a coma, Dylan Thomas got out of bed to go for a drink, at two in the morning, and came back an hour-and-a-half later claiming, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.” The proprietor of the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village subsequently estimated that it was probably more like six or eight whiskies.
Later that day, November 4th, 1953, Thomas felt he was "suffocating" and only managed a couple of beers at the White Horse. His doctor saw him three times and, on the third, prescribed morphine. The medical notes, summarized for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, described his arrival at St. Vincent’s early next morning as follows: “Patient brought into hospital in coma at 1.58 a.m. Remained in coma during hospital stay. History of heavy alcoholic intake. ½ grain of M.S. shortly before admission … Impression on admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy, for which patient was treated without response.”
John Berryman went back and forth to the deathbed. Ralph Ellison remembered Berryman saying that if Thomas died, poetry would die with him. He also remembered hearing Berryman “relieve himself of a rather drunken recital of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
Berryman later wrote that “Dylan murdered himself w. liquor, tho it took years.” But he also said that “[i]t must be remembered … that his weaknesses were often played on in order to get him into positions where he could be insulted with impunity; liquor was poured into him, and women not only threw themselves at him but were sometimes encouraged to do so by their academic husbands – I have myself seen this happen.”
The word “insulted” here is interesting because the cause of Thomas's death was, in fact, recorded as “insult to the brain.” This description, as Thomas’s biographer Constantine FitzGibbons noted, is “equally meaningless in British and American medical parlance.” But perhaps we know, nevertheless, exactly what the good doctors meant.
When Berryman heard that his reaction to Thomas’s death had been called “hysterical dramatizing” by a man at the BBC, he took it very personally, and went on a four-day binge.
Later that day, November 4th, 1953, Thomas felt he was "suffocating" and only managed a couple of beers at the White Horse. His doctor saw him three times and, on the third, prescribed morphine. The medical notes, summarized for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, described his arrival at St. Vincent’s early next morning as follows: “Patient brought into hospital in coma at 1.58 a.m. Remained in coma during hospital stay. History of heavy alcoholic intake. ½ grain of M.S. shortly before admission … Impression on admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy, for which patient was treated without response.”
John Berryman went back and forth to the deathbed. Ralph Ellison remembered Berryman saying that if Thomas died, poetry would die with him. He also remembered hearing Berryman “relieve himself of a rather drunken recital of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
Berryman later wrote that “Dylan murdered himself w. liquor, tho it took years.” But he also said that “[i]t must be remembered … that his weaknesses were often played on in order to get him into positions where he could be insulted with impunity; liquor was poured into him, and women not only threw themselves at him but were sometimes encouraged to do so by their academic husbands – I have myself seen this happen.”
The word “insulted” here is interesting because the cause of Thomas's death was, in fact, recorded as “insult to the brain.” This description, as Thomas’s biographer Constantine FitzGibbons noted, is “equally meaningless in British and American medical parlance.” But perhaps we know, nevertheless, exactly what the good doctors meant.
When Berryman heard that his reaction to Thomas’s death had been called “hysterical dramatizing” by a man at the BBC, he took it very personally, and went on a four-day binge.
Behind Books
“Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.” He can formulate this understanding, even write it out in French, and still find himself hiding booze around the house. As remembered by Simone de Beauvoir:
One Sunday morning at the beginning of March Arlette [Sartre’s adopted daughter] found [Sartre] lying on the floor with a dreadful hangover. We learned that he got his various young women, who knew nothing of the danger, to bring him bottles of whiskey and vodka. He hid them in a chest or behind books. That Saturday night … he had got drunk. Arlette and I emptied the hiding places, I telephoned the young women asking them not to bring any more alcohol, and I scolded Sartre vehemently … I could not understand the return of this passion for drinking. It did not square with his apparent mental balance. He put my questions aside, laughing. “But you’re fond of drinking too,” he said.
One Sunday morning at the beginning of March Arlette [Sartre’s adopted daughter] found [Sartre] lying on the floor with a dreadful hangover. We learned that he got his various young women, who knew nothing of the danger, to bring him bottles of whiskey and vodka. He hid them in a chest or behind books. That Saturday night … he had got drunk. Arlette and I emptied the hiding places, I telephoned the young women asking them not to bring any more alcohol, and I scolded Sartre vehemently … I could not understand the return of this passion for drinking. It did not square with his apparent mental balance. He put my questions aside, laughing. “But you’re fond of drinking too,” he said.
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