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 Art by Eric Schiller
the PopMatters books blog
Nine Booze-Soaked Books
Putting aside obvious selections like Charles R. Jackson’s The Lost Weekend, Malcolm Lowry’s harrowing Under the Volcano, or essentially anything written by Charles Bukowski, we present here a list of nine indispensible rye-saturated ruminations on the life of the rummy. Do not show up at your next AA meeting with any of these titles in your hip pocket because the vapors wafting from the pages will send everyone in the room falling off the wagon ... hard.
The Assault on Tony’s by John O’Brien
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ben Sanderson drinks himself into the tomb in O’Brien’s debut novel, Leaving Las Vegas, but in this posthumous release from 1996, five hopeless booze hounds holed up in a bar during an apocalyptic riot show just what a hapless wimp ol’ Ben was. This startling novel is a fascinating blend of Eugene O’Neill’s stark drama The Iceman Cometh and a Twilight Zone episode that could scare anyone straight into sobriety.
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Burnt out by the demands of fame and the unwanted King of the Beatnicks appellation, Jack Kerouac takes refuge in the coastal cabin of publisher and City Lights Books owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti (presented here as Lorenz Monsanto) in Big Sur, California. Jack thinks he can kick the sauce. Jack thinks twice about that fanciful notion when the DTs come-a-callin’ in full, living color. This is the book that Stephen King thought he was writing with The Shining.
John Barleycorn by Jack London
You know that quaint concept about alcoholics in denial? Jack wrote 300 pages on the topic in 1913 before the term was ever coined. “You have shown yourself no alcoholic,” Jack’s dutiful wife Charmian proclaims in the opening chapter, “no dipsomaniac, but merely an habitual drinker, one who has made John Barleycorn’s acquaintance by rubbing shoulders with him. Write it up and call it Alcoholic Memoirs.” And he did; a sometimes-rollicking Barbary Coast drinking history written by a man who denies having a drinking problem. The concept alone is more humorous and hypocritical than Glenn Beck writing a book on civility in public discourse.
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Dragged into and destroyed by the sordidness of the pathetic lives he is brought into contact with through his daily advice column, a newspaper reporter goes off the deep end and spends a lot of time at Delahanty’s speakeasy plotting his martyrdom after he has made the required stop at the seven Stations of the Cross. Much has been made over the decades about the obvious and sometimes over-the-top Christ symbolism in West’s outstanding novella but very few extracts have been composed around the fact that most of the book’s events unfold either in an alcoholic stupor or through the head-crushing punishment of a hangover.
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
In this quaint novel of Monterey, the Nobel Prize winning author writes of the close-knit community of paisanos, “a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods ... that lived in an uphill district above the town called Tortilla Flat” ... of course, Danny and his fellow paisanos can rarely actually see the town below because their vision is blurred by the gallons of deep red wine they are perpetually scheming to procure. A close cousin to another booze-soaked Steinbeck novella, Cannery Row, but infused with a larger zest for life.
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
“The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk ...” So begins Chandler’s sixth Philip Marlowe novel and, without a doubt, not only the best book in the series that forever cemented the literary concept of the hard-boiled LA detective but perhaps one of the best American novels of the 20th Century. Chandler’s two main clients in this bleak and breathtaking noir adventure are hopeless lushes: the wife murderer Terry Lennox and the Malcolm Lowry-like novelist Roger Wade who falls victim to blackmail and a quack doctor with a dry-out clinic. Marlowe’s drinking looks positively abstentious when stood up next to these guys.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The last novel Fitzgerald would see published in his lifetime is also the only novel in which he honestly grapples with the ghosts of booze land. Set in Europe during the interwar years, Scott tells the story of brilliant American psychologist Dick Diver and his wealthy and emotionally unstable wife, Nicole (sound like a particular couple we know?). There are lover’s quarrels, quaint expatriate celebrations throughout the European continent, and enough free-flowing champagne in the first chapter alone to give anyone a contact buzz. More mature and troubling than The Great Gatsby but unfocused at times due to the fact that Fitzgerald was dipping his own beak quite a bit during construction of the complex novel.
Northline by Willy Vlautin
Young Allison Johnson flees Las Vegas and her abusive skinhead boyfriend for a better life in Reno. Ha! Good luck with that, Allison, what with your tendency toward blackout drinking binges and those long conversations you have with your imaginary best friend, film star Paul Newman. A stark, powerful, and touching contemporary novel about the sometimes elusive search for self-belief in a physical landscape as desolate as the inner lives of Vlautin’s well-rendered and believable characters.
The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer by Tom Dardis
Of the seven native-born Americans awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, English prof Dardis writes in the introduction to this 1989 work, five were alcoholic. Dardis argues convincingly that the romantic concept of the alcoholic writer is a uniquely American contrivance and proves it through an examination of the drinking lives of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, and O’Neill—the latter being the only writer in the group whose creativity surged when he finally gave up the bottle.
—Rodger Jacobs
3:37 pm
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Tony Hillerman: People of Darkness
Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, introduced in Tony Hillerman’s 1980 novel, People of Darkness, is one of the enduring characters of mystery fiction. He embodies the conflicts felt by many bicultural people who struggle to integrate within their own lives influences from the modern, white world (Chee studied anthropology at the University of New Mexico and is considering joining the FBI) and their traditional cultural heritage (he’s studying to be a yataalii or Navajo healer).
A clear literary precedent is Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-Aboriginal detective in Arthur Upfield’s detective novels: like “Bony” Chee draws on his multi-cultural knowledge and experience in solving crimes. But Chee is more palatable to modern tastes: the Navajo are a sovereign nation and Chee can interact with the biligana world of white people on his own terms, without needing to embrace its values.
As is typical with Hillerman novels, People of Darkness begins by plunging you into the action. In this case, a bomb is set off at a cancer clinic. Then a box of keepsakes is stolen, a shadowy character passes through town, and a man is murdered. It all seems to have something to do with a group called the “People of Darkness” and peyote and an oil-drilling accident which occurred in the late 1940s. And because it’s a Hillerman novel readers get an ample serving of Navajo culture and New Mexico geography along with their mystery. That aspect is excellent as always (in fact, it’s the main reason I keep returning to Hillerman’s books) and the character of Chee is complex and believable.
Too bad Hillerman had a tin ear when it came to romance: the story of Chee’s dalliance with the white schoolteacher Mary Landon rings false from beginning to end. But it’s worse than that: Mary, like the Chee’s girlfriends in the later novels, is little more than a plot device to allow Hillerman to explore Chee’s attitude towards his Navajo heritage. Setting that weakness aside, People of Darkness is an enjoyable mystery novel which provides a glimpse inside a culture which is foreign to most people.
—Sarah Boslaugh
6:15 am
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Redemption of a Jerk
A crook-eyed and foppish jerks of jerks, Asterios Polyp is the guy at the university parties whom everybody hates but still self-consciously sidles near to just so they can hear what he’s saying—even if it’ll make them sick the rest of the night. Daredevil and Batman: Year One artist David Mazzucchelli does the amazing in this, his first graphic novel, in not only basing an entire work around such an unctuous creation but actually making him something of a real human being whom one can envision caring about. The result is one of the smartest and most rewarding graphic novels of the year to date.
At the start of Asterios Polyp, we can see that the titular titan of academia has fallen to great depths. On the night of his fiftieth birthday he was lazing about his apartment watching porn in a disheveled manner, right before the whole place went up in flames. Not long before he’d been a guy to be reckoned with, a renowned professor of architecture whose ideas were so uncompromising that he was called (with some envy) a “paper architect”—meaning none of his buildings had ever actually been constructed. One randomly-chosen bus ticket out of town and the novel turns into a series of flashbacks by which we see not only the rigorously applied mechanisms by which Asterios turned himself into such a preening ass of arrogance but the stages of his bona fide romance with a quiet beauty of a sculptor, Hana, who just finally couldn’t take it anymore.
Mazzucchelli fiddles enjoyably with his storylines throughout here, stirring in dream sequences and breezy asides on Platonic logic and the history of architecture. For all the lashings of satire leveled at the pretentious realms of theoretical disciplines, where an unbuilt building is a sign of an architect’s enviable purity, Mazzuccheli evinces a sharp and well-calibrated intellect, seeding his dialogue with the kind of worn-in literacy that such a work requires. The motley gang of supporting characters (particularly those in the nameless small town Asterios holes up in to take stock of his life) hold up strong against the gale-force wind of Asterios’ hawk-like visage and smirking glare. Unfortunately, a secondary device of the author’s which toys with the idea of a shadow brother to Asterios (also functioning as the narrator) plays less well.
The satire weeds out somewhat as the book whips along, Mazzucchelli’s art a vibrant blur of primary color and strong, simple lines that lends itself better to the heart-palpitating romance of regret that the book eventually becomes. By the end of it all, Asterios seems less a terrible bore than simply that worst and most arrogant part we fear is within each of us—which makes Mazzucchelli’s shock ending all the more wrenching when it comes.
—Chris Barsanti
8:00 am
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The Beats: A Graphic History
This quick-take introduction to the beatnik generation is about three-fourths excellent short-take biography and one-quarter well-meaning addendums of varying quality.
The Beats: A Graphic History
Edited by Paul Buhle
(Hill and Wang)
Continuing their smart series of alternative cultural historical graphic novels, Hill & Wang has come up with one of the best of the bunch. This quick-take introduction to the beatnik generation is about three-fourths excellent short-take biography and one-quarter well-meaning addendums of varying quality. The book starts with a lengthy take on the (like it or not) king of the beats, Jack Kerouac, and gives his sad tale—always running after the cool kids, forever trying to please mama—all due respect.
read more »
—Chris Barsanti
8:15 am
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“Duck rescue missions”: Introducing Inscriptions
They say you should never take an ink pen to a book. My mother would faint at the very idea. I’ve always argued with her (and others), though, of the bite-sized pieces of history lost if we all subscribed to that idea of books as sacred, untouchable artworks.
I write in my books. I do it all, from notes in the margins, to underlines, highlights, and even phone numbers if I absolutely have to (ie. am reading on a bus and that book is the only paper I have). I’m happy to do it, and I get a strange thrill when my secondhand books feature those very same scribblings. I feel like the next bearer in some great literary torch race. From reader to reader, taking notes as we go, each pointing out to the next just what it was about A Thousand Acres or Lord of the Flies that captivated us so (my secondhand copies of those books are filled with red pen comments and multi-coloured flouro highlights).
Better, however, than the notes and the markings throughout are those two or three-line inside jacket cover inscriptions when books are passed on as gifts. As much as I enjoy finding those inscriptions when book shopping at Saint Vinnie’s, I always feel slightly sad for the giver that their great gift has ended up with a peeling one dollar price tag in a thrift store. Did the receiver, I wonder, not like the book? Have they read and re-read it and feel it’s outlived its use? Did the reader ... die? So many questions, so much history.
We, as book recyclers, don’t know the giver or the receiver, but we can relate. We can look at the title of the book and know very quickly why it was handed over—Bridges of Madison County to an unrequited love, perhaps? Maybe Sophie’s World to a friend needing to see the bigger picture? And often the inscription will intensify our ability relate with short words of wisdom: “you need to read this book” or a line of Xs and Os.
I thought it might be fun to have a look at those bites of history, those moments marking a book’s move from one reader to another.
For our first post, I picked two key inscriptions, the first inside Richard Bach’s Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, and the second from Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Back in my first year at university, a friend handed me Illusions as a gift. Not a new copy bought just for me, but their own copy, with the words, “No, it’s okay, I’ll find another one”. Apparently, I needed it then and there. I went on to discover that such an idea was a major part of the book—what we really need, the universe will always provide. Sean-oh, in Christmas of 1980, very likely needed messages of inner strength and self-belief. There’s not much to this inscription on first glance, but look more closely and you’ll see the sunlight-like rays beaming from the word “love”, an extra expression of fondness just right for such a book.
As for Margie’s Christmas message to Kate, now that’s a little more mystifying: “Here’s to some successful duck rescue missions in ‘94”. Talk about a piece of history. Here’s a dedication you don’t normally see—just who is this Kate and what birds is she out rescuing? And why Canvesation in the Cathedral and not, while we’re on the subject, Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull? I haven’t read the Llosa book, and there may very well be ducks in the cathedral. Whatever the case, it’s a magical moment that reminds us that readers are all types of people, and that books as gifts transcend standard occasions and sentiments.
—Nikki Tranter
7:12 am
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A Procession of Them
University of Texas Press
September 2008, 152 pages, $45.00 Eugene Richards, a documentary photographer, joined forces with Mental Disability Rights International to create this disturbing book of photographs. Traveling to Mexico, Armenia, Paraguay, Hungary, Kosovo, and Argentina, Richards and the group wormed their way into mental hospitals, where Richards photographed the unremittingly grim conditions.
The black and white photos make less attempt at composition than at the documentarian action of seeking to capture the moment. The result makes Diane Arbus’ late work look like snaps from a child’s birthday party: a naked teenager huddled in a cage barely large enough for him to squat in, a Mexican girl who spends her waking hours straitjacketed: when unbound, she chews her hands, which are scarred and infected. An elderly woman huddled in a wheelchair, wild-eyed, and emaciated. A cold, bare room filled with men in various stages of undress, the concrete floor pooled with urine. Men shrieking in filthy showers as attendants wash them with buckets of icy water. Men, women, and children bound to beds, underweight and dirty.
Given the dearth of mental health services available in our (still) comparatively wealthy nation, the marginalized, even brutal treatment of the mentally impaired elsewhere in the world comes as no surprise. Yet I admit I looked at the photographs and watched the accompanying DVD (really, the book’s images set to Richards’ narration, which appears at the back of the text) with some frustration. Richards’ work is heartfelt and noble, but of limited appeal. At $45.00, A Procession of Them isn’t likely to find a wide readership. Rather, it will reach mental health professionals, academics, and aficionados of photography.
I admit some of my frustration arises from compassion fatigue. Living as I do in the San Francisco Bay Area, I see a procession of mentally ill, homeless people daily. Until her unit went into foreclosure, I endured the screaming of a mentally ill upstairs neighbor who heard voices. I complained to my husband about A Procession. I said I felt it was a misguided attempt. No, he said. Just because there are problems here doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye to suffering elsewhere.
He’s right.
—Diane Leach
3:51 pm
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