When you write about drinking, you never run out of material, because you can go on to writing about quitting. And if that's not enough, write about falling back into drinking, then how quitting the second time is different, going back to drinking responsibly, how that doesn't work, quitting again, etc. etc. Drinking is a goldmine of subject matter. And I bet drinkers are a good source of readers, since you can drink — quite a lot — while reading.
ADDED: We could make a list of books about drinking. The 2 that sprang to mind for me are:
"Dry," by Augusten Burroughs
"Clapton: The Autobiography"
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"The outrage and bafflement over mothers who drink to excess exploded recently, after Diane Schuler, ... killed four children, herself and three other adults. ... Ms. Schuler had smoked marijuana and had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit — the crash stands as a horrific cautionary extreme, against which there has been universal recoil."
Yeah, drunk driving is bad. Why is this case a particular indictment of drinking moms? It doesn't sound like Ms. Schuler was sipping Chardonnay at a play date. It sounds like the NYT simply wants to define the tragedy based on the usage statistics of her uterus.
Color me impressed. Ms. Wilder-Taylor must be pretty good at tipsy-mommy blogging if she’s never had to work in any pool boy jokes.
Besides, who needs booze, anyway?
Although she’s not feeling ill, there’s a little yellow pill.
wv = spemog. What has to be toweled off after the pool boy leaves.
Let's obsess over every. single. minute. aspect of our lives. And pretend it's fascinating.
Speaking of rah! rah! rah!,
THIS sounds like a job for . . .
Nonsense Rhyme Cheerleader Man!!!
(a copyrighted feature of this blog):
Have a drink, kitchen sink, help yourself to booze.
Pour some more, wine galore, vomit on your shoes.
Gooooooooooooo TEAM!
wv = igning, as in, that depends on what the meaning of the word "ing" ing.
"I am drinking," replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.
"Why are you drinking?" demanded the little prince.
"So that I may forget," replied the tippler.
"Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
"Ashamed of drinking!" The tipler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
"The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd," he said to himself, as he continued on his journey. from The Little Prince
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
A Drinking Life, by Pete Hamill
The Lost Weekend, by Charles Jackson
The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Mad Men -- TV series
Dry is such a great book. I laughed so hard I cried, and it was so touching at the end. Too bad so much of what Burroughs writes as memoir is embellished.
This post is making me thirsty. Kool-aid, anyone?
At "The High Hat," (http://thehighhat.com/Marginalia/007/drinking_pierce.html), we find a full discussion, including Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (best description of a hangover), Crime and Punishment(!), Th Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara, At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, The Shining by Stephen King, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. I would add The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, The Bear by William Faulkner, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, Tough Guys Don't Dance by Norman Mailer, and the entire oeuvre of Charles Bukowski. Georges Simenon's novels are drenched in alcohol in a subtler way. And a biography of Dylan Thomas would surely fit here.
If I have to get past, by which I mean jump over, any more commas, which are a fine method of punctuation, don't get me wrong, I may just go off the deep end, or something.
Sheesh! Is the NYT like this all the time?
"Too bad so much of what Burroughs writes as memoir is embellished."
But also: thank God.
@Althouse: Good point. I just hate fake authenticity.
I read "You Owe Yourself a Drunk" back in 1972 - that was enough to make me stop drinking. Well, that and drinking.
You could also write lies about your drinking, just like James Frey did with "A Million Little Pieces." Or you could write about how you drank when you told lies. Or how you drank when you were lying down. Endless possibilities!
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