Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Those Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writersdoor Donald Newlove
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Newlove creates in unforgettable prose the pictures of Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Fitzgerald and more in this book about alcoholism and genius. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
There is a problem for a writer who wants to write as a drunk: it's often just as dull, self-important, grandiose and self-indulgent as the real drunk. Newlove calls his drinking alterego "Drunkspeare" and when he summons the ghost of Drunkspeare the prose. It's no wonder much of his early work was unpublishable. Newlove's prose is the sort of prose favored by a number of 'muscular' male writers of the sixties and seventies. Lots of mouth-feel. It does get tiresome after a while because, frankly, it gets in the way of the story, and the story is powerful.
The later part of the memoir, in which Newlove gets sober, is far more interesting because its more readable and the pyrotechnics don't get in the way of the images. He is unsparing of his own self-deceit, his hideous selfish behavior and the guilt and shame that inevitably arrives when one has no choice but to put down the bottle and and face one's self in order to live. (I know whereof I speak here, since I have many years of sobriety and never wrote a single publishable thing while drinking.)
The part of the book which really sang for me was the second, in which Newlove turns his unsparing (yet still compassionate) eye on his fellow drunken writers. How he skewers their pomposity and self-justification. One only wishes he might have told them these truths to their faces. One suspects a few lives might have been saved.
He says -- "Genius is no excuse for self-destruction. . . the illness is ego, with its intolerance, hatred of change and resistance to getting well, grandiose talk and behavior."
This is a tale of resurrection, and while it might not always be comfortable to read, it doesn't need to be, it has the ring of deep truth. ( )