Reading Now: The Blake Bailey Bio of Charles Jackson

Bailey has been called the literary biographer of his generation. That strikes me as no exaggeration. He is fabulously good and his productivity is astonishing with stomping tomes on Richard Yates, Charles Jackson, John Cheever, and Philip Roth. I have yet to find a bad sentence in the two I've read.

Jackson's main claim to fame is his novel, The Lost Weekend, perhaps the best booze novel ever published. That's not just my opinion. The novel appeared in 1944 and  was made into a  film-noir blockbuster of the same name.

Jackson (1903-1968) was a big-time self-abuser, his drugs of choice being alcohol and Seconal. (We called them 'reds' in the 'sixties.)  Jackson died, at age  65, a total physical and mental wreck. 

The mystery of self-destruction, so common among novelists.

See also: Reading Now: Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

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Dave Lull writes,

My late friend Roger Forseth  wrote about Charles Jackson in an article for Dionysos: The Literature and Intoxication Triquarterly: ““Why did they make such a fuss?’: Don Birnam's Emotional Barometer,” a copy of which you can find here and a slightly edited version of which was reprinted in his posthumous book Alcoholite at the Altar: the Writer and Addiction: the Writings of Roger Forseth, which was reviewed by Frank Wilson here.

It's great to hear from you, Dave.  The Forseth article to which you linked is very good, and so is Wilson's review of Forseth's book. I ordered the book. The clincher for me was our mutual friend Patrick Kurp's Amazon blurb:

When I learned that Roger, on alternative nights, read one of Shakespeare's sonnets or a letter by Keats, my first reaction was: how sensible. This is a man who knows how to enjoy himself and understands what's important, an impression confirmed when we exchanged thoughts on such mutual enthusiasms as Coleridge, Auden, and Raymond Chandler. His scholarly work on alcoholism and American writers will prove invaluable to future scholars and readers, but I will always think of Roger as the man who knew what to read before turning out the light. -- Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence

As I recall, it was via Kurp's blog that I first made your acquaintance, years ago. 

 

This, from Wilson, also  made me want to buy the book:

Like them, he [Forseth] had had a drinking problem, complete with bouts of delirium tremens. He is quoted here as saying, during the last year of his life, that “the problem with alcohol is a philosophical problem dating back to Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, how to manage the desire for intoxication, for ecstasy. I started writing about this late…I think I had to wait until the alcoholism experience penetrated my theoretical mind.”

 

I've had a similar thought. It is the misdirected desire for fullness of life, ecstasy, joy that drives some of us to reach for the 'joy juice.'  "All joy wants eternity," sang Nietzsche's Zarathustra, "wants deep, deep, eternity." I myself am too bloody rational to overindulge: I know what the sauce does to the brain and the liver, and that knowledge keeps me within strict limits.  On the other hand, I consider the teetotaler an extremist.  It's all a matter of self-knowledge. For some, alcohol is the devil in liquid form. For others it is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life.  Know thyself!  If you discover that you cannot handle the hooch, then it is your moral obligation to abstain from it.  If you become an alky, then it's on you and your despicable refusal to control yourself.  If you compound the folly  by drunk driving, then  I want the book thrown at you. 

 

Is alcoholism a disease? You can guess my answer.I should dig up and dust off my old posts on the question.  Of course, it is undeniable that the stuff affects different people in different ways. But once you discover how it affects you, then it's on you and your free will.  Man up and take responsibility for your actions.  

 

 

Comments

[Hector]

You probably already know this, Bill, but the character of Elaine’s novelist father Alton Benes in Seinfeld is based on Richard Yates. Larry David dated his daughter in the 80s.

My favourite literary biography is A. J. A. Symons’ The Quest for Corvo about Frederick Rolfe, the author of Hadrian VII. If you find the psychology of self-destructive novelists interesting you will find no stranger or more fascinating figure in the history of world literature than the soi-disant ‘Baron Corvo’, a failed candidate for the priesthood, con artist, pederast, scholar, painter, photographer, and master of vituperative prose. The biography reads like a detective story as Symons describes how he went about researching the obscure and elusive Rolfe. You don’t need to have read Rolfe to find it compelling - in fact, the life is far more interesting than the work.

[BV]

Hi Hector,

Yes, I heard that story. Here is a bit of "The Jacket" episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLl9kZaXya4

But if Alton Benes was supposed to represent Ricard Yates, why the use of the title "Fair Game" instead of a title more suggestive of one of Yates' actual titles which include Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, and Young Hearts Crying?

I read Bailey's bio of Yates, which runs to some 671 pages. The genre has been called literary pathography. Yates, Jackson, et al. were deeply flawed individuals. Another is Eugene O'Neill. A tortured soul if ever there was one. A soul in torment lacking the sense to know that saucing the mix with John Barleycorn is like pouring gasoline on a fire barely contained but eager to engulf house and home, wife and child.

Dowling's biography's Of O'Neill another pathography. Well-spent a scholarly life digging through dirty laundry? My time well-spent inspecting the soiled rags?

Roger Forseth's Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction arrived yesterday. Good but not excellent. Makes me want to read Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920).

By the way, Hector, how did you get to be so erudite so fast? You are only around 30, right?

>>the life is far more interesting than the work.<< I'd say that about Yates. I'll look up A. J. A. Symons, Thanks for the tip.

[Hector]

'Pathography' is a good term. Two excellent autopathographies are J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip and My Father and Myself. They are minor masterpieces of English prose. I often find that it is not necessarily the most important or brilliant writers who have the most interesting lives.

I confess I don’t often read literary biographies, partly because I usually prefer going back to the authors themselves. I seldom read literary criticism for the same reason, though I used to read a lot when I was learning to read intelligently. I tend to reserve my non-fiction/non-poetry (to coin a phrase) reading to history, anthropology, art history and philosophy/theology but I’m no expert on any of these topics. I’m afraid my reading is broader than it is deep.

>>how did you get to be so erudite so fast? You are only around 30, right?<<

I am 36 so perhaps a little beyond 'around 30'. That probably makes me less impressive. I’m not sure I am all that erudite but people often tell me that I am! I'm also not sure how succinctly I can explain how this appearance of erudition came about! I have a very good memory, except for numbers - other than dates I can never remember numbers; alas, this is part of a general incapability with mathematics and I’m practically innumerate. I strongly suspect I have dyscalculia. But other than that, though I rarely consciously memorise things, I don’t tend to forget much of consequence, at least in outline. I grasp basic principles very quickly so I don't tend to find it difficult to learn about a new subject. I have a good intuitive grasp of what is useful to know and a good bullshit detector, so I don't tend to waste my time. As a reader I am disciplined in that I mark and/or write down passages to go back to, look up obscure words or references and so on and read slowly and carefuly but I am not especially systematic. I tend to read whatever I feel like rather than follow any organised plan.

I'm really an autodidact. I'm from a lower middle-class background and my formal schooling at the secondary level was pretty poor with the exception of one or two teachers, though mostly it was the fault of the curriculum not the teachers. It was a somewhat 'rough' school so many teachers also tended to spend most of their time in riot control mode. Luckily I had chronic asthma so was often off sick and then I'd stay at home and read - usually novels or history, sometimes books about science. My father once shocked a teacher who had said to him that I was very clever but I'd do better if I wasn't off sick so often by replying that it was a pity I wasn't off sick more often as that was the only time I learnt anything! Though my family are not scholarly or intellectual they are very intelligent and my father was educated at one of the best public (i.e. private) schools in England after winning a scholarship, though he didn't go on to university. He has a very good grasp of English especially and he encouraged me to read a lot and taught me how to teach myself. He also taught me the principles of writing well. Though I went to a prestigious university, sadly I do not feel I learnt much directly from the lectures or seminars, again with some notable exceptions. Nor was I very impressed by most of the lecturers nor by many of my contemporaries. Oddly enough, my university years are when I read the least in my life; I was chronically fatigued and depressed and it turned out later that I had undiagnosed coeliac disease.

And then I was an invalid or semi-invalid for quite a few years in my late twenties and early thirties which afforded me the luxury of a great deal of time for reading. So perhaps I owe it all to my dreadful health!

Also - and I maintain that this is key to anyone who asks me how I’ve read so much - I don’t own a TV and never have owned one since I left home when I was 18.