Equivocal Spirits: Alcoholism and Drinking in Twentieth-Century Literature [1 ed.] 0807817260, 9780807817261

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Thomas

B. Gilmore

Alcohol

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[QUI VOCAL IPIRITS Alcoholism and Drinking in Twentieth-Century Literature

THOMAS

B.

GIIMOBE

University of North Carolina Press

Chapel

Hill

and London

©

1987 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved

Manufactured

in the

United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gilmore,

Thomas

Equivocal

B.

spirits.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index. 1.

American

criticism.

literature

2.

in literature. fiction

— 20th century — History and

Alcoholism in

literature.

Drinking in

4.

— 20th century— History and

PS228.A58G45

3.

literature.

English

criticism.

810'.9'355

1987

Alcoholics 5.

I.

Title.

86-19355

ISBN 0-8078-1726-0

ISBN 0-8078-4174-9 (pbk.) Chapters

1

and 5 of

this

book

in slightly different

originally

form as

appeared

articles in

Contemporary Literature (Summer 1982) and Twentieth Century Literature (Winter 1982). version of Chapter 3

first

A somewhat shorter

appeared

in Comparative

Drama (Winter 1984-85). Permission to reproduce quoted matter will

be found on

p.

217.

my mother memory of my father

To the

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2015

https://archive.org/details/equivocalspiritsOOgilm

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction

3

CHAPTER ONE The

Place of Hallucinations in

Under

the Volcano

18

CHAPTER TWO Brideshead Revisited: Sebastian's Alcoholism as a Spiritual Illness

36

CHAPTER THREE The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

48

CHAPTER FOUR Drinking and Society in the Fiction of John Cheever

62

CHAPTER FIVE Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's The Victim

81

Contents

CHAPTER The Winding Road

SIX to Pat

Hobby:

Fitzgerald Confronts Alcoholism

96

CHAPTER SEVEN John Berryman and Drinking:

From Jest

to

Sober Earnest

119

CHAPTER EIGHT Jim, Jake, and Gordon:

Alcohol and

Comedy

144 Epilogue

170 Notes

177 Bibliography

201 Permissions

217 Index

219

Acknowledgment!

Any book thought

about,

re-

searched, and written over a period as long as nine years naturally

indebted to to

many

people,

whose help

it is

now my

acknowledge. The only concern diluting

many

the passage of so

years,

I

may have

properly belong here. To any such,

hope

that they will charge

me

1

is

grateful pleasure

this pleasure is that, in

some names

that

apologies and

my

forgotten

extend

my

only with forge tfulness, not with

ingratitude.

To Georgia State University and a number of

Department of English versity

1

owe

System of Georgia has no sabbatical

been generous

me

to

when I have combined once been able

to,

I

my

colleagues in the

a variety of thanks. Although the Uni-

with periods of these with

leaves,

relief

summers

Georgia State has

from teaching duties;

free, as

I

have more than

have enjoyed the benefits of a sabbatical in

name. The periods of relief were with pay; and thanks

all

but

to Paul Blount,

former chairman of the department, and Clyde Faulkner, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, stipends in the early 1980s.

I

Of

was aided by

a couple of

summer

special importance, because

1

was

nearing completion of the book, was a stipend provided by Dean

summer

Faulkner in the

of 1985. Throughout the whole period of

reading and research for the book, which really continued until

completion, the assistance of Jane

Hobson and her

its

staff in the inter-

was invaluable. Waino Suojanen, of the Department of Management, made useful library loan office of Georgia State's Pullen Library

suggestions for In

my

to sources that rison,

I

my earliest reading. Tom McHaney and David

of

Bottoms referred

me

would otherwise probably have missed. John Bur-

having recently published an excellent book on Georgia folk

pottery, gave

of

some

department,

me the benefit of his experience by answering a number

my questions about book publishing,

in addition to furnishing the

support of his friendship. Both Matthew Roudane and

my old

friend

Gene Hollahan, whose knowledge

of Saul Bellow surpasses mine,

nevertheless gave encouragement to

my chapter on The Victim. Vicmy Fitzgerald chapter, but of far

tor

Kramer read and commented on

x

Acknowledgments greater importance to

of

many

me

has been his loyal friendship over a period

years.

The Berryman chapter benefited from prompt answers to my queries by John Haffenden and by Alan K. Lathrop and Richard J. both with the University of Minnesota Library.

Kelly,

My

original interest as a scholar

British literature.

J.

eighteenth-century

critic is

Three scholars from that period were generously

encouraging about University;

and

my venture

into modernity:

Paul Hunter, formerly of Emory,

John

Sitter of

now dean

Emory

of Arts

and

Sciences at the University of Rochester; and Donald Siebert of the University of South Carolina,

whose support has heartened me even

though we have never met except through correspondence. Partly to reassure myself that

was not uniquely 1983

eccentric,

MLA meeting.

1

literature;

interest in the topic of this

book at the

was astonished

to receive some twenty-five inon drinking and alcoholism in modern

quiries about doing a paper

American

my

decided to hold a special session

I

attendance at the session was respectable; and

three of the panelists chosen

— Sonya Jones

of Allegheny College,

Nick Warner of Claremont McKenna College, and Martin Roth of the University of Minnesota

ways

that extend well

— have

beyond the

been helpful and informative in session. Martin has read

one chapter of the book; Sonya piqued by her

own

doctoral dissertation

terest of the University of

Although

I

withdrew

and enabled me

North Carolina Press it

to discover the in-

my

in

from consideration

This book its

is

subject nor

its

its

inception,

style will restrict its

hope

is

by

was encouraging

2.

not academic in

lectual audience. This

topic.

for publication

Mosaic, Dr. Evelyn Hinz, editor of that journal,

about the quality of Chapter

more than

my curiosity about Berryman

and

I

hope

that neither

appeal to an academic or

fostered

intel-

by the encouragement and

in-

number of friends who do not inhabit the groves of academe, among them Father Damian, of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, and Virginia Davis, whose interest was particularly important because it came early. Virginia Ross deserves special thanks as the only person who read and commented on all my chapters as I comterest of a

pleted them; she has dwelt long

hone her excellent native 1

enough

intelligence,

in the

and may

academic groves to

yet reenter them.

am greatly indebted to Sandra Eisdorfer, senior editor of the Uni-

versity of

North Carolina

Press,

whose encouragement and

criticism

xi

Acknowledgments were always

alike

see

my

clear

and

forthright,

and who

first

enabled

me

to

book as a whole.

The various chapters have gone through so many drafts, handwritten and typed, that they fill a large shelf. Among the departmental assistants or secretaries who have had a hand in the typing (and I may be forgetting some of the earliest) are Brenda Coker, Rhonda last of whom also my subject with me.

Gargis,

Marianne Ruelle, and Cindy Webnar, the

became

a friend

The

who

typist

curacy,

and

The two

book

are

stylistic vices.

unearthing

is

who

Bob

Barbara Harris.

have most thoroughly read and

Ryley, of the City University of

New

Garst, of Cornell College. Bob, also a panelist in the

MLA special session,

1983

and

the

critics

shape with amazing speed, ac-

final

good humor

and

friends

Tom

a strong interest in

gave the book

unfailing

commented on York, and

and shared

Tom

unerringly spotted

wrote page

after

my worst illogicalities

page of detailed comment,

many obscurities and opacities; although sometimes diffi-

dent and self-doubting, he was invariably incisive and never dead

wrong. Old friends the most. It is

a

little

melancholy

and adolescence of

my

to think

how many

three sons,

Owen,

hours of the childhood

and Frank,

Miles,

I

have

spent working on this book. But as they have grown to young man-

my

hood, they have also grown more appreciative of point that they

Owen,

now boast

to

people about

it

the oldest, even volunteered to read

and

troduction, thus preventing several infelicities.

Hannah, expressed gratifying

My

interest in

my

How can one do justice

in a

criticize the In-

My

niece, Colleen

progress.

mother, Sarah Tegler, takes great pride in

when

vided substantial material help at the time

work, to the

even before publication.

this I

book and pro-

most needed

it.

few words to the complex network of

support furnished by a marriage of thirty years?

My

has been consistently a patient listener and

Even more impor-

tant,

critic.

wife, Virginia,

she has possessed the healthy self-reliance and independence

simply to leave

me

be, with love

wise lonely stretches that

I

and

needed

caring, for the long

for the

book.

and other-

Abbreviations

Two works

frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations:

AA Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Alcoholics

1939. 3d ed.

New York:

Alcoholics

Anonymous World

Services,

1976.

12

&

12

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

New York:

Alcoholics

Anonymous World 1953.

Services,

}

EQUIVOCAL SPIDITI

r

Introduction

H^robably some readers H sense how profoundly per-

will

l^r sonal edge in which

it is

grounded

as Kirby Allbee puts

it

book is: the exand knowl-

this

suffering

periential

deepest levels are the kinds that,

at its

in Saul Bellow's novel

The Victim, can only be

gained "the hard way, the way you pay for with years of your say

more would be

to say too

tude for being

among

their suffering

and use

much, except

the few it

as

who

to

add

life."

To

my heartfelt grati-

have been able to pass beyond

one means

and enlarge

to secure

their

knowledge.

many

In

modern

dozens, probably hundreds, of works of

heavy or alcoholic drinking

ture,

is

litera-

important in ways or for reasons

almost too numerous to mention: a drunken character, a pivotal

drunk scene,

way

(the for

in

a

theme or

which the

subject, or

example, contributes to the feeling of

total

emptiness in Anthony

Powell's Afternoon Men). In spite of this importance,

most say the ubiquitousness, of drinking is

in

modern

first booklength study of the subject. There have, of course, been other approaches

one might

al-

literature,

mine

but nearly

all

the

them seem

are biographical. for

I

would not belabor them

committing the "biographical

in their

derelict or a

is

of

as a

F.

drunken truck

Scott Fitzgerald

window

am

fallacy."

no more

in

Many

of

more

little

of these works

any simplistic fashion

Their deficiency

to a

intrinsic interest

driver,

should have primary focus, even

on

it,

lies

rather

apparent failure to realize that without his work the drinking

or alcoholic writer

ters,

to

frustratingly peripheral or brief, supplying

than starting points for a study of the subject.

I

mood

something as elusive as

characters' frequent but mechanical drinking,

and

when

than a skid-row

(as in a

couple of

and John Berryman) the work

new show how two

understanding of the writer.

often trying to

work

that for this reason his

More

is

my

chap-

also

used

accurately,

separate subjects, the writer's

drinking and the work in which he writes about drinking, can shed light

on each

other. In contrast,

most previous comment on a

writer's

—

r

4

Equivocal Spirits

drinking

most the

is

merely that

superficial, this

names

of

modern

important distinction

—

unconnected with

inert,

At

his writing.

its

can consist of scarcely more than catalogs of writers is

who drank heavily or alcoholically

(this

often blurred), sometimes recorded in an ap-

palled or deploring tone. Apart from a kind of head-shaking or implicit "tsk tsk" at the

expense of some celebrated writers,

see the point of these

over name-dropping;

lists.

Any

1

some

sort of

critics

argument

hard to

it is

an improvement

is

have suggested or attempted to

demonstrate that the prevalence of alcoholism

among modern

ers indicates their peculiar susceptibility to

This

implication in 1976

when he

it.

— Lewis,

O'Neill,

were alcoholic drinkers "for great periods of

Goodwin, using Fitzgerald

Alfred Kazin's

notes that "of the six American Nobel

Prize winners in literature," three

Hemingway and Steinbeck

is

writ-

— "were

and Faulkner

their lives"

and two

hard drinkers." 2 Donald W.

as his example,

is

perhaps representative

more often the victims of members of other occupational groups. 3 Yet Don-

of those arguing that writers are indeed

alcoholism than are

ald Newlove, himself a writer

and

a self-confessed reformed alco-

"Booze

holic, vigorously disputes this thesis:

is

not an

many drunken

cupational problem: there are as

artistic

or oc-

sanitation workers,

brain surgeons, priests and car thieves as there are drunken writers, printers, actors

conclusive;

and ad men." 4 At the

much more

least, the

needs to be adduced. Even

if

How does this

in-

the writer's greater susceptibilities

could be established, however, one might

what?

argument remains

evidence, of a detailed and specific kind,

still

fact affect his writings?

questioning or exploding

some

be inclined

So

to ask:

Valuable though he

is

at

claims

insufficiently investigated

about a connection between drinking and modern writers, Newlove also reveals the hazards of

holic writers

an attraction

combined with

a

skimpy

to generalizing

about alco-

Of the life, New-

attention to their work.

John Berryman who achieved sobriety near the end of his love speculates that a possible reason for his suicide was his tion that "starting fresh

was

self-pity

rip off,

it

was

meant

that a massive part of his

and breastbeating. This was the like tearing the

last

realiza-

work so

mask he

couldn't

beard from his cheeks. Too, too painful.

Too much invested." 5 This idea may derive from the prominence Alcoholics reality,

Anonymous

however,

my

far

that

gives to self-pity as a fault of the alcoholic. In

Chapter

7,

which,

like all

my

other chapters,

pays close attention to the writer's work, suggests that at least in the

5

Introduction

poems concerned with drinking (and whole) Berryman's self-pity

among many.

In short,

when

I

poems

believe in the

biographical generalizing about drink-

ing writers slights or ignores their actual work,

it

can be virtually as

pointless as listings of heavy-drinking or alcoholic writers. is

good biography nor good

neither

many

too

writer's

work

fails

to

One might hope his drinking

conform

to

is

the

know,

more

problem and

its

this particular

literary criticism; there will

be

total illness,

and even

work

with a writer's complexities, including

all

biographies of

hope has never been

with far-reaching

writer's

any single preconceived theory.

relationship with his work. Although

regrettable because

also psychological

on the

result

that full-dress biographies of drinking writers

satisfactorily

cannot claim familiarity with I

The

exceptions or complexities ignored, ways in which the

would deal more

far as

as a

only a relatively minor strain, one

is

if,

as

is

writers, as

This failure

sometimes said, alcoholism

effects that are

spiritual,

modern fulfilled.

it

I

is

a

not only physical but

would have important

that a literary biographer could

ill

effects

afford to ne-

judging from two biographies of alcoholic writ-

glect. Nevertheless,

random (I am unable to say whether they are representative of modern literary biography), such works do largely neglect the subject or evince some ignorance of alcoholism. Until the last

ers

chosen

fifty

at

pages or so of his recent biography of James Agee, Lawrence

Bergreen has only two brief passages that focus entirely on Agee's drinking. Thereafter, the references increase, reflecting the worsening of Agee's alcoholism in his last years; but from the brevity of these references, the lack of sustained attention to Agee's drinking, failure to

connect

it

with his writing,

regards the subject as unimportant. 6

biography of Brendan Behan,

who

it is

The

and the

easy to see that Bergreen failures of

Rae

Jeffs in

her

died of alcoholism at forty-one,

more disturbing because she senses the importance and in fact devotes many pages to accounts of his drunken behavior, which was at times violent. She became acquainted with him as one of his editors in his later years and was involved in helping him to tape books, a method that embarrassed him but that he acquiesced in because he needed the money and his publishers wanted to capitalize quickly on the fame he had achieved. Ms. Jeffs seems at times not quite fully to grasp the most likely reason for this method: Behan was by then too sick and shaky from alcoholism for the intense concentration and effort required by writing.

are perhaps

of Behan's affliction

6

Equivocal Spirits

By expressing her view

Behan needed mostly

that

power or "per-

will

severance" to overcome his problem, and by manifesting her impatience with

him when he

failed to exercise

it,

exposes her ignorance of the nature of his wife of

Bill

Ms.

more

Jeffs

illness.

7

glaringly

Lois Wilson, the

Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, has said of

her husband during his drinking years that "he had plenty of willpower to do anything in which he was interested; but it wouldn't work against alcohol even when he was interested." 8 Some AA members have a cruder version of this: If you think that will power can overcome alcoholism, try using it the next time you have diarrhea. In works primarily biographical, then, the drinking of writers has been handled inadequately and unsatisfactorily. In literary criticism that gives priority to

an author's work, attention

to the subject of

drinking has been no more satisfactory. Here the fault has been less in ignorant treatment than in

The reasons

something close

to

complete neglect.

One

perhaps not immediately apparent.

for this are

them, however, might be connected with the

of

fact that until recently

drunkenness was in many ways a taboo subject, an unmentionable disgrace that often led families to pack a drunkard off to a sana-

tarium, where his confinement sometimes

quarter

him

actually

happened

became permanent, or

remote part of the house, an

in a

to

den with alcohol and

one

woman alcoholic

feeling the

shame

of

attic

to

or a basement, as

my acquaintance:

sod-

of her drinking as keenly as

did her husband, she no more thought of protesting her virtual im-

prisonment than he thought of lifting

it;

only by a nearly miraculous

concatenation of events did she live to become sober. This kind of

toward drunkenness could explain the general neglect of the

attitude

subject by biographers as well as literary critics rather striking

phenomenon common

drunkenness: the tendency to ignore

forming

it

into

something

else or

its

by

and

also another

in the reaction of

both to

harsh reality either by transrationalizing

it

—

seeing the

1920s instead of

Scott's increas-

ingly ugly alcoholism, or claiming that Jack Kerouac

drank alcoholi-

Fitzgeralds' romantic gaiety in the

cally

because he was exiled to the edges of American

drinking and

may be

the

its

main reason why,

ject has

been

reasons

why The

including

results can

be just as disturbing in to

borrow Martin

"invisible" to critics.

Victim

is

some puzzles

10

life.

9

Heavy

literature; this

Roth's term, the sub-

There are doubtless a number of

the least popular of Saul Bellow's novels,

inherent in the

work and

the generally

7

Introduction

higher regard for his later novels, beginning with The Adventures of

Augie March, as being more characteristic of Bellow. But almost certainly

one quality that has put

off critics

and readers

is

the pervasive

grimness of The Victim, the distaste and even dread aroused by the plot of an apparent skid-row

bum harassing another man and

threat-

ening to pull him into the depths with the lowest of the low. other Bellow novel

— any other novel — looks almost

story of drinking in

most wretched, degraded

its

There are probably

at least

drinking in literature by

aspect.

two other reasons

critics. If

Any

jolly beside this

for the neglect of

Frank Lentricchia

is right,

literary

criticism has, since the late eighteenth century, progressively nar-

rowed the concerns tion;

11

it

considers appropriate for critical investiga-

some such tendency could

easily rule out drinking or alco-

holism as legitimate interests except for sociologists or physicians.

Another and more obvious reason ics naturally

attend to what they

for the neglect is that literary crit-

know best, which

is

not alcoholism.

Thus Stephen Spender's long introduction to Under the Volcano, a major critical essay on Lowry's symbolism and his literary antecedents, dismisses in a sul's

page the centrally important subject of the Con-

how it shapes his vision. 12 Thus Daniel Fuchs,

alcoholism and

book on

a recent

comparing

it

Bellow, dilutes a short section

to a story

the crucial matter of failure.

13

in

on The Victim by

by Dostoevsky rather than concentrating on

how

Leventhal responds to Allbee as a drunken

These examples of neglect could be multiplied almost

indefinitely. I

my

book,

To repair the demonstrable neglect, Equivocal

Spirits

have been demonstrating in some detail the need for

the void

it fills.

always focuses primarily on an author's work and always pays close attention to

moreover,

its details.

it is

Unlike

all

previous approaches to the subject,

interdisciplinary in

fully at the places

two important ways.

where biography and

It

looks care-

literature intersect

when

each of these illuminates the other, as in the chapters on Fitzgerald

and Berryman. Otherwise, stories,

as in the chapters

The Iceman Cometh, Brideshead

cano, the focus

is

more nearly

Revisited,

exclusively

on the

the authors were heavy or alcoholic drinkers it

adds authority

however,

is

on John Cheever's and Under the Volliterary

to their depictions of drinking. In

my book

is

much more

persistently

work: that

important mainly as another respect,

and thoroughly

disciplinary, joining literary analysis with scientific

inter-

knowledge of al-

8

Equivocal Spirits

coholism. Although

I

believe that literature can contribute

much

to

an understanding of the complex nature and causes of heavy or alcoholic drinking,

and perhaps even more

emotional responses to the problem, the scientific

and

still

I

to arousing

also believe that a mastery of

knowledge of alcoholism, which

developing,

is

and shaping our

is

impressively large

indispensable both as a foundation for study-

ing literary representations of the illness and as a

means

of accurately

From

appreciating the distinctive contribution that literature makes. this

conjunction the book repeatedly

questions:

What new

light

can

if

implicitly poses

And how does

literature con-

augment, or occasionally even challenge

firm, intensify, dramatize,

the adequacy of this scientific knowledge? first

knowledge of alcoholism

scientific

provide for the student of literature?

two broad

The various answers

to the

question can best be seen in the chapters of this book; but be-

cause

its

primary concern

is

with

literature,

some attempt

to

answer

the second question should be made now.

Works of literature are

intrinsically

more dramatic and emotionally

intense than scientific studies, in which these elements would be out of place.

Almost anyone

realizes, for

example, that alcoholism can dis-

rupt and poison domestic affections, but John Cheever fleshes out

such a truth with emotional

intensity.

Of the writers considered

Cheever most squarely challenges the adequacy of tions of alcoholism,

which often

refer to the drinker's inability to dis-

charge his social responsibilities as key evidence of his

few of his

stories,

here,

scientific defini-

Cheever implicitly asks whether

it is

illness.

In a

legitimate to

define or judge alcoholism by the criterion of social responsibility

and even whether alcoholic defiance of the greater

good than conformity

opinion

may

itself

to

dictates of society

is

not a

them. Such questioning of received

be an expansion of knowledge. Another kind of

addition comes from a detailed confirmation or validation of existing

knowledge, as provided in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh: of

Vernon Johnson's

distinction

between an alcoholic and a drunk and of

several important perceptions of Alcoholics

throughout the book, of course, there

is

a

Anonymous. As

two-way

traffic in

is

true

knowl-

and Alcoholics Anonymous facilitate a more accurate understanding of the characters of O'Neill's play. The two chief ways in which literature augments scientific knowledge: Johnson's distinction

edge of heavy drinking or alcoholism have yet to be mentioned.

These are

(1) literature's ability to recognize

and preserve the com-

9

Introduction

plex humanity of the alcoholic and (2)

its

awareness that often the

naming two of the particular subject. With sure,

is

to

be its

and as

An

certain exceptions, such

complex individuality rather than

way

erary knowledge can be found in the treat alcoholic hallucinations.

at the scientific

matter, or in

Anyone

interested in

on Under

some other

fashion.

is

mentioned

tary strokes: Patrick

F.

my

in

their subject

all, it is

(often, alas,

attribute of

development and there is

them from at

lit-

an extensive look

Even when the major

their fullness of

is

that science detaches

the hallucinator

and

the Volcano. Primarily, these stud-

rigorous attempt at categorization, what

way

scientific

which these two modes

by the images of the hallucinations, by

the hallucinations

the

in

approach can begin with the sources cited

footnotes to the chapter ies categorize:

as satire, literature

example of the differences between

excellent

I

has evolved,

it

concerns to

tual

spiritual.

is

in norms or modern science is secular, leaving spiriother modes of inquiry, literature among them.

usually interested in

types;

am,

chief strengths of literature regardless of

root cause or effect of the illness of alcoholism

is

no

remarkable about them

is

their source for scrutiny. If

with only the most rudimen-

one of those drunken Irishmen),

age fifty-nine, hod carrier, with a long history of drinking and hospi-

The

talizations for treatment of alcoholism.

contrast between this

kind of sketch and the representation of the Consul in Under cano

—

among

the

most

fully

the Vol-

developed and inward depiction of an alcoholic

the various works

I

hallucinations, as recorded

treat

by

— could not be

greater. "Patrick's"

science, could usually be anybody's;

but the Consul's are an integral part of his complex humanity (per-

haps even the most important part) as well as the richest product of his vivid imagination.

Good

literature firmly resists stereotyping of the alcoholic.

stead portrays a figure divided, like

most of

us, not into

two

It

in-

tidily

comprehensible parts but into a welter of jarring emotions. Whether

winning or losing the struggle with

he

is

ity

of literature to convey the multifarious complexity of the struggle

in a fictional character (the

man)

that satisfies

his alcoholism,

Consul) or a

— much more than

and Zelda Fitzgerald partying

their

real

the abil-

person (John Berry-

the traditional view of Scott

way through

glamorously romantic example for society, and grief only

it is

the 1920s, setting a

somehow coming

to

because of Zelda's insanity and the Great Depression.

Zelda's story

is

not considered here; but

I

do

revise Scott's in a

way

10

Equivocal Spirits

not only more honest than the romantic view of him but also more

complex. Even though his alcoholism and his strong tendency to

deny

it

wrought havoc

in his

and

life

career, partially spoiling

of his potentially best work, his very attempts at evasion can be

plexly instructive about alcoholic deviousness. And, in

some

some comof his

best stories, the painful experience of prolonged alcoholism coupled

with an intermittent ability to be honest about

resulted in sharply

it

incisive diagnoses of the illness. Just as literature rejects monolithic

portrayals of the alcoholic, so at

its

best

it

refuses the explanation of a

single cause for the illness, especially a cause outside the alcoholic,

such as society or the

demanded by

sacrifices

artistic creativity. Fitz-

gerald was brought low by an illness about which he could not or

would not be honest, not by the crash of 1929. Donald Newlove rightly ridicules the belief that Jack Kerouac was driven to drink by American society. In my chapter on Berryman, I reject a similar assumption about

his drinking, as well as a corollary

this illness fatally

assumption that

flawed his poetry.

The perspective of science on alcoholism

almost always the

is

same: diagnostic, analytical, objective. But the perspectives of ture are varied, at least

alcoholism fact.

When

about the

is

more

some

of

alcoholism

is

—

litera-

that the disease of

an ascertainable

a question of perspective than

the angle of vision

fact of

them suggesting

largely interior, there

is little

doubt

that of Lowry's Consul, for example,

or John Berryman. In his short story "The Sorrows of Gin," however,

John Cheever seems primarily interested in presenting the indeterminacy arising from different perspectives on drinking; finally, it is impossible to Similarly, in

know whether

the Lawtons have a drinking problem.

The Victim Saul Bellow

is

concerned

less

with the prob-

lem of alcoholism than with the problem of perceiving he raises and answers a metaphysical question:

How

it.

Ultimately,

reliable is

our

knowledge when based on observation deeply colored by emotion? Put so baldly, the question has an obvious answer: Not at But, as usual in literature, the

all reliable.

working out of the answer

—

in this

case the tense frictions of a relationship between Asa Leventhal the supposed drunk, Kirby Allbee

Driven by disgust and

— holds

fear, Leventhal's fear

Allbee's skid-row level,

we may

totally

of being dragged

man

is

down

misperceive reality

something as apparently fundamental or seemingly

whether or not a

and

the greatest fascination.

an alcoholic. To say "we"

is

to

— even

verifiable as

not unwarranted,

11

Introduction

for

though The Victim

allegorical.

is realistic

enough on one

sessed with success, in which failure

name

suggests, Allbee

but Everyman

Of

who

ones

— our

on another

it is

raise the

the equivalent of hell.

is

As

not some piece of unspeakable gutter

is

his

filth

counterpart, our brother.

the writers included in

proach

level,

Leventhal embodies the fears of everyone in a society ob-

my

book, Bellow and Cheever are the

most searching questions about the

to alcoholism

—

not, finally, so

much

scientific ap-

because they object to

stereotyping (although Cheever certainly does, in "A Miscellany of

Characters That Will Not Appear") or because they find one or another concept of alcoholism inadequate. Rather, any such concept re-

duced is

to a label or

name, "alcoholic," and applied

an outrageous denial of his

ing," the

full,

to a

complex humanity.

human It is

and

"packag-

term used by Schlossberg, the old humanist and touchstone

character in The Victim, to protest any simplification of ings

being

their relationships. This is

the question of Allbee's alcoholism. bility suggests, the best

be-

why Bellow leaves open

probably

As

human

Keats's idea of negative capa-

may be

course for literature

to raise

provoca-

tive uncertainties.

The second major contribution of literature to an understanding 14 is to focus on its spiritual dimensions, a task that sci-

of alcoholism

ence

not equipped to undertake. "Spiritual" should certainly not

is

be reduced in meaning to "religious"; any good definition of the term

would be capacious, including many elements of the the emotional. In realizing that literature

is

conveying what drunkenness or alcoholism pitiableness,

its

degradation,

its

and

better than science at

feels like

—

its

terror, its

ludicrousness, occasionally even

—

we are recognizing its ability to Some reasons why writers drink are

glory

irrational

its

capture spiritual qualities. naturally suggested in their

work; in a broad sense, these reasons are often

spiritual. In Cheever's

"The Scarlet Moving Van," the alcoholic character Gee-Gee, whose

nickname derives from "Greek god," drinks the

humdrum

realities of

dealt with in this book,

indicates

suburban

in large part to escape

To step beyond the works

James Dickey's poem "Bums, On Waking" spiritual means provided by alcohol for es-

some important

caping or dissolving ordinary

"Who

living.

else has died

and thus

reality.

risen?"

Christ. In their wanderings, their

dlement of

Of the bums, Dickey asks, The answer, of course, is

15

extreme dislocation, and the befud-

their alcoholic blackouts, never

knowing where they

will

12

Equivocal Spirits

awake or

to what, the

bums

possess an enviable, almost Christlike

power of self- resurrection, removed from the limitations of sober reality and thus able to experience a daily renewal of wonder at the strangeness of life, as if waking to it for the first time. These are qualities that most writers would prize, and some have sought them through alcohol. A poem by Raymond Carver, "Drinking While Driving," shares with Dickey's the sense of renewal supplied hol,

of imminent

will

happen"

to

is

release

alco-

its

poem, and

that

something promises

unpredictability than

what the driver has

the last line of the

be more exciting in

by

from dullness: "Any minute now, something

been experiencing. 16 Clearly, though, these poems of Dickey and Carver share another, more important view: alcohol is the source of inspiration or the courage to take risks. No one needs to be told of the hazards of drunken driving, and anyone who drinks so heavily that he blacks out and wakes up not knowing where he is a rather common experience

among alcoholics,

not just

bums

—

Hence the appropriateness of the alcohol,

which

in

—

is

obviously setting his of

title

some uses seems

to

my

book, Equivocal

be a life-renewing

ways potentially and sometimes actually a destructive heavy drinkers themselves or

modern writers seem

when

life at risk.

Spirits:

force, is al-

force.

representing characters

When

who

are,

particularly interested in exploring that border-

land where the renewal of

life,

by extending the

limits of ordinary

perception or experience, impinges on destruction or death. Because to

some

ciety, a

extent these writers reflect or shape the values of their so-

character like Allbee

may be emulating them

drinking for authentic risk-taking. As he puts

wants to get

off the

merry-go-round, to

it

test his

at

in his use of

one point, he

mettle by hitting

bottom.

My cause

it

indicates the

good. As in traits

comedy is important to the book beone domain in which drinking is unequivocally

chapter on alcohol and

Don

Marquis's The Old Soak (1921), lengthy satiric por-

of heavy or alcoholic drinkers are possible; but

element

is

is

usually restricted in

to a scene or scenes of renewal: drinking provides

into a better truth,

a satiric

absent or at least subordinate to the focus on a largely

sympathetic protagonist, drunkenness

edy

when

world or

self

(Lucky Jim) or a means of learning the

sometimes astringent, about oneself

Aspidistra Flying).

When

com-

an eruption

(Jake's

Thing and Keep the

the traditionally affirmative aspects of

com-

— _

13

Introduction

seems to cooperate with some As William James fervently puts it, "Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes edy are uppermost, alcohol as other sort of benevolent

function in man.

It

"spirits"

spirit.

brings

things to the radiant core.

its

votary from the chill periphery of

makes him

It

for the

moment one with

truth."

James, however, ominously adds that these desirable attainable in

its

from drinking "only in the

totality is so

fleeting earlier

effects are

phases of what

degrading a poisoning." 17 They are attainable only

When

before drinking hardens into the disease called alcoholism.

Thomas Mann .

.

.

salutes "that creative, genius-giving disease

springs with drunken daring from peak to peak,"

realize that his

Any

speaker

is

the Devil.

.

.

.

that

we need

to

18

inquiry into the spiritual qualities of drinking, then, soon en-

counters their profoundly equivocal, almost paradoxical character.

Even though Allbee seeks

authenticity, a testing of his true self or

worth by means of heavy drinking and ciety, his final

authenticity.

appearance in The Victim seems

some ways,

discovered,

is

self,

and

in fact

note of in-

seems

radically to alter this

the usual result of alcoholic drinking, as

it

—

a proliferation the

because the alcoholic can avoid facing

it

in drink. If Cheever's godlike

it

to strike a

AA

has

the escalation of fear rather than the courageous con-

frontation or use of

ness of

bottom of so-

Although Allbee 's quest involves risk-taking, the endan-

gering of his conventional self in

falling to the

more harmful

by submerging

precisely

his aware-

Gee-Gee triumphantly

es-

capes the usual penalties and sorrows attached to alcoholic drinking,

Cheever provides "The Scarlet Moving Van" with a Charlie Folkestone,

who

is

not so fortunate.

drinking in Under the Volcano tion, the

is

If

foil

character,

the Consul's alcoholic

the chief source of his vivid imagina-

novel also reveals the exorbitant price he must pay as his

drinking increasingly becomes a form of dark, demonic possession. It is

as

if

the Consul

and some other alcoholic characters somehow

cannot see that using a physical means, alcohol, to achieve spiritual

ends or powers may corrupt or pervert those ends. 19 The excitement of escape

and the hope of renewal sometimes end

of addiction. Nevertheless,

achieves great value

when

much it

in the dull slavery

of the literature about alcoholism

directs

our attention to the duality or

equivocality of the spiritual dimension of drinking.

When

Brideshead

14

Equivocal Spirits

Revisited

conveys the paradox that the disease of alcoholism can

mean

mately

salvation,

it is

exploring territory

far

ulti-

beyond the ken of

science.

Three other matters should be dealt with in

this introduction. Al-

have been skeptical of the methods and efficacy

though a few

critics

of Alcoholics

Anonymous, 20

has by

it

now won

widespread recogni-

and

tion for being the leading repository of theoretical

— both

practical

nature and of how to treat it. on this knowledge throughout my book, some readers may welcome the persuasion of some testimony to the extremely high regard in which AA is held. Among

knowledge of alcoholism Still,

view of

in

many

my

of

its

extensive reliance

possibilities,

shall cite only three striking instances of this

I

testimony. Nowadays,

many

large

companies or corporations have

in-house programs of alcoholism therapy for their employees, nearly all

them claiming high

of

more

—

of recovery.

21

rates

—

times claim that their success rate ployee's fear of losing his job

and

treatment,

that this

becoming and staying knowledged but

often 70 percent,

is

if

is

based on the strength of an em-

he should not participate

sober.

Another element, seldom

company

program terminates, usually

the in-house

the recovering alcoholic

A second many

explicitly ac-

just as important, affects this high rate of success:

virtually all of the

so, to

fully in

the strongest possible motivation for his

When done

80 percent, or

Administrators of these programs also some-

is

therapies

borrow heavily from AA.

advised to enter

continue to follow

its

AA

program and

after a

or, if

few weeks,

he has already

to attend its meetings.

example of the impressive influence of AA can be found

in

whose therapy for alcoholism is fundamentally AA meetings and an urging of patients to practice the AA program. This pervasive use of AA by hospitals has generated some resentment among the AA membership, who believe that the fancier private hospitals and the insurance companies without which their prices could not be sustained are colluding to charge huge sums (nearly $12,000 a month, for one example, and sometimes the hospitalization is even longer) and to make fat profits for a mode of treatment that AA itself offers absolutely free. As a final exthe

hospitals

an intensive

ample,

if

series of

imitation

is

one sort of testimony

to success,

AA

— Overeaters

has been

AnonyAnonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, and Neurotics Anonymous, doubtless together with remarkable in the epigones

mous,

Gamblers

it

has spawned

15

Introduction

other progeny organizations,

AA

whose I

existence has escaped

believe,

my

notice. All of these

simply adapt the language and principles of

which

to suit their purposes,

are largely the

same

as AA's: to

understand and arrest an addiction. Because of

its

knowledge of alcoholism, then,

entirely appropriate

that

my book

AA

itself

have thought

it

should draw more extensively on Alcoholics Anony-

mous than on any as

I

highly respected

other extraliterary source. At the same time, and

no

readily admits,

knowledge of alcoholism, so

I

single source has a

monopoly on

have also used a variety of other scien-

sources.

tific

Although there seems

to

be no

irresistible logic

demanding one

arrangement of chapters rather than another, a few reasons ordering can be given.

I

have grouped

first

my

for

those chapters of rela-

tively restricted subject or scope: alcoholic hallucinations

(Under

the

Volcano), alcoholism as a spiritual illness (Brideshead Revisited

and

dramatized anatomy of alcoholism and a

dis-

Under

the Volcano), a

tinction

between alcoholics and drunks (The Iceman Cometh). Chap-

4 and 5 are similar in the sense that the writers treated therein,

ters

Cheever and Bellow, searchingly question or challenge the concept of alcoholism, chafing at entific objectivity, tical

it

as a stereotype, raising doubts about

disputing the stigma usually attached to

its sci-

it,

skep-

about the very validity and usefulness of the concept. Chapters

6 and 7 pay significant attention both to the alcoholic author's

and the

work, attempting to demonstrate their relationship and

to his

ways

life

in

which each can illuminate the

chapter counterbalances to

some

other.

The eighth and

last

extent the essential seriousness of

the others by indicating that even heavy drinking can

on occasion be

a constructive, liberating force. Finally,

it

though these tain writers

might be well are, for

to say a

little

about

my

reasons, simple

choosing the modern period, for selecting cer-

and work and

for excluding others.

Because a good

many

twentieth-century writers have been heavy or alcoholic drinkers,

someone with a flair for the catchy generalization could, I suppose, dub this period the Age of Literary Alcoholism, just as (with the same flair) one could call the Romantic period the Age of Literary Opium Addiction. Whether such generalizations could stand the test of historical scrutiny, or whether they really amount to anything when the complex effects of individual addictions are carefully examined, is another matter. If any credible historical argument can be

-16

Equivocal Spirits

made

for the

modern period

as

one of cultural alcoholism,

it

might

begin with the hypothesis, though limited to America, that Prohibi-

was a

tion

catalyst for

heavy drinking in some

such drinking seem, in the same

circles,

circles

because

it

made

admirably audacious and

The argument might then proceed by reflecting on whether it is something more than coincidence that some of the most penetrating works about alcoholism begin to appear at about the time of the defiant.

repeal of Prohibition or shortly thereafter: Dorothy Parker's "Big

Blonde" (1930), Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" (1931), O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (written in 1939), Charles Jackson's Lost Weekend

my book

(1944). But

undertakes no such argument, which might

well prove inconclusive. of such later writers as

And when one

considers the lives or works

John Berryman or Richard Hugo,

becomes

it

impossible to maintain that the heavy drinking of writers or cisive exploration in their

and I

work began and ended with

Prohibition

immediate aftermath.

its

make no

apologies for excluding from

my book such a sentimen-

chestnut as Days of Wine and Roses or the voluminous

tal

its in-

work

of

Charles Bukowski, which seems to be at the farthest possible ex-

treme from Days but which

I

nevertheless take to be another species

of sentimentalism thinly overlaid

by

its

macho

trappings, the senti-

mentalism lying in Bukowski's assumption (exemplified by heroes

who ism

are always about the same) that is

drunken defiance of

philistin-

the only proof needed of superiority to philistinism.

1

do

re-

number of works definitely deserving of study; would mention the poems of Richard Hugo; Brian

gret the exclusion of a

among

these

I

Moore's The Lonely Passion ofJudith Hearne (1955), a masterful study of the shifts

and evasions of

a

woman

alcoholic trying to

deny her

problem; and William Kennedy's Ironweed (1983), whose alcoholic protagonist should be seen as a figure resembling an epic hero.

Doubtless others not mentioned also deserve inclusion. say that there are limits to the patience of every reader

have erred,

I

have tried

I

and

can only that, if

I

to do so by stopping short of these limits and

leaving the reader sighing for more, rather than cursing

my prolixity. Thus my

Ultimately a writer pleases others by pleasing himself.

primary criterion of choice has been considered here.

I

my

keen

interest in the

have sought to avoid works whose portrayals of

alcoholism replicate or seriously overlap each other. at least

works

one extended treatment of each modern

I

have included

literary genre,

nov-

17

Introduction

plays, short stories,

els,

and poems. Some famous

writers

reputedly heavy or alcoholic drinkers have produced no great interest

on the

subject; these

I

who work

have naturally excluded.

On

are

of the

other hand, a writer has not had to be verifiably alcoholic for inclusion; Saul Bellow certainly is not, life

Evelyn

that

Waugh was

and although

at

certainly a heavy drinker,

some periods of his I

am not convinced

he was alcoholic. To have selected only the work of alcoholic

writers

would have meant

rejecting The Victim,

one of the major

studies of the indeterminate character of alcoholism, even raising

human comonly writers who

doubts about the validity of applying the concept to plexity.

To have worked from the assumption that

are certifiably alcoholic can write perceptively about alcoholism

would have

belittled the

power of observation and imagination.

ONE The

Place of

Hallucinations in

Under

the Volcano

Most

critics

of Under the Vol-

cano have concentrated on density

its

ship to other sary,

and ard,

modern

literary masterpieces.

may have led

but they

critics to

1

one with such monumental

literature

(one might think of

Lowry

cause

undermine fully

relation-

its

These focuses are neces-

overlook one of the most salient

distinctive features of the novel: the fact that the hero 2

symbolic

of

meaning and

Don Birnam

is

a drunk-

drunkards of

thirsts that other

in The Lost Weekend, be-

its nearly contemporaneous success would own) seem pale and timid by comparison. No one has

feared that

his

appreciated Lowry's almost breathtaking audacity in forging a

modern Everyman

or Dantesque figure from a

man

with a uniquely

gargantuan craving for alcohol. Nor has anyone sufficiently noticed the importance in the novel of a result of such excesses, a result that is

well

enough known

readers,

may be one

to observers of alcoholism

but

that, to

other

of the strangest characteristics of the story:

its

3

numerous and vivid alcoholic hallucinations. The frequency with which Lowry employs hallucinations of varied types and for varied purposes distinguishes his novel even from

hero's

other stories about alcoholics. For example, instead of being repeatedly subjected to hallucinations, as Lowry's Consul Lost Weekend, several times escapes

nostalgic

Birnam, of The

memories of childhood. His one genuine and

oped hallucination, vivid

is,

from his alcoholic miseries into

that a bat

and horrible but

is

attacking

also brief

and devouring

and sharply

set off

fully devel-

a

mouse,

from the

is

rest of

the novel.

Lowry was and

interested in conveying the

terror that alcoholism could arouse

awe and wonder, the pity victim was a person

if its

otherwise intelligent and noble. The hallucination became one of his

19

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

chief vehicles for reaching these effects as well as a

major expression

of his imagination. Appreciation of Lowry's imagination

by contrast with Jack Kerouac's Big Sur (1962), in

end of the novel and are scarcely enough

compensate

to

two hundred pages of apparently structureless, tions.

enhanced

confined to less than twenty pages near

tagonist's hallucinations are

the

is

which the pro-

slice-of-life

for over

observa-

The continual mingling and blurring of hallucination with

ality, their

re-

frequent overlapping or indeterminacy, are one source of

the great richness of texture in Under the Volcano, a fecundity like the riotous jungle

way of a the

growth that Yvonne and Hugh press through on

to Parian. This

their

mingling and indeterminacy aid in the depiction

more compelling and complex protagonist than Don Birnam or hero of Big Sur. If the Consul is as certainly fated as Birnam by

his alcoholism, the considerable suspense generated

by

his story lies

not in our ignorance of what will happen but in the ingeniously imagined, increasingly hallucinatory

ways

which

in

will

it

be brought

about.

Another source of suspense or tension sense that the Consul

is

engaged

Under

in

the Volcano is

our

in a struggle of almost epic signifi-

cance against dark, demonic, terrifying forces that are in large part represented or bodied forth by hallucinations.

Consul struggles not so tions as to

make sense

much

to avoid

More heroic

succumbing

still,

the

to the hallucina-

of them. Birnam's intelligence, though acute,

is

applied to less titanic aims: mainly to finding the means, financial

and

physical, to go

on drinking.

in his extremely long

Jonathan Cape, the

It is

and important

letter that

not surprising then that Lowry, letter to his

persuaded Cape

Volcano without change, expressed resentment the comparisons that Cape's editorial reader

tween his novel and Charles Jackson's. For securities,

Lowry thought

right, largely

because of

his

its

eventual publisher, to accept

Under

the

and exasperation

at

had repeatedly made behis self-doubts

all

book incomparably

better.

and

in-

He was

hallucinatory power.

That Lowry himself recognized the importance of hallucinations in

Under

the Volcano is

demonstrated in his

letter to

Cape.

He was

pleased that Cape's editorial reader found "the mescal- inspired phantasmagoria," the Consul's "delirious consciousness," impressive, objecting only to the reader's complaint that these effects are "too long,

wayward and

elaborate."

revise the novel,

it

4

Lowry added

became "a

when he undertook

that,

spiritual thing."

5

to

This apparent connec-

20

Equivocal Spirits

tion of the squalor of alcoholic hallucinations with spiritual matters

suggests one characteristic quality of Lowry's mind:

its

tendency to

blur distinctions or to combine ideas or categories usually kept dis-

On various occasions,

crete.

for

example, the Consul hears voices that

he terms his "familiars." At one level these are auditory hallucinations,

which some scientists regard as more

common among alcoholics than

the visual kind. These voices, however, are sometimes also Lowry's

versions of good

and bad

angels; consider the novel's epigraphs

Bunyan and from Goethe's

Faust,

and

from

several allusions within the

some respects an even closer analogue Day maintains, Under the Volcano is "the

novel to Marlowe's Faustus, in

Consul.

to the

If,

as Douglas

greatest religious novel of this century,"

6

the authority of

its

vision

derives to a great degree from the soil of the alcoholic hallucinations. In this juxtaposition of the sordid or debased with the exalted, similar to that

which Yeats explored

in "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,"

Lowry was adept at perceiving correspondences. 7 Though mostly in sources not familiar to the student

of literature,

records of actual hallucinations are abundant. There are, to be sure,

many to

different species of hallucinations.

For example, there seems

be wide agreement that alcoholic hallucinations

induced hallucinations, which

differ

from drug-

(at least in the early stages of

drug

use) often consist of recurrent geometric patterns or designs

and

vivid colors with either a neutral or a pleasing emotional effect.

8

contrast, the typical alcoholic hallucination can

In

perhaps best be de-

scribed as paranoiac, involving schemes or plots of persecution, threats of violence, or the perpetration of violence,

ing to the death of the hallucinator- victim. variants of these recurring delusions are also

sometimes lead-

9

Some rather specific common: for example,

according to a survey of 382 hallucinating alcoholics, no less than 48 believed that hostile gangs or the police were pursuing them.

We

have no way to determine, of course, exactly

Under

10

how much

of

the Volcano portrays alcoholic hallucination actually experi-

enced by Lowry.

It

can scarcely be mere coincidence that an impor-

tant element of the novel

—

the recurrent motif that the Consul

is

being spied on, which turns into full-blown police persecution in the last

section

— bears so

striking a resemblance to a

some time

in jail in

Oaxaca, Mexico, in

several of his letters explaining his

type of

Lowry almost certainly 1937 or early 1938, incarceration and the events lead-

alcoholic hallucination. Moreover, although

spent

common

late

— 21

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

ing

up

novel

to

it

—

the details in

— sound so

largely the

some

instances found their

way

into the

overwrought that they can only be regarded as

product of hallucinations. Lowry's major biographer,

Douglas Day, acknowledges that the police must have been aware of

more

Lowry because of

his flagrant drunkenness, surely a

son

than the claim in his correspondence

for his jailing

incorporated in the novel in the police confusion of

likely rea-

(later partly

Hugh

with the

Consul) that he was mistaken for a Communist friend. Day rejects this

claim as "pure romance" and regards Lowry's stories of ruthless,

mysteriously malevolent police persecution as "almost certainly exaggerated." This

is

an excellent assessment. 11 The paranoiac exag-

geration probably took the form of hallucinations.

If

we

realize that

these were later transferred mutatis mutandis to the novel, better understand

why

we may

several explanations of the Consul's fate, es-

pecially in the final section, are not quite convincing. Hallucinations

remain ultimately intractable; they cannot be reduced

to rational

intelligibility.

That Lowry transfers to the novel some of his is

not in

tions still

itself

remarkable.

It is

the uses to

— some probably experienced,

hallucinations

others perhaps wholly invented,

others perhaps a combination of experience

that call for further

own

which he puts hallucina-

comment and evoke

and imagination

admiration, for they are one

of the most striking manifestations of Lowry's genius.

Most hallucinations recorded

in

medical or

works are

scientific

evidently the fruit of mediocre minds: in spite of the lurid or sensational circumstances giving rise to them, they

reading.

make

rather dull

Not so the Consul's hallucinations. In the closing section of

the novel he sits in the Farolito tavern, sinking into despair.

He

is

faced with the prospect of hallucinating, whether or not he continues to drink; nevertheless,

he seems incapable of anything

less

than an

The following passage seems to be almost a synoptic reprise of hallucinations he has frequently suffered: "his room shaking with daemonic orchestras, the snatches of fearful tumultuous sleep, interrupted by voices which were really dogs barking, or by his

arresting vividness.

own name

being continually repeated by imaginary parties arriving,

the vicious shouting, the strumming, the slamming, the pounding, the battling with insolent archfiends, the avalanche breaking the door, the proddings from under the bed, cries,

and always,

the wailing, the terrible music, the dark's spinets."

down

outside, the 12

22

Equivocal Spirits

Even

this passage, as close to

being abstractly typical of alcoholic

hallucinations as any to be found in the novel, possesses a couple of

Though

distinctive touches.

archfiends" both), they

the "daemonic orchestras"

and "insolent humorous (or

may be strictly metaphorical or slightly may also be fleeting signs of what almost every

other hal-

lucinatory passage in the novel confirms: that even the most seemingly simple hallucination

endowed with moral or

is

tones. Just after his arrival at the Farolito, the to

be a couple of auditory hallucinations. Unlike the

these,

spiritual over-

Consul has what seem

common

run of

which are merely persecutory, the Consul's are packed with

moral meanings or

hints: "the place

was not

silent. It

was

by

filled

that ticking: the ticking of his watch, his heart, his conscience, a

clock somewhere. There was a remote sound too, from far below, of

rushing water, of subterranean collapse" the reader

from his brother and his former wife

words

to

(p.

337).

The Consul and

know why he should have a bad conscience; he has run off

them.

And

after

the rushing noise

some

particularly vicious

may be from

the nearby bar-

ranca, the ubiquitous ravine symbolizing a kind of cloacal hell into

The phrase "subterranean collapse" thus hints physically or literally at the barranca and metaphysically or morally at the Consul's spiritual condition. The use of hallucinations to convey moral meaning or significance will receive more extended treatment later, as will another of their qualities also which the Consul's body

is finally

hurled.

evident in this passage: they usually have contact with or basis in reality.

That

is,

there

and there

the bar,

may

actually be a clock ticking

certainly

is

a barranca, though

source of the rushing sound in this passage

The

is left

somewhere

whether

in

the

it is

problematical.

hallucinations, then, are ordinarily placed in

some non-

hallucinatory matrix, seen as connected with or emerging from reality.

This

vice, for

one means that Lowry discovered for naturalizing the demaking it believable. To gain the same end he had other

is

One

means

as well.

tablish

Mexico as a land whose scenes are objectively surreal or

lucinatory, a land in

function of the

first

section of the novel

which even the Consul's

reflects,

the Cotswolds,

"you would find every sort of landscape

Windermere,

Eure-et-Loire, even the grey

planet

upon which,

New

to es-

hal-

friend Jacques Laruelle

perceives the birds as "something like monstrous insects"

which, he

is

and

in

at once,

Hampshire, the meadows of the

dunes of Cheshire, even the Sahara, a

in the twinkling of

an

eye,

you could change

cli-

23

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

mates, and,

if

you cared

highway,

to think so, in the crossing of a

such a setting the Consul's hallu-

three civilizations" (pp. 13, 10). In

seem less bizarre than they might otherwise. main characters, in fact, respond to Mexico as if it had a

cinations will All of the

hallucinatory strangeness.

On her return to the Mexican street where

she has lived, Yvonne, the Consul's former wife, registers most of scenes as

"with

its

its

they were novel and disturbing: for instance, a shanty

if

dark open

to fetch their

sinister

carbon"

bunkers" from which their servant "used

(p. 63).

Yvonne's perceptions seem only slightly hallucinatory, some

If

abrupt visions of Hugh, the Consul's brother, have the horror of the like a tree stump with a tourniquet on it, army boot that someone picked up, tried to unlace, and then put down, in a sickening smell of petrol and blood, half reverently on the road; a face that gasped for a cigarette, turned grey, and was cancelled; headless things, that sat, with protruding

genuine thing: "Something a severed leg in an

windpipes, fallen scalps, bolt upright in motor cars"

any reader tions,

who might

Hugh

see that he differs from the

contemporary

reality;

by means of Hugh's lucinations

248). For

have missed the resemblance to hallucina-

reflects that these grisly

perhaps, in Geoff's dreams." As

we

(p.

images were "like the creatures,

we become

acquainted with Hugh,

Consul in his concern

world of

for the

he seeks a role in the Spanish Civil War.

visions,

we

Yet,

begin to realize that the Consul's hal-

may be an almost normal response to a world on Hugh and Yvonne "hallucinate"

verge of mass carnage. Indeed,

the fre-

quently enough (in the sense of having visions or hearing sounds

without an easily identifiable source

phenomenon comes to seem not but a valid way of seeing. 13 The hallucinatory ically,

humdrum

ody of

itself.

is

a

in the natural

symptom

world) that the

so naturalized in the novel that

reality that turns grotesque, a

madness

of alcoholic

paradox-

it is,

crude travesty or par-

Consider Quincey, the stereotyped American neighbor

and the unnamed,

of the Consul,

comes upon him lying drunk

old-school-tie Englishman

in the road.

Though

who

the Englishman

is

good Samaritan, the dialogue between him and the 79-81) is close to a Terry-Thomas caricature; the

a version of the

Consul (pp. thoughts running through the Consul's mind while he the road

more

(it is

sensible

amazing

and

that

he

is

lies

alone in

capable of any thought at

rational than the conversation.

all)

are

To some degree,

24

Equivocal Spirits

then, sober reality

is

so intolerably thin that

ication, or hallucination,

discover important truth

Quincey and the Cantabrigian

He may

it

travesties itself. Intox-

becomes a way to pierce this buffoonery, and seize its complexity. also attest to

to

Lowrys comic power.

have been justified in his recurrent complaints that readers

14 of Under the Volcano did not adequately appreciate these powers,

which

are

comic

effect.

sometimes manifest Because

to laugh at a

this

in his ability to use hallucinations for

means

that the

Consul

occasionally able

is

terror, such comedy Anyone well versed in the

major cause of his suffering and

affords further evidence of his heroism.

alcoholic hallucinations of medical records can recognize this as a

refreshing contrast to their usual dreariness.

One element

in the preposterousness of

15

Quincey

is

his supposi-

tion that hallucinations consist of the popular cliches of snakes tigers

and even pink elephants

expects (Henri) Rousseau to

(p.

come

135).

The Consul's

jest that

Not long if

after his chat

hammy

in a

132).

with his unenlightened neighbor, the Consul,

but clever enactment of Quincey's low opinion of

him, takes a swig of bay rum, smacking his to

he

riding out of his garden at any

moment on one of those tigers is completely lost on Quincey (p. as

and

lips

over

it

and remarking

Hugh, "A charm against galloping cockroaches anyway. And the

polygonous proustian stare of imaginary scorpions"

Consul

is

able to wrest

comedy even from mostly

material. In the studio of his friend Laruelle

pictures,

(p.

174).

The

serious or grim

he notices a couple of

both dealing with drunkards, both of a hallucinatory vivid-

ness and with obviously allegorical meaning. In the

grappled on a smashed bedstead

gnashing their teeth. in vain for a

sound

No wonder;

among broken

first,

"harpies

bottles of tequila,

the Consul, peering closer, sought

bottle." In the second,

which foreshadows the

divergent fates of Yvonne and the Consul himself, a group of drunkards

is

seen tumbling "headlong into hades" while the sober are as-

cending to heaven. The Consul notes wryly that the "females were casting half-jealous glances

bands, (pp.

some

of

whose

downward

after their

faces betrayed the

plummeting hus-

most unmistakable

relief"

198-99).

The most unusual comedy perhaps occurs that most thoroughly incorporates the themes, alcoholic hallucinations. increasingly

It is

unusual because

somber and portentous

section,

in that section (XII) plots,

it is

and moods of

unexpected in

and because

this

in this sec-

25

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

tion the mingling of hallucinations

and

reality reaches its baffling

The resulting comedy is, in Lowry's words, "macabre," with gruesome gaiety" that is hard to describe any more exactly 354) but that is certainly at a vast remove from the joyful, 363, (pp. liberating comedy of Lucky Jim. Just after the police seize him, the height.

"a certain

Consul sees something that appears thetic reflection of his

own

to

be a kind of comically sympa-

condition, the

more

startling for its in-

was only the uncontrollable

on the

congruity in this context:

"it

barroom

having a nervous convulsion, trembling

floor, the rabbit,

370- 71). 16 Thus

over" (pp.

the gathering

gloom

is

face

all

several times al-

An old woman who

tries to warn the Consame time seems to be one of his persecutors because she plunges her hand into his pocket as if in search of money (p. 367). The figure most successfully blending macabre humor and deadly seriousness is the pimp, a symbol of love de-

by rays of humor.

leviated

sul against the police at the

graded

to lust (one of the Consul's sins in this final section)

and the

animate symbolic counterpart to the barranca, the Consul's cloacal retribution ria,

ting

and

hell.

After intercourse with the pimp's prostitute,

the Consul encounters her master, "an incredibly filthy

hunched

feet didn't

in the corner

reach the

on

littered,

first it

(p.

352)

17

pimp proves

be

to

sit-

—

a vision so

can hardly be credited except as

hallucination. Like other hallucinatory images in this section, ever, the

Ma-

a lavatory seat, so short his trousered

befouled floor"

grotesquely disgusting that at

man

real

enough. Though he

is

how-

one of the

Consul's most insidious persecutors by pretending to be his friend, the

pimp manages

within the bounds of

to stay

comedy by

a re-

lentless mutilation of English. It is

no small proof of

his

heroism that the Consul, almost to the

life, maintains enough detachment to extract comedy from whose blurring of hallucination and reality is increasingly terrifying. The tension or struggle between hallucination and reality

end of his situations

in his perceptions further

see a

man

identity of a

moment

bespeaks his heroism. In the Consul

we

on the name and red bird spotted by him and Yvonne when, scarcely a

delivering an exact scientific discourse

later,

he

is

assaulted by a hallucination that the trees are

shaking or dancing to a soundless music (pp. 74-75). His never knowing when or how suddenly a hallucination will descend on him, and his refusal to accept this state without struggling to distinguish, or

comprehend

it,

help to ennoble him. At times

resist,

when

26

Equivocal Spirits

we might

expect him to surrender to hallucinations most abjectly or

— or simply Nicaragua — he

incoherently

to pass out, as

when he is lying drunk in

instead holds an incisive interior

Calle

Hugh, and Yvonne

the relations between himself,

The Consul

is

(pp.

the

monologue on 77-79).

not always so triumphantly in control. Before his

Hugh, he envisions him "advancing as if to decapihim" with a razor (p. 303). The Consul responds with great

final rejection of

tate

anger,

which he knows

be baseless because he can identify his

to

sion as hallucination; yet

leads to the harsh

it

words and,

vi-

in turn, to

the rupture needed as an excuse for him to go to the Farolito. Even when he succumbs to hallucinations or their effects, we see him not so much as a drunkard bringing them on himself as a pitiable victim of demons or furies beyond a control that he usually attempts to exert. The pathos of his flight from Hugh and Yvonne is heightened

by

their discovery that

for

he has

him, a fragmentary

left,

in a tavern they visit in their search

poem about

another

flight

— not from them

but from apparent hallucinations of pursuers, "eyes and thronged rors" (p. 330). In this

poem,

wages a valiant and moving struggle against such forces of ality

and

The

and

pity elicited

by the struggle

are also the product of a

frequent, almost pervasive ambiguity in the novel

and

reality.

more contemptible than

between

halluci-

ambiguity appeared to result primarily

If this

from the Consul's drinking,

seems

irration-

terror.

fear

nations

ter-

Consul

as in the novel as a whole, the

it

might seem a weakness or confusion

pitiable. Usually,

to lie in the nature of things,

however, the ambiguity

sometimes appearing

be

to

simply an aspect of an extraordinarily rich and animated metaphorical texture in the novel. Even in the last section, the Consul has a few

moments

of calm in

which he can

they were objects in a Dutch

still life.

register impressions as

language portends the hallucinatory terrors to come: "a cry street

if

Yet even here the figurative

someone being murdered, brakes grinding

far

away

down

the

a soul in

pain" (p. 353). Earlier, in Quincey's garden, just before asking Dr. Vigil (perhaps not altogether seriously)

what he can do

for a case of

some moving up a

delirium tremens, the Consul casts "a suspicious eye ... at

maguey growing beyond

the barranca, like a battalion

slope under machine-gun that the

maguey

is real,

but

fire" (p. if its

138). There can be

little

resemblance to a battalion

is

doubt merely

— 27

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

figurative

and not

partly hallucinatory,

why would

the Consul eye

it

with suspicion? In a country represented

ena as a

madman

pigeons under his a

hammock, and

by such strange and abundant phenom-

garlanded with a bicycle shirt, a

tire,

bus driver carrying

a

bald boy wearing earrings and swinging on

a procession of buses to different exotic destinations

appearing simultaneously from a single road in the country (pp. 224, 232, 240),

it

should not be surprising that even Lowry's major biog-

rapher will not pretend to decide whether a pair of fawns being

room or a vulture sitting in a wash basin both details mentioned by Lowry in his correspondence, and both included in an unsent letter written by the Consul to Yvonne slaughtered for a hotel dining

—

(pp. 36, 88)

—

are hallucinated or real.

are not particularly unsettling,

some

18

If

the foregoing ambiguities

others are. After conjuring

up

a

vision of drinking in Parian in terms of the tritely hallucinatory im-

agery of mirages, the Consul suddenly finds the reality surrounding

him

in his

garden to be so richly and vividly reanimated as to border

on hallucination: "from above, below, from the from under the rattling,

earth,

came

a continual

sky, and,

might be,

it

sound of whistling, gnawing,

even trumpeting" (pp. 139-40). This juxtaposing of two

types of hallucination suggests that only an augury of death (Parian

come

has already

and then only

to

have

this

meaning) can galvanize the Consul

in a hectic, almost hallucinated way.

Hallucination and reality pile

up

in layers,

sometimes becoming as

complicated in their relationships as rock formations in a terrain

with a long history of violent geological upheaval.

A relatively simple

instance, but with a twist of surprise, occurs in the Consul's garden: after listening to his "familiars," those auditory hallucinations

men-

tioned earlier, the Consul sees in his path not the hallucinated snake

we might

expect, but a real one

— and with

at least faint

symbolic

overtones of the serpent in Eden (pp. 126-27). At other points the relationship

becomes more

tortuous. In

Quauhnahuac, near the be-

ginning of the expedition to Parian, the Consul pauses with Laruelle

some Diego Rivera frescoes in which dressed as wolves and tigers. As he gazes, these

before

Consul

to

Not much

merge later,

into

native warriors are figures

appear to the

"one immense, malevolent creature"

(p.

212).

with a mysterious continuity having resumed the

comparatively undisturbing hallucinatory quality of

art,

those ani-

28

Equivocal Spirits

mals or some

like

them appear

Bosque (the wood). By

El

numerous other

Quauhnahuac tavern, and because of

as murals in a

this time, in their context

may remind us of those Mount Purgatory as The Di-

allusions to Dante, they

beasts that block Dante's direct route to

Comedy opens.

vine

we

In general, the further along

plex and problematical

Consul

for the first

is

is

the

first really

ably ambiguous.

to

meet

this disclo-

long passage whose character remains irresolv-

when,

a

the

time drinking mescal, which he has already

involves a

It

cination) of a time

supposed

more comand

doom. Almost immediately following

associated with his

sure

are in the novel, the

the relationship between hallucination

X begins with a new and foreboding development:

Section

reality.

is

memory

after

(perhaps a remembered hallu-

drinking

woman, Lee

all

night, the

Consul was

Maitland, at a train station. There

The woman never apsomewhat doubtful ("Who was she?" asks retrospect). The trains that pass through are described shimmering ... in mirage." The clickety-clack noise

are suspiciously improbable circumstances.

peared; even her reality the Consul in as "terrible

they

make

.

is

.

is

.

repeatedly emphasized, as

it

might be

moment"

hallucination. Finally, at evening, "the next

alcoholic blackout

had

filled

On

man who'd just

then the coal companies. ...

tried to sell

him

Consul waited in the

A

delicious smell of onion

dealing with

some

soup

in

Vavin impregnated the early morning. Grimed sweeps

hand trundled barrows, or were screening

we

though an

morning, "the dehydrated onion factory by the sidings awoke,

sidestreets of at

(as

the other hand, there are entirely plausible

naturalistic details in the recollection: as the

early

an auditory

the intervening time), the Consul recalls

himself "in the station tavern with a three loose teeth."

in

remembered

coal" (pp.

hallucination,

281-83). Are

remembered

reality,

or

inextricable combination of both?

Such complicated interweaving of hallucination and

actuality,

with an increased uncertainty about the identity and time of the latter,

recurs in the

Yvonne

in a

same

section.

The Consul, dining with Hugh and

Tomalin tavern, suddenly

blackout) finds himself seated

on a

toilet,

(that

is,

after

an apparent

from which vantage point

he alternately reads from a tourist brochure about Tlaxcala and tens to the continuing conversation of Hugh

and Yvonne,

makes an occasional contribution. Or so

seems

it

to

at first;

lis-

which he but

if

the

29

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

preceding

is

an accurate description of

reality,

it

soon appears that

Hugh and

the overheard bits of conversation are not merely from

Yvonne but from various times and people; and then it appears that we are dealing not only with remembered reality but with remembered and current auditory hallucinations, these shifts and confusions

developing in the space of a few minutes (pp. 293-301).

all

Perhaps

named

it is

no coincidence

that the tavernkeeper of this section

Cervantes; Under the Volcano

mingling hallucination or fantasy with

means of

is

Don

as adept as

reality,

is

Quixote at

and the two

stories,

by

and not always answer-

their ambiguities, raise perplexing

able questions about the validity of conventional distinctions be-

tween sanity and

insanity, reason

and imagination,

fantasy or hallu-

19

and reality. The indeterminacy of

cination

and hallucination

reality

nowhere

is

extensive as in the final section of Under the Volcano. there

is

not so

much

to follow

is

happening (though

not

this is

As is common in alcoholic hallucipersecution and violence seem to occur for no adequately

always easy) as to account for nations,

what

else as

The problem

it.

credible reasons. Virtually without warning, the Consul copulates

with a prostitute, Maria. Though the level of allegory,

doom

this is part of his

a betrayal of his love for

it is

even be a kind of symbolic murder of her,

seems also the

it

hallucination because, at the level of reality, the Consul's cess of lust while in a state of extreme intoxication

The

fornication seems the

first

because, at

Yvonne and may stuff of

sudden

ac-

unconvincing. 20

is

step in executing the persecutory plot

of the typical hallucination, with Maria leading the Consul into the

progressively greater darkness of the back

rooms the Consul had plots

earlier

rooms of the

Farolito,

thought of as "spots where diabolical

must be hatched [and] atrocious murders planned," past "a chuckle" and "two

men

sin-

drinking or plotting" (pp. 200, 347-48). The several policemen who later begin to threaten him he

ister

.

.

.

him

in his "delirium"

much

hallucinatory as

regards as "phantoms of himself" surrounding (pp.

361-62)

real.

And

lirium

—

—

that

is,

they are at least as

the motives for persecution are

flimsy pretexts for malignity

more those

— than

of alcoholic de-

of believable reality.

Finding an unsent cable of Hugh's on the Consul's person, a cable that contains a cryptic reference to Jews, the fascist police seize this as a

reason to

vilify

on

the Consul as a Jew; but in fact any excuse

30

Equivocal Spirits

for their bullying

would serve

of the final section, then,

is

just as well.

The ambiguity

especially

appropriate for a novel in which the spir-

itual fate of the central character is left uncertain.

Ultimately

some

tenebrous the episode with Maria, she in the

fall

However

of the ambiguities are partly resolved. is

unequivocally instrumental

of the Consul; however phantomlike the police, resembling

the persecutors in alcoholic hallucinations, one of their

ders the Consul.

However

number mur-

exciting or challenging the ambiguities be-

tween hallucination and

reality, this effect is

greater importance, the

most stunningly innovative use

Lowry puts

the hallucinations in the novel.

among

differences

those

tions, nearly all agree

who

transcended by one of

Though

to

which

there are

some

have described or defined hallucina-

on one key element:

their falsity or unreality.

21

But Lowry makes the hallucination perhaps his chief vehicle for

moral implication and again, perceiving

for the

prophecy or discovery of

truth.

Here

an analogy with Don Quixote may be helpful. Both

works suggest

that imagination, insanity, or hallucination offers a

surer route to

more important

truths than does reason or sanity.

Early in the novel, in an unsent letter to Yvonne, the Consul acts as a

prophet when he records the fear that he will destroy himself by his imagination

(p. 40).

tions can be a

Because, for the extreme alcoholic, hallucina-

major expression of the imagination, we see that the

Consul's hallucinations prophesy reality on the cutting edge or "final frontier of consciousness" (p. 13 5). last

22

Moreover, particularly in the

section of the novel, they become truth or reality.

How may

this

strange metamorphosis be explained? Richard

Cross, in a penetrating

comment on another Lowry

Ethan Llewelyn of October Ferry

to

protagonist,

Gabriola, notes that the

most

likely reason for the fire that destroys Llewelyn's house, inherited

from his

father, is his feeling of repressed rage

toward his father com-

bined with a sense of unworthiness and damnation resulting from guilt over that rage.

These

feelings,

from a psychological condition flagration.

pens

in

that the

23

Similarly,

Under

by some magical transference

to material reality, cause the con-

perhaps one could account

for

much

that hap-

by

realizing

the Volcano, especially in its final section,

Consul so longs

for his

own

destruction that, with the aid of

an immense quantity of alcohol, he hallucinates the various means this end: the threats, the police persecution, the

to

confused violence,

31

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

even his

own

murder. Simultaneously and mysteriously, as in a kind

of self-fulfilling prophecy, the hallucinations

A complementary a

become

actuality.

explanation of the metamorphosis originates in

comment Lowry once made

Norman Matson,

to a friend,

sian bistro: "I find places like this, dark small places

where.

.

.

.

Sometimes

I

think

in a Pari.

.

every-

imagine them, see them in a

first

I

.

nightmare and then find them actual and existent in the world." 24

If

nightmare and hallucination are practically synonymous for an alcoholic like

Lowry or

the Consul,

Lowry

meant

evidently

that his hal-

lucinations always have some duplicate in the real world. But

seems from

this

remark that somehow the hallucination

cedent or higher

more mundane

it

the ante-

is

necessary for the invention or birth of a

reality,

material reality. That

is, if

Lowry

couldn't hallucinate

Of course, the very or some similar Mexi-

these "dark small places," they wouldn't exist.

phrase suggests the Farolito.

can tavern or taverns

Lowry 's descriptions was almost certainly

may

Under

in in

An actual

Farolito

have furnished embellishing details for the Volcano,

but the seminal concept

one or more hallucinations.

some simple

Prior to the final section of the novel, there are

ex-

amples of the use of hallucinations as prophetic symbols. Glancing into a public

garden

at

one point, the Consul sees what he terms the

routine hallucination of a figure "apparently in

ing

.

.

.

head bowed figure

of

mourn-

Very few of the

Whatever the

identity of this

hallucinations are merely routine.

anonymous

some kind

in deepest anguish" (p. 130).

(who may be

clearly grieving for a loss of

the Consul himself), he

is

quite

Eden, an expulsion from paradise, the

gardens of Under the Volcano repeatedly assuming this symbolic association.

A somewhat more complex flower.

There

is

no reason

to

the Consul fantasizes or, as

he attributes to

it.

He

first

it

prophetic symbol involves a sun-

doubt

its reality

as a natural object, but

were, hallucinates the significance that

complains to Dr. Vigil that

growing behind his house, watches him with later

he comments

to his brother that

Like God!" (pp. 144, 179). This last

Marlowe's Faustus,

who

it

is

hostility

stares at

him

this flower,

and

hatred;

"fiercely

....

one of the novel's echoes of

in his last minutes, in a

moving and pro-

foundly serious parody of Christ's Passion, agonizingly implores,

God,

my God,

looke not so fierce on me." 25

It is

"My

understandable that

32

Equivocal Spirits

the Consul,

whose descent

into the darkness of hell has already be-

gun, should imagine that a symbol of God's light and goodness

is

judging him.

A

more complex prophetic

still

hallucination

of his excess. ... the light

now

now

on,

off

.

plunged into darkness, where communication threaten" (p. 145).

and

retrospective:

26

.

in the black path

if it

whole town

the

.

lost

is

Actually, this ramified image

is

.

.

.

bombs

both prophetic

looks toward the Consul's destruction and the

Quauhnahuac cinema's power in

the Consul's pic-

is

and stricken

ture of his soul as a "town ravaged

failure in Section

1, it

also looks back,

hint of a plague of locusts, to the carapace of a locust that the

its

Consul has recently found tendency of

(p. 133).

this hallucination, like

to invest the Consul's fate

More important, however,

many other passages

is

and soul with a universal importance.

novel in which the Spanish Civil

War hovers

the

in the novel,

In a

background

in the near

because of Hugh's presence, in a world poised on the brink of global

Lowry well knew, writing and

destruction (as

during World town,

lost

War

II),

the hallucination's imagery of a destroyed

communication, and bombs can stand

sands of pictures of razed towns or

cities,

for the infamous and symbolic instance Lowry can be extremely skillful, as he is at

rewriting his novel

perhaps,

any of thou-

for

more

specifically,

of Guernica. In any event, in using this hallucination,

bringing us to see the Consul not as an isolated individual but as

suffering the fate of

Everyman

in the late 1930s. Essentially the

imagery reappears intensified, with the Consul at final

hallucination of the novel: "the world

itself

its

same

center, in the

was bursting,

burst-

ing into black spouts of villages catapulted into space, with himself falling

through

it all,

through the inconceivable pandemonium of a

million tanks, through the blazing of ten million burning bodies"

375).

(p.

Because Under the Volcano

is

at

one

level

an allegory,

it

frequently

exhibits characteristically allegorical fluidities or overlappings of identities; these

gory being that

should not surprise us, a basic assumption of all

characters are merely different facets or aspects of

a single, prototypical

there

is

mankind. 27 In an allegory of cosmic sweep,

usually one character

who comes

closer than

any other

being a prototypical Everyman. In Under the Volcano this sul,

and hallucination helps

other characters.

alle-

to

show

the links between

is

the

to

Con-

him and

the

a

33

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

Perhaps the

first

time the term hallucination appears

Consul notices an "object shaped

like a

man

dead

.

.

.

is

when

lying

flat

back by his swimming pool, with a large sombrero over (p. 91).

by

Though he wishes

his vision,

which

is

prophecy, indeed, of the Consul's

this hallucination be-

nated but discovered by the roadside as

Tomalm,

Yvonne and the Consul

to

own destruction in man lies with his arms

Parian.

his

a stage

The bus

Hugh

man, not rides a

halluci-

bus with

Hugh

stops;

to

notices that the

stretched toward a wayside cross twenty feet

is

morning

for

but

failed to

linked not only with the poolside apparition

but with an Indian on horseback that

—

on the Consul's journey

an apparent suggestion that he yearned

had seen

in the novel

own death. The sombrero covering

the face connects this vision with a nearly dead

He

face"

would "go away," he is little disturbed so fleeting that no significance attaches to it.

Undergoing several metamorphoses, however,

distant,

its

it

comes one of the most important prophetic symbols

achieve salvation.

its

the

on

(p. 246).

whom

Hugh and

both

The Consul's

the Consul

reaction to the

man,

—

wounded and obviously in need of help, is strange unaccountable, in fact, if we miss the allegory. Though his wish to avoid

badly

becoming entangled with the

authorities has a certain plausibility, his

inordinately strong fear of helping, his refusal to be the

maritan, implies a refusal of brotherly compassion which sarily, in allegory, also

sul's

moral and

a rejection of self. This

spiritual rejections,

but

it is

is

good is

Sa-

neces-

only one of the Con-

important, for with

it

the

pace of rejection seems to intensify. This train of events begins with a casual, fleeting, seemingly meaningless hallucination beside the sul's

and cynical because of

Increasingly harsh

escape from strip

Con-

pool.

Hugh and Yvonne

away more of

Parian, the

his

his

mounting

(again, allegorically

desire to

and morally,

to

humanity) and to drink self-destructively in

Consul picks a quarrel with Hugh

in

which he

criticizes

wounded man, whose right to die he defends The Consul's argument may seem to have some cogency as (p. 309). part of his larger attack on Hugh as a globetrotting busybody and his desire to help the

brummagem

savior. In asserting the futility of

however, the Consul

is

compassionate action,

exposing his accelerating rejection not only of

the world in general but also of those closest to him, for this section

ing, as

it

turns out.

—

Hugh and Yvonne a final severThe Consul experiences several types of suffering

of the story ends in his flight from

34

Equivocal Spirits

for his rejection of

Yvonne, one taking the form of a particularly

gruesome hallucination. Looking from the

Farolito

toward the jungle

Hugh and

path by which he has arrived in Parian and by which

Yvonne, in Section XI, attempt to follow him, he sees "some unusual animals resembling geese, but large as camels, and skinless men,

whose animated entrails jerked along the least, makes sense as a representation of Yvonne's death, trampled by the horse belonging to the a death for which the Consul is in more than one dying Mexican way responsible. The next thing he sees is a policeman leading a without heads, upon

ground"

stilts,

The

341).

(p.

image, at

last

—

up

horse

the path.

Not only does the Consul

fail

to grasp

any meaning

nation; after the brief interval of lucidity in

man, he

also fails to see the even greater significance of a

which the

lucination in is

in this halluci-

which he sees the

police-

second hal-

face of a beggar reclining outside the Farolito

changing to that of Senora Gregorio, another tavernkeeper in the

now

novel, "and

an expression of infinite pity of course,

is

upon which appeared and supplication" (p. 342). The Consul,

in turn to his mother's face,

much

ing or beseeching

in

need of pity; and his mother may be supplicat-

him

understand the

to

meaning of the

vital

ex-

traordinary shifts of identity registered by the hallucination. These

may

indicate that, because

to practice love

heeding

and

pity

this lesson, the

we if

are

all

essentially

one person, we need

own

salvation. Instead of

only for our

Consul chooses,

and twinges of conscience,

phantoms or hallucinations

to continue

albeit

with

on the path

fitful

misgivings

to hell. Therefore

that are also real, ghosts of a

younger

self

or of better days, appear to accuse or reject him: the policeman referred to as the Chief of

image of his former

some

poet,

Gardens

is

recognized by the Consul as an

self (p. 359); a tavern

patron

who

looks "like a

friend of his college days" (p. 360), pointedly snubs him.

may represent punishments for the Hugh and Yvonne, and of his own better self.

Morally, these rejections rejection of

Even though the end of the novel ing,

it

slide

may afford hope

is

highly problematical in mean-

of redemption for the Consul, an arrest of the

through rejection to damnation. 28 This, too,

in the

is

presented largely

form of a hallucinatory reverie that may be the most

kaleidoscopic of any in the novel. Just before his

may

find the

tyranny of

answer

Consul's

to his prayer to

self" (p. 289).

He seems

life

intricately

ends, the Consul

be released from the "dreadful

at last to

heed his mother's sup-

35

Hallucinations in Under the Volcano

and compassionately

plication

to

acknowledge

that

we

are

all

one by

experiencing the extremes of pelado (or Barabbas) and Christ, atoning for his neglect of the dying Mexican by entering his identity as

"Now he was

well:

the one dying by the wayside

maritan would halt" ing

when

other

(p.

375).

29

where no good

These identifications begin

Sa-

proliferat-

the Consul asks: "the policemen, Fructuoso Sanabria, that

man who

looked

rabbit in the corner

like a poet, the

and the ash and sputum on the

not each correspond, in a recognized, to

luminous skeletons, even the

some

way he

filthy floor

— did

couldn't understand yet obscurely

faction of his being?" (p. 362).

The

police, the

Consul's "phantom" persecutors, assist the spread by their questioning,

unable to decide whether the Consul

man, or "Norteamericano"

(p.

culmination with the Consul's

a Jew, pelado, English-

is

372). But the process only achieves last reverie, in

which he

also appeals

strongly for Yvonne's forgiveness. Although the Consul's treated as offal, because even the trees pity

ends on a note of hope this last

him

its

body

is

(p. 375) the novel

for the salvation of his soul. Like

much

else,

important development, appropriately enough in a novel

about an extreme alcoholic, centers on a hallucination.

WO

¥

Brideshead Revisited Sebastian's

Alcoholism as a

Spiritual Illness

M

^ne indication of how Evelyn

B Waugh

m

W

w

^^B0r

is

will

alcoholism

approach the Sebastian

of

Flyte in Brideshead Revisited

revealed by differences between otherwise strikingly similar set-

and

tings in this novel

two

in

Waugh s

Handful of Dust. The settings are

virtually indistinguishable nightclubs: the Sixty- four, at

Street, in

Handful and the Old Hundredth,

at

Brideshead. Both clubs are rendezvous for male ish upperclass

when on

members

64 Sink

Street, in

of the Brit-

a spree.

In Handful, in a passage that has

Waugh

100 Sink

no counterpart

in Brideshead,

offers a genially ironic tribute to the club's ability to survive a

generation of obviously well-justified police and even parliamentary investigations into

two

visitors,

Tony Last and

men

1

The drunkenness of

his friend Jock Grant-Menzies,

is

are not

drunk enough

to

shed their genteel

stuffiness

and thus take an appropriately harsh revenge on Tony's wife infidelities.

Their petty harassment

course of the night

—

is

The

scene

total effect of the

drink can If

is

a

few telephone

calls in the

that she can continue her adultery with im-

As

liberation that fails to occur.

implies, Handful

—

for her

morning after by Tony's apology,

nullified the

which reassures Brenda punity.

may best be

its

described as that of a

epigraph from The Waste Land

populated by mannequins that no amount of

endow with

authentic

vitality.

the scene from Handful can be viewed as incipient

aborted, the similar scene from Brideshead

is

a

comedy

good deal more

boding. As Sebastian, Charles Ryder, and Boy Mulcaster pull front of the

its

not dis-

most disturbing element of the scene may be

turbing. Indeed, the that the

violations of the law.

its

Old Hundredth,

the doorway; although he

their attention is

is

drawn

to a

fore-

up

man

in

near

a kind of conventional, stage-prop

37

Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

— "Keep dose" —

drunk, his muttered remarks

be robbed and given a

2

out, you'll

be poisoned," "You'll

accurately predict the

fact, if

impending misfortune. Mulcaster, anxious

nature, of an

his friends with his familiarity with the club, attempts to civilities first

with

its

Ma May field,

proprietress,

recognize her; bored, she does

little

more than repeat "Ten bob Once his party is

way

seated, Charles notices

two prostitutes approaching

because of their

faintly sinister.

whom

Head" and "Sickly Child"

faces, "Death's

These omens narrowly miss

is

exchange

although he does not at

each" in a mechanical

that

not the

to impress

fulfillment, for

he

labels,

116).

(p.

when an extremely intoxi-

cated Sebastian later drives away from the club with his friends

women, he almost has

the two

117) and

(p.

is jailed.

and

a "head-on collision with a taxi-cab"

In the highly atypical clamor of his denials of

drunkenness, and in his desire, upon release, to go abroad rather than return

home or to

sudden change

for the

Oxford,

we glimpse

worse in his

life,

Sebastian's awareness of a

the

end of innocent, carefree

its

aftermath, then, are early

drinking.

The scene

at the

Old Hundredth and

signs that Sebastian has developed a serious affliction

and

that

Waugh

idea

how

will treat

it

seriously.

At

this

point

we can have no

complex and ambiguous Waugh 's treatment plexity derives in large part from

the

first

might be called

will

become. The com-

Waugh's twofold view of the

illness:

naturalistic, realistic, or psychological; the

second, spiritual. The two views are present almost from the begin-

ning of Waugh's examination of alcoholism, and their coexistence

through much of the novel gives that examination an unusual richness

and depth. Eventually, however, the

spiritual aspect of Sebastian's al-

coholism seems to assume paramount importance for Waugh. Ambiguity arises from a double view of even this aspect: although he

never completely cease to regard Sebastian's drinking as a

Waugh

increasingly presents

it

kind of jelix culpa, a necessary

may

fault,

not as an ordinary weakness but as a

trial

and preparation of Sebastian

for a

With the eventual ascendancy of this view, the cogency undermined (at least as a study of alcoholism) by the diminution of both its complexity and its ambiguity. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Waugh's interest in providing a full, credible picture of alcoholism was ultimately supplanted by more compelling interests.

better world.

of the novel

is

In spite of a family

and

a great personal

charm

that

make

Sebas-

38

Equivocal Spirits

one of the most sought-after young men in English society (during his first year at Oxford, his rooms are filled with invitations from London hostesses; p. 31), he possesses several prominent traits that tian

are not only sharply incongruous with his advantages but that, ac-

cording to some studies of alcoholism, greatly increase his probaof developing it. His volatile moods, his pronounced insecuand immaturity (symbolized by the Teddy bear that he takes with him to Oxford), and his deep-seated feelings of inferiority debilities

rity

serve to be noted.

3

More than one observer has pointed out

a crucial

and sometimes insuperable difficulty in attempts to define an alcoholic personality: one cannot always tell whether the characteristics in question

Although

it

and

true that alcoholic cause

is

Waugh

tangled,

the

preceded and caused the drinking or resulted from

more

enables us to see

above-named

it.

On his

first visit

Charles observes that Sebastian almost sneaks

easily

to his

nanny and avoiding a

have met. Charles

of him.

When

Charles from

often be

clearly than in real life that

characteristics definitely precede Sebastians alco-

holism and probably contribute to

ducing him only

may

effect

finally

him

sister

in

to Brideshead,

and

out, intro-

whom they could

asks Sebastian whether he

ashamed

is

Sebastian expresses the fear that his family will steal

him

(p. 37),

it

must come

as a surprise, because neither

Charles nor the reader has yet encountered that family's other bers.

It

becomes

clear, too, that Sebastian is

Sebastian and his mother. is

He

clearly possesses,

doomed to lose Charles, to any individual member of it. A person thinks he

is

he nevertheless

his family collectively or to

is

outstanding strength

between although

states the fear quite simply:

one quality that Sebastian

mem-

not referring omni-

sciently to the struggle for Charles's loyalties that later occurs

charm

4 it.

so insecure about his most

likely to discover

some extreme means

of re-

lieving his pain.

Because low self-esteem borders on self-hatred, another ascribed to the alcoholic,

own

it is

trait

often

not surprising that Sebastian evinces relatively

new. The

vehemence with which he scourges himself may be rather

startling:

this

at

even while his

home

stays

for Easter

alcoholic drinking

during his second year at Oxford, Sebastian,

drunk most of the

Charles, "If (p. 135).

it's

is still

time, at

any comfort

one point says

to you,

I

who

to his houseguest,

absolutely detest myself"

This seems an overreaction: Sebastian has neither done nor

said anything truly detestable; engaged in solitary drinking, he has

— 39 Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

largely kept his arrest for

away from other members of the drunken driving and

seem

reactions

excessive:

where

from prison, Sebastians

his release

a

family. Similarly, after

more conventional young man,

such as Boy Mulcaster, would dismiss the incident as a tian says to Charles, "I If

I

just slip

people do

might go abroad ....

away abroad they

when

can't get

sooner go to prison.

I'd

me back,

can they? That's what

the police are after them" (p. 121). Assumptions of

derangement or hypersensitivity will scarcely explain these

The explanation probably occurs during to Brideshead.

Sebas-

trifle,

Charles's

first

reactions.

extended

visit

Although Sebastian has hitherto seemed casual about

his Catholicism, Charles

is

unquestionably in earnest

wickeder" than his friend

and Sebastian

set straight at this time;

when he (p.

86). His Catholicism sets

is

much

claims to be "very, very

such ex-

tremely high standards of conduct that Sebastian feels his departure

from those standards more keenly than any non-Catholic could. The worse his drinking becomes, the more acutely Sebastian the widening gulf between his values

and

his

suffers

from

drunken behavior. Ac-

cording to Vernon E. Johnson, an unusually perceptive student of alcoholism, this conflict between values and behavior

is

exactly

what

and separates him from a sociopathic or skidrow drinker. 5 As Sebastian's alcoholism progresses, Waugh offers many glimpses of symptoms often agreed to be indicators of alcoholism: Sebastian's defines the alcoholic

increasing tendency to drink surreptitiously (p. 130) or alone; his

preference for low ford (p. 108); (p. 159); his

6

company

in

pubs during

his

second year

at

Ox-

his drinking to achieve the oblivion of blackouts

trembling hands

(p. 134); his

neglect of his appearance

(p. 152). Sebastian's desire to flee the consequences of his arrest for

drunken

driving, a desire that

tifications of his

expands and

drinking accumulate until

three continents,

is

cies

Waugh

is

mor-

him over parts

Anonymous as

of

the

a "geographical cure" for this

also depicts quite fully the alcoholic's

marked tenden-

toward manipulation of others and the invention of excuses or

rationalizations for his drinking.

At

least

7

one of Sebastian's apparent excuses

a dipsomaniac, they can is

intensifies as the

drives

often referred to in Alcoholics

typically alcoholic fantasy that there illness.

it

"If

they treat

bloody well have a dipsomaniac"

(p.

me

like

156)

would have become a of the treatment of which he complains here,

not merely a rationalization; for

dipsomaniac regardless

—

if

Sebastian

— 40

Equivocal Spirits

this treatment

holism

may

abet

it.

a family illness.

is

8

Alcoholic irrationality

pervade the family that one of pouring the alcoholic's liquor of

Lady Marchmain,

contrived than

its

down

the drain. Although the actions

Sebastian's mother, are

example

this

Anonymous believes that alcomay so thoroughly members may, for example, try

Alcoholics

—

at various

much more

elaborately

times in the novel they in-

volve her enlisting or attempting to enlist the aid of Charles, Rex

Mottram, Mr. Samgrass, and an Oxford priest stop Sebastian's drinking

nor are her

results.

— her motives

The

to report on, curb, or

are not appreciably different,

alcoholic determined to drink can always

find a supply. Moreover, in

ways

Lady March-

that she fails to see,

main may even be enabling Sebastian

to drink.

As Charles

tries in

vain to explain to her, her surveillance, by threatening his freedom,

provides Sebastian with an additional motive for desiring alcoholic

escape

ting Sebastian

by

Samgrass's role also indirectly encourages

(p. 144).

know

that

its

concomitants

—

irresponsibility, defiance,

sometimes cited as being among the gravest

dissatisfied

let-

immaturity rebellion

of alcoholism.

Waugh would

have

its

move beyond

naturalistic

symptomatology or

cruder or more obvious manifestations,

Waugh

probably looked on psychology as no more illuminating than the

sponse of Julia, Sebastian's

sister, to his

chemical in him." Charles rightly

alcoholism:

"It's

reflects that this "cant

(p. 129). Similarly, a reductivist

something

new form"

psychology can appear to say that a

person with Sebastian's qualities must become an alcoholic. But

Anthony Blanche

suggests, the

portant for understanding the skill that

knowledge of the psychoanalyst

term requires a recognition of Anthony's

competing against the Marchmains reason alone he is

as

im-

Marchmain family, he mentions anmore important: that of a "di-

motives and limitations. At this point in the story he

thony

if,

is

ultimately seems even

abolist" (p. 53). This strange

this

re-

phrase of the

time" was just "the old concept of determinism in a

other

9

with any analysis of his treatment of Sebastian's alco-

holism that failed to psychology. In

and

liabilities

There are reasons to suppose, however, that

been

by

he will be rescued from any troubles caused

his drinking. This protection fosters the emotional

and

it

is

is,

in a sense,

for Charles's allegiance,

and

for

generally catty about them. In addition, An-

incapable of coming any closer than "diabolist" to defining

The alcoholism of some spiritual impov-

the Marchmains' essentially spiritual quality.

Sebastian

is,

for

Waugh,

primarily the sign of

41

Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

erishment or malaise. This added spiritual dimension makes

more complex and mysterious iorist

illness

it

a

than a determinist or behav-

could ever acknowledge. 10

Two

facts of Sebastian's family are

extremely important for an

understanding of the deep spiritual division that his alcoholism

re-

Lord and Lady Marchmain have long been separated; and his

flects.

father has abjured, seemingly for good, the Catholic faith.

doubt with

his father in

mind

It is

no

that Sebastian refers to himself as

"half-heathen" (p. 89). Although one of Sebastian's excuses for drinkto escape the control of his

mother

— and although

may even

ing

is

be

true, as his father's mistress suggests, that Sebastian hates his

mother

102)

(p.

God. Sebastian's

and

father,

—

it

and

his other half remains loyal to her religion

self,

as sundered as the former union of his

perhaps seeks and finds in drinking some

mother

relief

from

this pain.

Another, more subtle reason for Sebastian's alcoholism

an inheritance from his

Lady Marchmain note

father.

Both Cara, the

their similarities.

may

lie

father's mistress,

in

and

Cara observes that "Sebas-

much" and that Lord Marchmain "was nearly a drunkard when he met me" (p. 103); 11 Lady Marchmain asserts that, tian drinks too

in fleeing her, Sebastian is repeating the pattern of his father (p. 137).

The

inherited spiritual malaise, however, lies beneath these resem-

blances;

it

can be described as an ignorance of

Marchmain, says Cara, misdirected is

better to have ... for another

ship.

how

to love.

Lord

to his wife a type of love that "it

boy than

for a girl," a

romantic friend-

Although his relationship with Cara prevents his developing

into a drunkard, she

emphasizes

to Charles that

does not love her; their relationship

and sex,

"that

one thing that no

Improving on his

is

Lord Marchmain

founded on companionship

man can do for himself" (pp.

father, Sebastian builds a

101-3).

romantic friendship with

As Cara defines it, this is only a step toward mature love, "a that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men." The friendship is termi-

Charles.

kind

.

.

.

nated partly by Sebastian's alcoholism, partly by Charles's involve-

ment with

the rest of his family.

grope his way toward some higher order of love, but he

is left

to

learns

much more

p.

Without paternal example, Sebastian

readily to dull the pain of emptiness with alcohol

.

The medicine, however, becomes itself a "soul sickness" (12 & 12, 46) and aggravates the isolation or loneliness it is supposed to ease.

42

Equivocal Spirits

Sebastian's older brother,

Lord Brideshead, commonly referred

Bridey, once explains that he drinks

to as

seldom and reluctantly because

him alcohol does not promote what he regards as its chief end: a feeling of "sympathy between man and man" (p. 93). For Sebastian, the more his drinking inflames and augments his self-hatred, the less for

his desire to achieve to drink alone;

any such sympathy.

both by

his

own

not just that he wishes

It is

preference and by the consequences

of his alcoholism, he increasingly

is

alone, a

common outcome

as al-

coholism advances (pp. 127, 129-31, 149, 168). 12 This isolation is conveyed by images and hints of coldness, as much internal or spiritual as physical, that largely replace the tian's first

year at Oxford

(e.g.,

warmth and

gaiety of Sebas-

pp. 104-5, 121).

Sebastian at last slips the leash of his various keepers and leaves

England

—

good, as

for

it

turns out. Charles, learning of his where-

abouts from Anthony a year or more after

last

seeing Sebastian him-

him in Morocco. Dispatched to bring him home because Lady Marchmain is dying, Charles is unsuccessful; Sebastian himself

self,

is

locates

There are

in a hospital, too sick to travel.

beginning to

effect a

signs,

however, that he

recovery from his spiritual

illness.

Sebastian has not stopped drinking at the time of Charles's find out

from Cordelia, another

had almost quit during is

sister

who

visits

him

is

Although visit,

later, that

we he

German who than become a

his period of living with Kurt, a

home and then commits suicide rather The implication is that if Sebastian and Kurt had continued

forcibly sent

Nazi.

living together, Sebastian

The

might have recovered

crucial elements in this recovery are

fully.

much

like those desig-

nated as necessary by the program of Alcoholics Anonymous: an end to isolation

and withdrawal;

a

recommitment

ticular a willingness to escape "the

to society;

and

in par-

bondage of self" by helping fellow

alcoholics to recover. 13 There are differences, of course: Kurt alcoholic,

help

is

and one person hardly

great

— he

is

starving

constitutes society. But his

when

Sebastian finds

him

(p.

is

no

need

for

214) and

has a badly infected foot that will not heal. His need matches Sebastian's

never

equally great need to be of service to someone,

which he could

Most important,

in his relation-

fulfill

in his family (p. 215).

ship with Kurt the fundamental part of Sebastian's spiritual recovery is

his learning for the first time a

of love. Kurt

stained

and

is

so unattractive

"set far apart,"

complete and deeply satisfying form

—

his face

is

lined, his teeth tobacco

and he speaks "sometimes with

a lisp,

43 Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

sometimes with a disconcerting whistle, which he covered with a giggle" (p. 211) (p. 214).

No

—

that even Sebastian realizes that

one, that

that

when he

is

Kurt's death, Sebastian's recovery

who

Cordelia,

sees

him

him

is

part prediction of the remainder of his

life,

insists

(p. 216).

stopped. According to

and whose report

last

for Kurt,

out of the hospital and

his job to bring Kurt's cigarettes to

it is

With

illustrated

him

likes

self-effacing

is

homely duties

charity manifested as a desire to perform

most touchingly

no one

but Sebastian, whose love

is,

is

part description,

he has become and

will

continue to be a periodic drunk. Even this occasional intoxication

might have been ended had Sebastian been allowed

to

become

a mis-

sionary lay brother; Cordelia informs Charles that he was denied this

monastery near Carthage (pp. 304-5). In the end, however, Sebastian's drinking is to be viewed not as a misfortune but

privilege

by

a

as a blessing, cally

and

it is

departs from any

in revealing this

and

Sebastian's ethereal beauty

restlessness

not so

is

view that

Waugh most

radi-

scientific depiction of alcoholism.

much

alcoholic escapism (though

his

surname,

Flyte, suggest that his

a longing to elude his mother's control or

contains both of these elements) as

it

it is

a quest or pilgrimage in search of his truer destiny, his otherworldly

home. Much other evidence

upon

in the novel, direct

and

indirect, bears

or supports this hypothesis. Neither Sebastian's family nor his

society has

any place

coming much

for

him; he cannot

less attractive.

thetic, is seriously

fit,

at least

not without be-

His father, though generally sympa-

flawed and remains rather shadowy despite Cara's

attempts to sketch in his details; Sebastian's mother unintentionally

becomes

his

enemy and

persecutor; the eccentric Bridey, though

own

penetrating at times, has his

preoccupations and can spare

little

attention for his younger brother; Julia, closest in age to Sebastian,

regards his drinking with impatience

and contempt; and Cordelia,

sharing something of her brother's sweetness or purity and having a willingness to forgive his drinking, follows a different path.

On

is

much younger and

ultimately

his first visit to Brideshead, Charles

is

struck by what seems to the reader, in retrospect, an uncanny prescience 'It's

on

where

Sebastian's part:

my family live'"

out of place or homeless. ent

when one

he does not say "That (p. 35). In his society

One can

is

my

home,' but

Sebastian

is

equally

scarcely wish that he were differ-

takes stock of the people

who

are at

home

in the

world: Samgrass, oily and obsequious; Rex Mottram, a thoroughly

44

Equivocal Spirits

vulgar freebooter; Boy Mulcaster and his

sister, Charles's wife,

repre-

Hooper and

the

unnamed "travelling

salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his

fat

wet hand-shake, his

senting the vacuous aristocracy;

grinning dentures"

(p. 139);

and Anthony Blanche, whose strengths and honesty but whose honesty and

are verbal vitality, shrewdness,

shrewdness are seriously limited by envy of Sebastian's appeal and an inability to

comprehend

Anthony

a blank or cipher,

is

its

As

source.

name may

his last

suggest,

another version of the type of

still

modern worldliness or emptiness, busily registering "who's in, who's out" among the "packs and sects of great ones." (If the Flytes were an obscure, working-class Catholic family, Anthony would take no inthem.) Charles Ryder, the narrator,

terest in

the

most

attractive

is,

male character, but he too

apart from Sebastian,

suffers

from the

sterile

afflicts the rest. Although he is strongly drawn to the Marchmains and, unlike Anthony, dimly perceives the source of their magnetism (p. 303), Charles long clings to his agnosticism and ex-

modernity that

emplifies the limitations of aesthetic

humanism,

for

which reasons

alone his friendship with Sebastian was destined to founder. 14

The

dissimilarity

own

makes

his

might

say,

find

as

it

between

all

of these characters

and Sebastian

One much

appropriate path extremely difficult to discover.

not altogether metaphorically, that he does not so

drunkenly stumble onto

it.

In so doing, he

makes

certain

him toward wholeness. He leaves behind his (p. 127). It is part of the mordancy Waugh's comment on a despiritualized, wasteland Europe that

renunciations that bring

heathen, pagan, or Arcadian self of

Sebastian achieves this metamorphosis in the realm of the infidel,

though

it is

grimage his

is

perhaps also significant that the apparent end of his

wanderings carry

aesthetic

pil-

commemorated by Augustine, 15 and that him toward the Holy Land. 16 He renounces the

Carthage, vividly

— with

Oxford, one of

its its

roots in materiality

treasured artifacts

object of both these

the stripping

movements

away of worldly

is

and with

—

himself, for a time at

The common purification, gained by

for the ascetic.

spiritual

dross. Brideshead Revisited thus be-

comes not only Waugh's denunciation of modernity but also, and more generally, his adaptation of the ancient Christian theme of contemptus mundi, according to which the world

enjoyed but, at best, a place of sorrows and better existence.

17

is

not something to be

trials

preparing one for a

— 45 Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

In these changes or developments of Sebastian, his alcoholism

plays an important part. doxically,

it is

It is

his chief trial or

the spiritual illness that,

mode of suffering;

para-

more than any other change

he experiences, moves him toward spiritual wholeness or health. For this

reason the alcoholism

source of division

is

neither a vice to be deplored nor a

G. Jung once put

spiritus contra spiritum, as C.

the deleterious effect of alcoholic "spirits" in a letter to Bill Wilson,

co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. 18 Rather, although alcoholism

seems last

have had some such

to

effect

on Sebastian

departure from Brideshead, thereafter

my

disease,

Life."

19

it

Imaging the world as hospital, sick bay, or

lazaretto supports the contemptus

mundi theme; such images

prominently in descriptions of Sebastian's

later

life.

with an infected foot and "secondary syphilis" Lazarus,

20

When

Charles

seemed

is

figure

His friend Kurt, 213),

is

akin to

and out of hos-

in

him in Morocco, he is which made others fat and

visits

struck by his friend's emaciation: "drink, red,

(p.

and because of his alcoholism Sebastian

pitals or infirmaries.

until the time of his

helps to cure "this long

to wither Sebastian" (p. 214). This is a sign, of course,

that alcoholism

is

having a desirable

effect,

wasting the flesh and in-

creasing Sebastian's spiritual purity. By reducing abject, childlike helplessness

him

to a condition of

and dependence on God,

a condition

not natural for one of Sebastian's station, his alcoholism further contributes to this purity.

Cordelia's final account of Sebastian raises to ignore.

Even while he was

some problems not easy

living with Kurt, Sebastian displayed

unusual goodness in his self-sacrificing ministrations to person. But

it is

a greater strain

claims that Sebastian

is

on

credibility

when

an

lowly

this

Cordelia

flatly

holy and that his suffering from alcoholism

has been the chief agency of his holiness (pp. 306, 309). Although Cordelia

is

generally a reliable observer

and judge,

much

faith

she perhaps leaves too

to

be taken on

or showing any real links between agency

and

in this instance

by not establishing

effect.

One

tend, of course, that God's grace to Sebastian, taking the

holism,

21

is

simply inaccessible to

therefore the apparent disparity

dences the weakness of difficult to

as she

human

human

understanding, and that

between form and end only

perception.

accept this position. Moreover,

seems

could con-

form of alco-

if

Most readers may Cordelia

to be, that Sebastian's alcoholism

is

is

evi-

find

it

maintaining,

his cross,

22

she (and

46

Equivocal Spirits

Waugh)

come

also

perilously close to the boundaries of comic satire,

beyond which Robert Burns's Holy Willie excuses his fornicating three times with "Leezie's lass" day, or

on the grounds

beyond which Ernest

nouncement of Pryer him, derisively

that

recalls

Pontifex,

that

he was "fou" that

annoyed by the smug an-

he would accept martyrdom

if it

befell

who proclaimed herself "a Waugh invites no such commay be farfetched; but if the asso-

an Irishwoman

23 To be sure, martyr to the drink."

parisons with Sebastian, and they

ciations are even conceivable, they serve to illustrate the

equacy of alcoholism as a vehicle

Another aspect of Sebastian's cult

.

.

.

last

transformation

at least as diffi

rather bald with a straggling beard" (p. 306), both she

and Charles, on

pay scant attention

his earlier visit,

ravages of his alcoholism. But Cordelia (or rather

yond

is

Although Cordelia does remark that he "looked

credit.

to

terrible

dubious ad-

for Sebastian's holiness.

this neglect to a sanitizing or

to the physical

Waugh) goes

be-

bowdlerizing of Sebastian, a visual

softening of his alcoholism that seems unwarranted

no matter what

degree of spiritual purity or holiness Sebastian has reached.

The

naturalistic or realistic representation of his alcoholism recedes too

The Sebastian who, during his last stay at Brideshead, embarrassed the company by his "clouded eye and groping movements ... his thickened voice" (p. 167) is replaced by a Sebastian whose drinking bouts are now decently invisible and whose alcocompletely.

indistinguishable from his status

holism

is

monks

as a "queer old character

and

.

.

.

among

the North African

pottering round with his

broom

bunch of keys"

(pp. 308-9). Although he has lost the magic beauty of his youth (p. 31), Sebastian has been compensated by a his

charming quaintness. The picture has of alcoholism,

A

its

appeal; but as a delineation

disturbingly incomplete.

basic fault of Brideshead Revisited as an investigation of alco-

holism ness

it is

is

and

that the

more Waugh focuses

attention

special destiny, the less interest there

The subordination of alcoholism gressively clearer because

it

on

is

Sebastian's holi-

in his alcoholism.

as a source of interest

becomes pro-

begins to emerge, after Sebastian leaves

means to his holiness and salvation. An even more fundamental problem lies not in the handling

Brideshead, as merely the

Sebastian's alcoholism but in the character himself.

of Sebastian,

Sebastian "a

Anthony Blanche little

is

On

of

the subject

usually malicious; but in calling

insipid" (p. 56), he states an important truth. Dis-

47 Brideshead Revisited: Spiritual Illness

counting Anthony's

ill

will, this

simple and artless that he

is

means

that Sebastian's

unable to sustain the

novel as a central character; after about

its

minishing interest in Sebastian's alcoholism

might almost be said

to

is

so

weight of the

midpoint, he simply dis-

appears, thereafter to be infrequently reported on.

Sebastian's role. This difficulty

goodness

full

lies

24

Behind the

di-

the diminution of

with his major "good" characters

have been habitual with Waugh. Tony Last in

A Handful of Dust and Guy Crouchback in the Sword of Honour trilogy are largely passive or acted upon; the libertines or blasphemers

—

Basil

Anthony Blanche, even the Randolph Churchill of the Di25 aries seem to corner most of the vitality. Waugh 's apparent inSeal,

—

ability to

combine energy with goodness suggests

made alcoholism

a center of intrinsic interest or a

that,

whether he

means

to

an end,

he could not have created a character such as the Consul in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano: half-crazed by drink, hallucinating, torn

and tormented by good and

evil spirits,

In contrast to the Consul's tumult

the hellish barranca, there

is

and

above

all

vividly dramatized.

his final, precipitous

about Sebastian's alcoholic suffering. But,

at least until

comes preoccupied with more transcendent matters, he complex, and

at

holism, especially of

its

tailed,

fall

into

something too restrained or genteel

Waugh

be-

gives a de-

times subtle delineation of Sebastian's alcospiritual aspects.

26

E E The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

It

would be

la work

of literature

Boughly

steeped in alcohol than

HHI Eugene

more

however Hickey loon

The

to his drinking

instead of

companions

for

The

fact that

affectionately as

when he shows up

what has customarily been

tion of Harry's birthday.

or ap-

is

Harry Hope's skid-row

at

his friends into confusion

drunk

The

central character of the play,

— Theodore Hickman, known simply and

— throws

thor-

drama

O'Neill's

Iceman Cometh; virtually every character in the large cast pears to be a confirmed drunkard.

imagine

difficult to

sa-

sober

his binge in celebra-

Hickey was a periodic drunk

who went on a spree only would not have raised doubts about the reality of his alcoholism for O'Neill, who was himself a periodic alcoholic until, at

who

never mixed alcohol with work and

twice a year

age thirty-seven, he began an almost totally successful lifelong absti1

nence. Although Hickey's alcoholism

by

interest

may be

his underlying psychological

play, for a large portion of the

surpassed in dramatic

problems revealed

performance most viewers

late in the

will

be

curi-

ous about the remarkable change in Hickey from inebriation to so-

He

briety.

claims to have achieved

much more

than abstinence; in

claiming also the attainment of an unshakable peace or serenity, he

seems

to

be implying that he has effected in himself a drastic refor-

mation of character. As even most laymen

Anonymous has been method

ate widely tices of

far

more

in effecting sobriety.

If,

know

today, Alcoholics

successful than any other regimen or as

we shall see, Hickey

tends to devi-

from some of the most fundamental principles and prac-

AA, the viewer aware of these

his assertions of a

will

have good reasons to doubt

happy, peaceful sobriety long before his

self-disclosures discredit them. Furthermore,

reaching this sobriety

is

if

Hickey's

unsound, he can scarcely

fulfill

terrible

means of

his enthusi-

49

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

astic

ern.

mission of conveying

2

to his old drinking friends at

it

tools

cellent

Hope's tav-

AA provide

In short, throughout the play the principles of

ex-

examining Hickey's salesmanship in order to

for

new product

determine the quality of his

or "line," sobriety.

Hickey observes some principles and practices similar to those of

AA. Just

after

he arrives

men

he promises the

at Harry's,

not deliver any "temperance bunk," recognizing the siveness of such an approach (p. 79).

becoming honest with also

seems eager

oneself, a

major tenet of AA

AA method

maintenance of sobriety. 3 Although

(p. 81).

much

will

At

first

he

and hope,"

for the establishment

a

and

find out late in the play that,

had suspected, Hickey was withholding

tion about himself, ically

we

he

or offen-

importance of

stresses the

to share his "experience, strength,

phrase expressing a chief

as Larry

He

that

futility

essential informa-

of the time he appears to be sympathet-

sharing his experience with Harry's friends and noticing the

problems to his own: "1 know exactly what you're up against, boys. I know how damned yellow a man can be when it comes to making himself face the truth. I've been through the mill. ... I know you become such a coward you'll grab at any lousy

similarities of their

excuse to get out of killing your pipe dreams"

Hickey understands that his others

is

assumes ing

own

(p. 189).

alcoholic drinking

AA also,

Like

and

that of the

only a symptom; once they eradicate the cause, which he to

be pipe dreams that torment them with guilt for not act-

on them, the symptom should disappear

pressive than his sharing

(p. 81).

4

Even more im-

and knowledge, by the time of

his appear-

ance in the play Hickey seems to have reached a major goal of AA, the acquisition of serenity

complishment most

and inner peace. He emphasizes

insistently (p.

Hickey's practices, ideas,

79

et passim).

and achievements,

closely as

them may seem to resemble some of AA's, are inauthentic. In way to characterize Hickey is to see his actions

enlightening

ody or

travesty of genuine adherence to

AA

this ac-

5

principles

some fact,

of

one

as a par-

and proce-

dures. For example, he doubtless succeeds, in a verbal sense, in

avoiding "temperance bunk," but his efforts to reform the denizens of

Hope's saloon by persuading them to surrender their pipe dreams are so zealously obsessive that Harry quite reasonably likens Hickey to "a

bughouse preacher escaped from an asylum"

of the least of Hickey's failures. strength,

Not only

is

and hope" extremely incomplete

(p.

244). This

is

one

his sharing of "experience, until late in the play;

it is

50 Equivocal Spirits

prompted by reasons about which Hickey is apparently unconscious and which are much less praiseworthy than the motive of helping others to achieve sobriety. As his impatience with their intractability grows, his proselytizing fervor recedes and is diluted by cynicism.

He

refers to his efforts as "selling

them the

to the times

dog on me,"

my line

and compares

of salvation"

when he would trick some "dame, who was sicking house wouldn't be properly

into believing that "her

furnished unless she bought another wash boiler"

something more reprehensible

at

work here than

There

(p. 147).

is

Harry's "bughouse

preacher," for Hickey derives pleasure from the attempt to wield

power over them

his

former drinking companions. Instead of bidding

problem over

to turn their drinking

to

God,

as

one

AA

prin-

6

would have them do, Hickey plays God himself. Even as he change them are a species of salesman's con, he expects them to entrust themselves to his care and guidance. In general, then, Hickey makes a mockery of the AA program. He ciple

reveals that his efforts to

claims to have achieved a degree of mental and emotional tranquility that

AA

thinks possible only after action and

twelve extremely demanding principles.

on most of these must be possible, just as

it

lifelong

and

7

who

follow

the

is

its

deliberation

on

AA holds that work is

im-

holds that the serenity Hickey regards as perma-

modest but

program (AA,

his friends believe that

realistic

p. 60).

& 12, p.

hope

that

75). Progress, not

AA extends

to those

Hickey, in contrast, would have

he has gained almost instant perfection. By

how he

persistently failing to explain briety,

much

fact,

that complete mastery

nent can be enjoyed only at intervals (12 perfection,

In

Hickey implies that

has achieved his serene so-

took only will power to vanquish his

it

pipe dreams. AA, though, contends that will power usually plays

havoc with alcoholics and strength.

"easier, softer

supplant

tries to

Hickey 's exertion of

it

with other sorts of

will, then, is a striking

way" or shortcut

that

instance of the

AA specifically warns against as a When Hickey

snare for anyone seeking reliable sobriety (AA, p. 58).

attempts to impose his will on the others and to convince them that they must submit to his notions, he resembles the actor

manage or stage of actor's

direct everyone with

life;

when

whom

who wants to

he comes in contact on the

they refuse to behave exactly as he wishes, the

subsequent conduct and emotions accurately mirror Hickey's:

"He decides

to exert himself

more.

.

.

.

Still

the play does not suit

51

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism him. Admitting he

may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying"

people are more to blame. (AA, p. 61).

Hickey's most fundamental problem his important study of alcoholism,

Prodigal

Son

as the

is

a lack of self-acceptance. In

Vernon Johnson sees the

in his intense feelings of self-abasement or self-loathing.

also notes that this

one of the most

is

must surmount

the alcoholic sobriety.

biblical

paradigm or prototype of the alcoholic, especially

difficult

it.

Johnson

but necessary hurdles

in his pursuit of a lasting

Hickey never surmounts

8

and contented

Although he acknowledges his

alcoholism and thus takes a step toward self-acceptance, further progress

halted by the obsessive cycle of guilt

is

and

self-hatred

turned to murderous anger against his wife.

Because of his compulsiveness, Hickey achieve honesty about himself.

anyone willing

to

work hard

is

particularly unable to

AA practically guarantees

at its principles

— except

sobriety to

who

for those

are "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves" (AA, p. 58).

Although "constitutionally" might pose questions of

some

pretation in that

he

falls

contexts, Hickey

is

in this group. His disability prevents

ing anything like the vitally important Steps 4

searching and

uncovered

to

fearless

God,

Hickey appears his

life

to

inter-

so crippled psychologically

him from

practic-

and 5 of AA: making

moral self-evaluation, and admitting the

a

faults

oneself, and at least one other person. Although work out both these steps by telling the story of

to the habitues of

Hope's barroom, in

reality the results are

only a grotesque travesty. The elaborate network of projection, de-

and self-deception woven by most alcoholics

nial, self-justification,

and destroyed by Steps 4 and 5 of AA intact.

guilt

Though

and

it is

self- hatred,

confesses the

is,

in Hickey's case, left largely

frayed around the edges by his reiterations of

he quickly repairs

its

only major hole

when he

words of hatred he uttered over Evelyn, declaring

he must have been insane

that

moment. Furthermore, even if Hickey's story exhibits some honesty, he tells it reluctantly and involuntarily, only when other methods of winning the habitues to his

views have apparently

failed.

honest, Hickey achieves

at that

Being only grudgingly and peripherally

none of the

benefits usually derived

from

work on Steps 4 and 5. Hickey's self-assessment is not fearless but full of fear, for he knows that it must lead to the disclosure of his real

52

Equivocal Spirits

from

remorse, and

murder of Evelyn. Instead of bringing

relief

similarly oppressive emotions, as the

two steps are designed

Hickey's travesty of

The most

them

and aggravates these

revives

basic flaw of Hickey's Step 4

or deepening his honesty,

guilt,

is

to do,

feelings.

that instead of increasing

As he

actually increases his dishonesty.

it

reviews his marriage and his continued bouts of drinking and whor-

Hickey projects more and more of his self-hatred onto Evelyn,

ing,

until finally

he blames her for his behavior and even suspects her of

deliberately

augmenting

it

by her repeated forgiveness

(p.

239). This

massive displacement of responsibility exactly reverses the direction

which would be inward;

of an honest fourth step,

on the

self

should overcome

not altogether one's

concentration

its

resentments and, even in situations

should "disregard the other person

fault,

From

volved entirely" (AA, p. 67). dition,

all

in-

his disingenuous fifth step, in ad-

Hickey receives none of the advantages specified

in

AA litera-

transcending alienation or isolation; achieving a sense of being

ture:

forgiven

and

a concomitant ability to forgive;

defined as "a clear recognition of what and

and gaining humility,

who we

really are" (12

12, pp. 58-59). Hickey fails to bring about any desirable change

one resounding,

if

peace to his friends

he imagines ferred to in

it

an

short lived, success at Harry's.

it

in himself; his

in transmitting his

kind of

this is scarcely the attractive

to be, "a healing tranquillity"

and

peace

"a resting place" re-

AA description of the results of the

p. 63). Rather, judging

in the play,

But

is

&

fifth

step (12

& 12,

from one of Hickey's descriptions quite early

sounds more

like a

permanent

rest or the lethal

peace

he bestowed on Evelyn in his travesty of the "amends steps," eight

AA. (On pp. 226-27 he speaks of his murder as "the one possible way to make up" for all his wrongs to her.) Freed of

and

nine, of

their pipe

dreams, Hickey assures the others at Hope's, "You can

go of yourself at

last.

Rest in peace. There's less

Let yourself sink

no

farther

ominously, especially

diction of O'Neill's

if

you have

we know

and the Doc gives you a shot drift off" (pp.

mate death.

When

to go." Alternatively

the story of the

kill

but no

morphine adin

Long

effect of this new when you're sick and suffering

in the arm,

85-86). But most

they

let

sea.

compares the

peace to a powerful drug dosage, "like

and you

bottom of the

to the

mother and her counterpart, Mary Tyrone

Day's Journey into Night, Hickey also

like hell

down

and the pain

often his

metaphors

tomorrow, Hickey informs his

goes, inti-

friends,

53

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

game

"You've finally got the

man's spell over them suffer a

of

life

licked" (p. 225). Until his sales-

broken by his pleas of insanity, his friends do

is

kind of death; though desperately trying to get drunk in

order to escape Hickey's goading, they find, as Harry repeatedly puts it,

that the "booze" has lost

AA

plication of the

its

"kick" or "life" (pp. 202-3).

concept of peace or serenity

before renewed effort and activity.

The

those

for

the promised result

who work is

a vital

The im-

that of a pause

peace

result of Hickey's

is

a

him and one another,

deathlike trance, severing his friends from

whereas

is

hard at practicing

AA

principles,

brotherhood of love and caring (AA,

pp. 152-53).

Perhaps the broadest promise in a group of statements sometimes collectively designated as the

and outlook upon most

significant

life

will

tion to his problems,

much

of

the calm of death.

p.

84) for the better. Hickey's

changes are disastrous: he moves from a viable

though tormented way of heaping

AA promises is that "our whole attitude

change" (AA,

it

living to a desperate

and untenable

from accepting responsibility

solu-

for his faults to

on Evelyn, from human anguish or

Whether by AA standards or by those

suffering to

of

common-

sense observation, one of Hickey's most appalling failures

misjudgment

in trying to force his ideas

on people who are

is

his

plainly

unreceptive to change. 9 His persistence might seem completely in-

comprehensible were

it

not for the

fact that

much more is at stake new strength.

than helping the others or impressing them with his

Through

their conversion

he seeks vindication not only of the sound-

ness of his ideas but also of his sanity, justification and even forgiveness for the murderous length to which he went to achieve peace.

have

10

Even

so,

fallen into

it

remains somewhat puzzling that Hickey could

such palpable error without assuming that he

is

more

thoroughly insane or blind to reality than he appears to be; in detecting the faults or foibles of others, he proves time

markably shrewd. Yet he misses the

essential

and again

to

and unbridgeable

be

ence between himself and the derelicts at Harry's. Whereas he intolerably tortured

must

by the unrealizable pipe dream of sobriety

finally annihilate its source, the derelicts are

selves, their

re-

differis

so

that

he

content with them-

pipe dreams, and the alcohol that helps them to post-

pone attempts

to fulfill these

dreams and

to anesthetize

any sense of

moral or social responsibility. Their dreams are so anachronistic that efforts to fulfill

them would amount

to insanity:

although he has not

54

Equivocal Spirits

left

his saloon for twenty years,

in the

neighborhood would

Harry thinks that hundreds of people

still

remember him

affectionately;

Tomorrow, one of Hope's denizens, thinks he can laundry the clothes that he evidently

51-52).

hit the skids (pp.

Men

left

retrieve

there years before,

Jimmy from a

when he

so addled cannot take kindly to any

disruptive idea, such as Hickey's assertion that Harry really hated his

deceased wife for making him "have ambition and go out and do things,

when

This

doubtless true, and

is

you wanted was

all

it

to get

such fury that he leaves his saloon

to

drunk

in peace" (p. 195).

has the intended effect of driving Harry

almost interminably

for that

delayed walk around his neighborhood. Hickey supposes that

its

abortive failure will have the further effect of exploding Harry's pipe

dream and reconciling him

to reality,

whereas

it

brings

him only an

empty, ghostly peace, similar to the results of the other attempts to

act.

But

his pipe

left to

dream and

derelicts'

alcohol, Harry, like

no trouble avoiding change or transforming reality: fading memories of his wife are for the most part comfortably

the others, has his

sentimental.

Harry and his

friends, then, feel

nothing

like the

agonized guilt

and

self-loathing that

Hickey expresses with increasing frequency

and

that have impelled

him

to act. This basic difference suggests that

these characters are drunks rather than alcoholics. Although the irrational behavior of cal, is

both types of drinkers will usually appear identi-

Vernon Johnson observes

that,

beneath the surface, the alcoholic

deeply troubled by the growing discrepancy between his drunken

conduct and the values or standards to which he

still

maintains an

allegiance. Eventually, Johnson says, although the drinker's

awareness

may have been dimmed for many years by alcohol, a crisis or a series of crises in his life may restore his sense of this discrepancy and actucommitment

ate a strong

example tion ill

is

to quit drinking. Johnson's

came when

his wife confronted

him with

patient died because he, the physician,

Johnson characterizes drunks

contrast,

most

fascinating

an alcoholic physician whose turning point and reformathe fact that a seriously

was passed out

at

home. In

as psychopaths or "socio-

paths [who] appear to lack the values or conscience essential to the conflict

we

observe in alcoholics. They actually

feel

no

guilt or

shame." 11 If

"psychopath" or "sociopath" seems rather harsh language for

Harry and

his friends,

on

reflection

one begins

to see its relevance.

55

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

The pipe dreams entertained by all the habitues of Harry's are an innocuous form of psychopathology, for, until compelled by Hickey, these characters have no intention of acting; nor do they feel much guilt or shame because of their failure. Because they comprise a small society that functions quite amiably until Hickey 's intrusion, their

sociopathy seems are almost if

all

less evident. In a larger perspective,

however, these

either highly unstable or marginal people, disreputable

not positively hostile to or potentially destructive of society: two

man

pimps, three prostitutes, a former circus con

New York policeman expelled

from the force

(Mosher), a former

for graft

(McGloin), the

mentally unbalanced son of a corrupt father (Willie), a former ward heeler (Harry), an embezzling gambler sides in the Boer

War

and

a

coward on opposing

(Lewis and Wetjoen), a former anarchist with

an ill-concealed contempt

for the

masses (Hugo), and a former pro-

The "former" attaching to most they have abandoned even their shady occupa-

prietor of a gambling

house

(Joe).

names indicates that tions. They could scarcely suffer from the alcoholic's conflict between behavior and values, for gambling, collecting graft, and like pursuits cannot be said to display values in any generally accepted sense. Perhaps one reason

why

they are satisfied to remain drunk

is

that

they are just enough influenced by society to recognize that their old activities

were corrupt or worthless and therefore warrant no struggle

for recovery.

For their

surrounding them,

own

it is

and

sake, moreover,

that of the society

comgood humor by obscur-

just as well that heavy use of alcohol

bines with their pipe dreams to keep

them

in

ing or hiding ugly truths. While temporarily deprived of intoxication

and of the pipe dreams

it

nourishes,

some

of

pathological violence. Rocky, reaching for a

Chuck, unites with him instead

them nearly erupt

gun

in a quarrel

in turning against the "doity nigger,"

them with

a

averted only by the derisive laughter of Larry.

A

Joe. Joe, "snarling with rage" at this epithet, goes after knife;

bloodshed

bit earlier,

is

in

with

Wetjoen and Lewis have had a

scuffle just offstage,

which

almost breaks out a second time (pp. 130, 167-68, 177). There are also near fights

McGloin If,

then,

ters in

between Cora and Pearl and between Mosher and

(pp. 100, 134).

by Vernon Johnson's distinction almost

The Iceman Cometh are drunks,

play? There can be only two, Hickey

who

and

all

of the charac-

are the alcoholics in the

Larry; but for different rea-

sons this designation must be tentative for each.

56

Equivocal Spirits

Hickey's intense guilt and revulsion with himself plainly imply his

awareness of failure to meet some standard. The source their love.

is

Evelyn and

Attempting to overcome his fecklessness and to

fulfill

his

love for Evelyn, he finally murders her because he realizes that he

cannot purge his flaws. But in making the attempt he at to

demonstrate

Jimmy Tomorrow, to did, Jimmy confesses

seems

drunkard

regard his love with indifference. Bleakly can-

drunkenness always had such paramount

that

importance for him that he (pp.

least

his alcoholism, not being able, like the

now

cannot even

229-30). For Hickey, the alcoholic in

recall

why he

conflict,

married

whoring and

sprees are followed by agonies of remorse at having betrayed his love.

The major question about Hickey

is

whether his

identity or coherence to be described as alcoholic.

self

has sufficient

According to AA,

the primary step toward ending alcoholic drinking occurs

drinker accepts that he

is

when

an alcoholic. Hickey's personality

badly divided that this unitary designation

may not be

the

is

feasible.

12

so In

Freudian terms, Hickey seems to consist of an id locked in recurring tension or struggle with a superego, represented by Evelyn values, that

ego

is

never satisfactorily assimilated or internalized; Hickey's

by the warfare between these two

radically polarized

is

Freud has a description of conflict rosis that

and her

fits

in

some types

forces.

of obsessional neu-

quite exactly the psychological condition of Hickey:

"the ego defends itself vainly, alike against the instigations of the

murderous science.

It

id

and against the reproaches of the punishing con-

succeeds in holding in check at least the most brutal ac-

tions of both sides; the

first

and eventually there follows

outcome

is

interminable self-torment,

a systematic torturing of the object, in so

by "object" we may understand Evelyn, comes to conceive of as punishment, we see how his torment becomes so excruciating that he seeks relief in causing Evelyn to suffer and ultimately ceases to restrain his "murfar as

it is

within reach."

If

whose

forgiveness Hickey

derous

id."

The

13

roots of Hickey's id are his strong

traction to the

low

beer drinking in

its

life

of the small

pool

halls, to its

and apparently innate

at-

town where he was born: to the to the madame,

whorehouse, and

whose bantering cynicism, deriving from the view world consists of a multitude of fools waiting to be duped and sold a bill of goods, reflects and confirms Hickey's own (pp. Mollie Arlington, that the

232-33). Hickey's account of his early

life,

however, poses a couple

57

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

of puzzles:

why he

and why he

not entirely at ease with his cynical outlook,

is

To the extent that Evelyn repre-

attracted to Evelyn.

is

would seem

sents Hickey's superego, she

to reinforce values that

Hickey had already absorbed from one or both parents. But Hickey does not refer

at all to his

mother, and toward his preacher father he

seems as harshly cynical as he

is

toward the

rest of the

world and,

times, toward himself, considering his father's talents to have

at

been

merely a variety of sales pitch. Hickey, then, appears to be utterly devoid of principles or values

when he meets

Evelyn. Yet

whores and the hangers-on

beyond

at the

zens of Harry Hope's saloon),

it.

dissatisfied

with

this life

Hickey seized upon Evelyn

the innate preferences for

town

we see, though without quite knowing

why, that Hickey was not only hating because of

his camaraderie with the

pool halls (forerunners of the deni-

which he despises

but even

to rescue

self-

him from

himself, perhaps be-

cause of unadmitted guilt engendered by his rejection of his father,

and

to

supply a worthier motive in his

life

than triumphs over an

endless stream of gullible sales prospects.

The marriage

ultimately

fails.

Psychologically speaking, the major

elements of Hickey's personality, the id and superego, failed to cohere in a single, relatively stable whole. With his urge to shed the fetters

of responsibility through drinking

world with the eyes of men

Hickey has

much

in

like the

common

and

his

tendency to see the

onetime circus

grifter

Ed Mosher,

with the sociopaths at Harry's. Unlike

them, however, he has a powerful superego or conscience.

companions have occasional twinges of obliterate

them by

alcohol.

self-hate, they

Such a solution

is

If

Harry's

can dull or

only temporary for

Hickey: driven by the opposed forces of his id and superego, his

mo-

complicated by alternating and irreconcilable

atti-

tives are further

tudes of love and hate, attraction and repulsion toward his superego.

The tension from the Hickey to

polarity of these emotions

is

too great for

tolerate indefinitely; hatred finally gains the

and leads him

upper hand

to kill the superego's source, Evelyn. Putting the

matter another way, Hickey's self-hatred, growing like a malignancy

from

his years of failure to arrest

comes so unbearably painful person: his wife,

who

it

that

or remove

its

causes, at last be-

he must project

it

onto another

exacerbated his awareness of failure by repeat-

edly forgiving his faults. 14

One can suppose

that

if

Hickey's personality had been better inte-

58

—

Equivocal Spirits

grated, he

might

finally

have stopped his drinking by making a

newed and determined commitment

and

to the responsibilities

ues represented by his love for Evelyn and their marriage. As

however, one half

may

re-

valit is,

regard Hickey as an anomaly, half a drunk and

an alcoholic. His

id,

with drunkenness as one of

tions, also uses this as a chief

weapon

in

its

its gratifica-

intermittent but invete-

which might be thought of as the redeemable alcoholic in Hickey and its chief support,

rate defiance of the superego,

potentially

Evelyn. The repeated enactments of defiance or rebellion carry Hickey away from, rather than toward, self-acceptance: given his native

cynicism, they feed his contempt for the part of his self that possesses values, for time

ing control.

and again

When

imagine that

it

demonstrates

it

and Evelyn

Hickey could

its

ineffectuality in exert-

are conquered

slide into the

by the

one might

id,

untroubled drinking of his

friends at Harry's. But extinguishing a part of the

self,

or total repres-

and so Hickey's superego, now twisted by hate, seems to resurface as an ostensible desire to save his friends from themselves, taking the form of his father's preaching that Hickey sion, never succeeds;

thought he had long ago rejected with contempt. 15 Because his id and

superego had been nearly balanced in strength, and because the tension of this balance provided a functional dynamic that compensated in part for his lack of integration, Hickey's

conquest really spells his

defeat, the dissolution of a personality precariously held together

only so long as

tensions were unresolved.

its

Hickey's superego,

and with

cendancy of the drunken

the alcoholic

it

id

self,

The overthrow of brings not the as-

but the end of a workable

Hickey's ideas of peace have insistently suggested,

and actions

all

in the play are merely the final twitches or

a rigor mortis of self sets in.

Larry Slade

from his love

is

who would

mother and

"Movement" of which she was

words

of his

spasms before

rather be a drunk, released his residual loyalty to the

a leader, indifferent to

all

values or

moral codes, convinced of the delusiveness of truth and of the ability of

values.

pipe dreams. But he

is

is

unable to achieve

this

much

of a

drunk or an

desir-

escape from its effect

on

alcoholic; although

he

Judging by the amount of liquor he consumes or

him, Larry seems not

As

16

an alcoholic

for Parritt's

self.

described early in the play as having a "half-drunken mockery in

his eyes" (p. 9),

whose

he

faculties or

is

the only character besides Hickey

moods never seem

and

significantly altered

Parritt

by

his

59

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism drinking. His alcoholism

is

be measured not by glasses or bottles

to

drained, but by the degradation of his

with the reality of old

and

ties

life

genders substantial self-hatred, as evidenced

cowardly clinging to flesh,"

life,

an attempt

in

break

to

values. His escape, like Hickey's, en-

when

Larry refers to his

to his "dirty, stinking bit of

"with a sneering, vindictive self-loathing"

withered old

(p. 197).

men

Both

are adept at clothing their self-hatred in cynicism, Larry articulately

debunking suckers

Hickey manifesting contempt

ideals in general,

who buy

for the

As the play ends, both seem

his sales pitch.

to

be

looking forward to death.

But such similarities should not be allowed to conceal the funda-

mental differences between Hickey and Larry. Despite his apparently genuine

if

rather shallow affection for

Hope and

his friends, for ex-

ample, Hickey's cynicism and contempt are more pervasive than Larry's. Finally

even Hickey's

tred, the quality of his

efforts to

help the others evince his ha-

peace being death: he hates them as he hates

himself, for they are reminders of his condition

when,

as

he says

dis-

gustedly, he used to return to Evelyn after a binge looking like

"something they threw out of the D.T. ward in Bellevue along with the garbage" (p. 237). Larry's attitudes are primarily three: a sweep-

ing cynicism or nihilism, pity or compassion for suffering,

with himself for this ings.

It is

pity. Pity is

not only that Larry

is

and anger

probably the strongest of his

less tortured

feel-

than Hickey and thus

can refrain from involving others in his self-hatred or inner conflicts. Being inherently more compassionate, he would spare the others pointless suffering

and protect

their only happiness. All of the inhabi-

tants of Harry's recognize Larry's benevolence,

expresses

it

most

but Jimmy Tomorrow

concisely: "You pretend a bitter, cynic philosophy,

but in your heart you are the kindest

Jimmy's version of Larry

is,

partly accurate. Larry's cynicism

man among

us"

(p. 44).

however, sentimentalized and only is

more than

a pose beneath

beats a heart of gold; his struggle between compassion indifference

is

real

and dramatic.

Parritt

betrayed both the

woman

no redeeming (his

and cynical

provides the most severe

of Larry's allegiances. Because the younger

ing and possesses virtually

which

man

is

test

signally unappeal-

features,

own mother) and

having evidently the

"Movement"

Larry has loved, and being personally dishonest, wheedling, and cowardly, he seems designed to afford Larry every opportunity to practice dismissive callousness. Larry appears to succeed in main-

60

Equivocal Spirits

taining this attitude until, with the departure of Hickey, Parritt at last

on Larry

prevails

mete out the death sentence he had been longing

to

A few minutes later,

for.

Parritt

commits

suicide. Unlike the vacancy,

the pure negation, of the peace that Hickey friends, Parritt's death is a

from himself an intolerable load of

may be an example

tence

circles as

of what

guilt

and dishonor.

Larry's sen-

sometimes referred

is

AA

to in

"tough love."

By enabling

AA principles in

Parritt to take certain steps similar to

order to heal his psyche and find peace, practicing certain sult,

would impose on Hope's

redemption, the only way he can remove

AA

it is

as

if

Larry himself

principles in an abbreviated fashion.

As a

he experiences important change. Committing suicide,

in effect takes AA's Steps

8 and

9,

making amends

to the

is

re-

Parritt

mother he

has betrayed even though he cannot effect her release from prison. In his protracted

and sporadic exchanges with

Larry, tracing a faltering

course (with Hickey 's unwitting help) from dishonesty to truth, Parritt

makes the kind

of searching self-evaluation

and 5 of AA. Larry

also

may be

demanded by Steps 4

said to undertake a searching

and

honest self-evaluation, although without the subsequent happiness

promised by AA.

To appreciate

attitudes in the early first

one must glance

Larry's changes,

and middle sections of

the play. In

one of

speeches, he ridicules truth as "irrelevant and immaterial" to

stating his preference for "the lie of a pipe

Though he denies death

it

(pp. 9-10).

one of his own pipe dreams

at this point,

is

that

importunities for help, Larry at about the midpoint of the

play reaches his nadir of cynicism

and

self-deception:

honor, faith or treachery are nothing to

same stupidity which into dust in the

me"

dream"

his

life,

a comfortable sleep that he will welcome. Beleaguered by

is

Parritt's

to

at several of his

(p.

same

is

ruler

me

and king of life, and

grave. All things are the

128). This nihilistic vision,

"Honor or

dis-

but the opposites of the in the

end they

rot

same meaningless joke

meant

to rebuff Parritt, also

represents an extreme in Larry's refusal to examine himself as the

source of such views.

Goaded by Hickey, Larry

later achieves a disconcerting

about himself: rather than looking forward to death, he afraid of

it

(pp.

196-97).

When

he sanctions

discovery is

actually

Parritt's suicide,

Larry

takes another major step in his moral "inventory," to use AA's term, for

he belies his professed indifference

to values

by acknowledging,

61

The Iceman Cometh and the Anatomy of Alcoholism

however Parritt's

reluctantly, the truth of

death Larry finds a

and seemingly irreconcilable for Parritt's ritt

honor and moral

way

to resolve

responsibility.

him

feelings: to signify his lingering affection

mother and the "Movement" and to find the only

The temporary nature of sized, for

he also

In

some highly disturbing revenge on Par-

to take

as the betrayer of both, yet to indicate his pity for Parritt

abling

17

by en-

morally satisfying solution to his anguish.

must be emphacondemned to see

this resolution for Larry

realizes, to his

dismay, that he

is

"the two sides of everything." Just as he has seen Parritt with both love

and

man

being, so he has viewed the

hate,

both as detested turncoat and suffering, pitiable hu-

"Movement" and

mother,

Parritt's

swinging between sardonic cynicism and compassion or

pity.

The

antinomies or dualities of his vision are ultimately irreconcilable. Yet

who

Larry,

berates himself as a

"weak

fool" (p.

258) for being thus

stronger than Hickey, who, unable to bear the tension of

divided,

is

his love

and hate

for Evelyn, simplified his feelings to a

murderous

hatred. Finally, as

he nears completion of his inventory, Larry recognizes

that fear or cowardice

worst

ment

fault.

18

—

"Life

He must know

is

too

much

for

me!"

him

258)

—

is

his

into

an involve-

Perhaps the shame of

this realiza-

that Parritt coerced

in life that will not continue.

(p.

tion transforms Larry's desire for death

from a philosophical pose

Though he seems unaware of it, Larry's headway against fear. As the

to

one im-

a genuine longing.

there

portant sign of

play ends, he

is

is

the only one not joining in the general intoxication. In reply to the

query of a

woman who

once asked

selves to the level of beasts to

have said that "he

pain of being a man."

who makes 19

why men sometimes lower them-

by drinking, Samuel Johnson

Larry,

it

is

reported

a beast of himself, gets rid of the

seems, will no longer seek the refuge

of drink to escape the pain of a self with irreconcilable dualities of vision.

Hickey and Larry are powerfully moving characters because O'Neill invested important elements of himself in both of them.

may

If

Hickey

represent something like the person that O'Neill feared he

would become arrest of

it

if

there

he continued his periodic drunkenness, with his

emerged an O'Neill more

like Larry: bleakly unillu-

sioned, wanting for years to die, yet renouncing alcohol as a relief

from his awareness of the painful antinomies of

self

and

existence.

20

FOUR Drinking and Society in the Fiction of

John Cheever

may be

Cheever

John

the

American writer who shows the

most thorough and

diver-

with drinking

sified familiarity

modern American society. At times the familiarity relaxes into comedy. As Cheever sketches the suburban milieu for his novel Bullet 1

in

Park, he introduces the reader to the Wickwires, at

unexceptionably

were always

and driving

attractive

first

couple but for the arresting

falling downstairs,

bumping

glance an

fact that

"they

into sharp-edged furniture

their cars into ditches." Their vulnerability to accident is

sufficiently explained

by an intimate look

at the detritus of their

Monday mornings. Mr. Wickwire, badly hung cry of pain

when he

sees the empties

over, utters a

on the

shelf

by the

sink.

some pantheon of remorse. Their intent seems to be to force him to his knees and to wring from him some prayer. "Empties, oh empties, most merciful empties have mercy upon me for the sake of Jack Daniels and Seagram Distillers." Their immutable emptiness gives them scotch, gin a look that is cruel and censorious. Their labels and bourbon have the ferocity of Chinese demons, but he definitely has the feeling that if he tried to placate them with a genuflection they would be merciless. He drops them into a

They

are ranged there like the gods in

—

—

wastebasket, but this does not dispose of their force. It is

2

doubtful that a reader can be disturbed by the drinking problem

man who

wry and witty about his condition. It is even more doubtful that one would prefer the condition of a doctor, portrayed later in the same novel, who has recently joined Alcoholics Anonyof a

is

so

mous. In a trenchant parody, Cheever reveals what appears first-hand

knowledge of two of the

least attractive features of

to

be

some

63

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever

AA parlance:

its

47-48). Not only the Wickwires'

gelicalism (pp.

Rabelaisian

confessional banalities and the logorrhea of

abandon

to drink

would be more

but even a

life

fun, at least

if

one may

judge the latter spirit from a scene enacted in another novel by

Wapshot and Mrs. Wilston

in a

room

evan-

its

Moses

Viaduct House,

at the

St.

Botolphs's hotel. Both are far gone in drink. Moses, attempting to

carry his rather too generously proportioned inamorata to bed, to the right, recouped his balance and weaved to the right Then he was going; he was going; he was gone. Thump. The whole Viaduct House reverberated to the crash and then there was

"weaved again.

an awful pet.

.

.

.

He

stillness.

She,

lay athwart her, his

lying in a heap,

still

was the

without anger or impatience. She smiled.

cheek against the car-

first

'Let's

to speak.

She spoke

have another drink,'

she said." 3

Although Cheever significant than

is

capable of using alcohol for nothing

more

comic shock, as when a character urinates into a

sherry decanter and the rector arrives "and sipped piss," or for spin-

ning a kind of grotesque

tall tale,

as

when a woman

turns to drunken

promiscuity and then commits suicide because her appliances

down and

peatedly break

she has difficulty getting them repaired, 4

he characteristically goes beyond these

relatively easy achievements.

Perhaps one reason for his parody of Alcoholics Park

is

his desire,

Not Appear,"

it

Anonymous in

Bullet

conveyed in "A Miscellany of Characters That Will

to avoid

this story that deals

on

re-

such cliches as "the alcoholic." The section of

with the stereotype

is

in fact

an

effective satire

("X" has a ridiculously exaggerated attack of the shakes, for ex-

ample) and on

potential for sentimental exploitation. X, having

its

been offered a fresh there.

start in Cleveland, is returning

His family, meeting him at the station,

is

a

home from

a trip

model of propriety,

support, and affection: "His pretty wife, his three children, and the

come down

flows off the train.

welcome Daddy." Daddy practically Cheever briskly aborts both the scene and the sec-

tion at this point.

It is

two dogs have

all

perhaps not so

sentimentality (he himself in the

to

is

guilty of

much it

that

Cheever objects

on occasion

death of the boy in "An Educated American

he objects to the simplicity that enables such, stripped of every other tive in "the

When

way we

live."

trait, is

it.

—

to

for instance,

Woman")

The drunk or

as that

alcoholic as

neither interesting nor instruc-

5

Cheever resorts

to stereotyped drinkers,

it

is

usually for

64

Equivocal Spirits

some extremely short vignette or some transitory bibulous Irish maid Nora Quinn, in "The Day the Pig Well," briefly parallels the action of the flight of stairs (p. 226).

on another

title

effect.

The

Fell into the

by tumbling down a

But "The Sorrows of Gin," centering in part

Irish servant,

Rosemary,

is

shifting, largely unreliable perspectives

complicated by irony and by

on drinking.

We see many of

and persons through the eyes of a fourth-grade girl, Amy after looking in on her parents' cocktail party near the

the events

Lawton, who,

beginning of the story, listens at length to their Unlike her fellow servant and

from positions

mary

for drinking

implicitly

new

who was

sister,

and who died

repeatedly dismissed

in Bellevue Hospital, Rose-

eschews alcohol and professes

to find her strength in

About the drinking of Amy's parents she

the Bible.

after calling

empty her

it

"all sociable,"

stuff!" (pp.

One

199, 201).

domestic, on her

first

day

Amy

she counsels

father's "gin bottle into the

irony

off,

cated, her coat "spotted with

is

cook, Rosemary.

sink

contradictory:

is

quite vehemently to

now and

then

—

the filthy

that this seemingly respectable

returns from

mud and

New York

totally intoxi-

When

ripped in the back."

Mr. Lawton reprimands her for drinking in front of Amy, Rosemary cries,

"I'm lonely. ... I'm lonely, and I'm afraid, and

(p. 202). Evidently the Bible has deserted her. She

it's

is

all I've

got"

discharged at

once, and as a result of this object lesson in the ravages of alcohol,

Amy

pours one of her

father's gin bottles

down

the sink. This act

newly hired

leads the very next day to the discharge of a second

cook, Amy's father angrily assuming that she has drunk the gin and

meanwhile inveighing against various other servants who have con-

sumed

his liquor. Just as

he reduces these people to stereotypes,

in another irony, his daughter reduces

and pours out spective

bottle,

more

father's drinking,

as

to the level of

one

that

seems

Rosemary

to bear

Mr. Lawton accuses the babysitter, Mrs. Henlein, a

the suburb's decayed gentility.

him

him

of his gin. This loss produces a third per-

some resemAmy's and Rosemary's. Having discovered another empty

on the

blance to

still

so,

drunk but

Her reaction

is

also to telephone the police with the

sure, vociferously urging

them

to arrest

him

member of

not only to denounce

(p.

same

disclo-

207).

Partly because of the unreliable perspectives, the realities of the

Lawtons' drinking are not easy to determine.

mary and

If

the advice of Rose-

the hysteria of Mrs. Henlein are obviously based

geration, there appears to be

an element of truth in

on exagand

their

—

65

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever

Amy's

— view

of the parents. But even Amy's view

when not aroused by works

in her father,

firmly denies to herself

any

not consistent:

Rosemary, she seems able to

fears traceable to

achieve a degree of objectivity. Although that alcohol

is

Amy detects several changes

most notably a happier mood, she between him and the drunks

similarity

who hang on lampposts or fall down. But then she recalls occasions when her father missed a doorway by a foot and once when a cocktail guest, Mrs. Farquarson, missed a chair

she has heard about, people

she went to

sit in.

Amy

concludes that the main difference between

clownish drunks and her parents and their friends never indecorous"

(p. 205).

When

is

were

that "they

the other guests and Amy's par-

ents pretend that Mrs. Farquarson did not miss her chair, they imply, for the reader

to dispel

may be

if

not for Amy, that such excess

any lingering

right

is

not approved. As

if

Rosemary or Mrs. Henlein

possibility that

about the Lawtons' drinking, Amy's

father, in the final

section of the story, awakes "cheered by the swelling light in the

sky

.

.

refreshed by his sleep" and hoping to find

.

his daughter,

who had

tried to

run away, "that

the best place of all" (pp. 208-9).

On

some way

to teach

home sweet home was

these notes, vaguely suggest-

— but reform —

ing that the Lawtons have no serious drinking problem

haps also hinting

at paternal

repentance and

per-

the story

closes.

As

my concluding remarks on "The

Cheever's primary interest in drinking

Sorrows of Gin" may indicate, is

societal:

not so

much

in en-

larging our understanding of alcoholism or in exploring

its

on individuals

or actual, in

as in seeing

its

manifold

effects, potential

marriages, families, or society. This focus

is

not surprising;

influence

it

would

be hard to think of a modern American writer more concerned with society

and

6

ego. In a

less

concerned with the introspections of the romantic

number of Cheever's stories, drinking may be seen

three ways, though sometimes in a variety of combinations

mutations: (1)

when

is

one of

and per-

practiced outside a recognized social form or to

excess, drinking usually signals

drinking

in

some kind

of societal trouble; (2)

occasionally used as a token or an affirmation of a social

or familial bond; (3) occasionally, abstemiousness or abstinence

viewed just as dimly as excess, and actual or potential ciety.

As

harm

much

the

same reasons

—

its

either to the abstinent person or to his so-

more — "Reunion,"one"Goodbye, My

illustrations of

three stories

for

is

or

of these approaches to drinking, Brother,"

and "The Swim-

66 Equivocal Spirits

mer"

— seem

most remarkable

the

for their intensity, their skill, or

Even more notable, perhaps, because of

their complexity.

scendence of these approaches and their limitations,

Moving Van."

Finally, in three of Cheever's later stories

sider the evidence that

tran-

its

"The Scarlet

is

we

shall con-

Cheever becomes skeptical of society as a

sat-

norm by which to measure and criticize deviation. Instead, stories suggest, it may be that society is deviant and that heavy

isfactory

these

drinking, drug abuse, or other forms of behavior traditionally repre-

hended

Of

as deviant are potentially redemptive.

the three views of drinking enumerated above, the

common

most

in Cheever's stories.

may be memorable and gel of the Bridge" gazes

early

morning hours,

there emerges "a car.

little

Even extremely

at the

fell" (p.

in a sable cape being led out to a

scene seems only the visible

No

explicit

symptom

An-

in the

494). Like the images of Blake's "Lon-

companion or husband shows her either a

examples

of "The

entrance of a restaurant across the street

woman

rangement. For what other reason would a

condition?

brief

As the lonely narrator

from his Los Angeles hotel window

drunken

She twice nearly

don," this

poignant.

the

first is

answer

is

some larger demeans whose

tip of

woman

of

"solicitude" drink herself into this

provided, but that her condition

or a representative cause of social malaise

is

is

sug-

gested by another brief scene immediately following, in which the

occupants of two cars stopped for a

traffic light

get out, assault

one

another brutally, then drive off (p. 494). Both scenes indicate, whether as cause or effect, a rupture or absence of the social bond.

escorted, the

woman

is

Though

so isolated by her condition that seeing her

can only deepen the narrator's sense of loneliness. Infidelity, adultery, seduction, or

promiscuity

is

often seen

by

Cheever as either abetted by or associated with drinking. In "The Five-Forty-Eight," Blake, a married

pugnant characters

man who

in Cheever's fiction,

newly hired secretary

is

makes

— an accomplishment

one of the most

his

re-

seduce a

for his hiring her

other prospective employers, learning of her history of mental

troubles,

worked

would not

late

one

— by proposing

night. In

a drink after they have both

"Brimmer," the

of course denotes drinking, like

to

that proves easy because

he takes unconscionable advantage of her gratitude

when

move

is

even in appearance, whose natural

glassy-eyed

title

character,

whose name

portrayed as a master seducer, satyr-

and "almost always had

ally is drink;

a glass in his

he

hand"

is

sometimes

(p.

386). Al-

67

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever

though Brimmer arouses a to

sympathy when he

little

later

is

reported

be dying, for the most part the narrator regards his behavior with

when

distaste as a potential source of "carnal anarchy," especially

Brimmer shows no be married

hesitation about seducing a

(p. 388). Georgie, the mostly docile

band of "An Educated American Woman,"

is

woman and

he knows

made

finally

happy by an increasing awareness of his empty marriage is

awakened one night when he

bathroom

it is

facilitated

affair;

by drinking

adulteress of "The Brigadier

as

(p.

so un-

that his wife

and drunkenly,

more from

530). Shortly thereafter,

(p.

from sexual ardor, Georgie has an Cheever,

noisily

falls,

is

in their

loneliness than

usual with adultery in

531). Mrs. Flannagan, the

and the Golf Widow,"

enters an affair

with Mr. Pastern for another reason; as he learns to his dismay, not love but a key to his

bomb

shelter that she

component

Again, drinking seems an essential tery (pp.

is

in initiating the adultitle

and drinking

that

canny

him

in the

rustic, discovers that the lust

woman he loves, Maria Petroni, are When she declines his proposal

united with of marriage

flagrant promiscuity.

and he asks whether she wants a younger man, she ling,

but not one.

done

it.

want seven, one

1

This was before

I

met you.

men around

to

was a

drink and then

were

it is

after (p. 504).

500-501). In "Artemis, the Honest Well Digger," the

character, a excite

to

inarticulate hus-

lot to

finished,

come I

anything bad at

for dinner. ...

we

all

didn't feel dirty or all."

I

replies, "Yes, dar-

right after the other.

.

.

.

I've

asked seven of the best-looking I

cooked veal scaloppine. There

got undressed.

.

.

.

depraved or shameful.

Although Artemis continues

while longer, that account "was about

it"

to see

When 1

they

didn't feel

Maria for a

for their relationship (pp.

652-53). however, "Reunion"

It is,

—

a story of only

two and a half pages,

the shortest of the sixty-one in Cheever's collected stories

—

that has

power as a depiction of the devastating effect of excessive drinking on human relations. There are several reasons for this power. One, no doubt, lies precisely in the extreme brevity and conthe greatest

centration; these contrast with a tendency in quite a few of Cheever's stories

toward diffuse and multiple

flection. stories.

7

"Reunion"

is

effects, authorial

perhaps the most

fully

or essayistic re-

dramatized of Cheever's

Except for the opening paragraph, which supplies informa-

tion about the circumstances of the

everything

is

carried

meeting of father and son, nearly

on by speech or

action.

Another source of

its

68

Equivocal Spirits

power may be

that the situation

tifying experience of Cheever's

the surprising

number

— profound em— draws on some mor-

deals with

it

barrassment by an inebriated father

a boy's

indelibly

own boyhood

or youth. Judging from

of times that Cheever has incorporated ver-

sions of this experience in other works, though usually in just a few

sentences or in short scenes, clearly he the point of obsession.

8

If

is

fascinated with

these other stories afford only peripheral

treatments of this experience, "Reunion," by giving tion, also

A

maximizes

its

The son, who

directly to his discomfort or

dence

is

his

is

Cheever's

that

he must leave his father

For the most part the narrator-son

Cheever chooses

is

what he

tact,

no point

refers

embarrassment; although our only

growing insistence

recorder and the focus

exclusive atten-

also the narrator, at

is

them

a train, the tacit quality of his feelings renders affecting.

it

force.

further aspect of the story's artistry

leaves unsaid.

almost to

it

is

to catch

more

the

all

evi-

only an unobtrusive

on the behavior of the

Here too

father.

though vivid and loud, the father

to underplay:

is

by no means grossly obvious about his intoxication; 9 we know that he has been drinking (or that he his

is

a habitual drinker)

son for lunch only by the observation that the

a rich ens,

compound

drunk only from one ludicrous

slip as

(p.

518).

smell "was

father's

behavior

is

We know that he is

he orders drinks ("two Bibson

Geefeaters") and from his anger with a waiter

for smiling (p. 519).

only a heightening or extension of

his natural personality. For the son, tolerable.

father's

of whiskey, after-shave lotion, shoe polish, wool-

and the rankness of a mature male"

Probably the

when he meets

however,

Although he has been living with

this

heightening

his divorced

is in-

mother and

has not seen his father for three years, he "was terribly happy to see

him

again"

end of the meeting,

to meet him for lunch in New York; he even wants a commemorate the occasion (p. 518). But when, at the

and

photograph

to

story,

it is

he says that he never saw his father again

also clear that

mere hour and a

after this

he never made another attempt. In a

half, then, a father's intoxicated

behavior ends his

relationship with an affectionate son.

The

father

as the son

is

seems just as eager to

have

it,

to

demonstrate his love for his son

but his expression of that love

is

abysmally

misconceived. In slightly different circumstances, his rudeness to waiters in ordering drinks might display a refreshing audacity.

climax of the restaurant scene in the film Five Easy

Pieces, in

The

which

69

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever Jack Nicholson sweeps everything

off the table

and then

leaves,

evokes gasps of admiration from the audience. Nicholson's rudeness,

however,

is

retaliatory; the waitress fully deserves

solence, in contrast, erately, the father

is

The

it.

father's in-

unprovoked, and, where Nicholson acts delib-

appears simply compulsive. In this characteristic

also lies a basic difference

between the father and Gee-Gee, the hard

drinker of "The Scarlet Moving Van." Not only are his insults less

and

most part Gee-Gee seems

the

trivial; for

to

know what he

to be calculatedly indifferent to the consequences.

not indifferent to the impression he

away from four

are turned

leave or

sonny.

by

.

.

.I'm terribly sorry"

(p.

is

his son. After they direct invitation to

520), though whether he refers to

have lunch, or both,

know. Yet the father then proceeds actly the abusiveness that sir,

by

doing

father

refusal of service, the father says to the boy, "I'm sorry,

his behavior or their failure to

"Kind

making on

is

restaurants, either

is

The

will

he has

you be good enough

to treat a inflicted

to favor

is

that a

man

impossible to

on a

ex-

series of waiters:

me with one of your God-

damned, no-good, ten-cent afternoon papers?" striking irony of the story

is

news vendor with

(p.

The most drunken com-

520).

enslaved to

pulsiveness seeks to impress his son with his mastery over people.

Perhaps not by chance, he resembles the drinker, in one of the most searching parables from the so-called Big

Book

of Alcoholics

Anony-

who plays at being a kind of cosmic stage manager, with other people merely so many puppets to be manipulated in order to dismous,

play his

We

power (AA, pp. 60-61).

can respond with a sense of

liberation to Gee-Gee's insults in part because his is

primary audience

one of adults and equals capable of shrugging him

ers of "Reunion."

son;

and

Gee-Gee

if

is

But the primary

if

off like the wait-

silent auditor of that story is the

his father is as indifferent to the to that of his fellow suburbanites,

humanity of waiters

we may surmise

as

that, in

driving his son away, the father has sentenced himself to a desolating

and permanent

loneliness.

"Reunion" focuses on the shock of embarrassment, only hinting a pathos to follow. less effective

rator,

knowing

house he

is

"The Seaside Houses," though more

than "Reunion," develops at first

its

diffuse

latent pathos.

The

at

and nar-

only the name, Greenwood, of the owners of a

renting for the

summer,

is

saddened and disturbed by his

discovery of several empty whiskey bottles around the house and

grounds. Cheever, an alcoholic, must have been drawing from fears

— 70

Equivocal Spirits

about his

was

own

drinking; his daughter has recorded that "long before

he was alcoholic, there were bottles hidden

even aware that

1

all

over the house, and even outside in the privet hedge and the garden 10

The narrator Greenwoods had built

shed."

learns from a neighbor that, although the a curved staircase for their daughter's

months pregNew York on

ding, she "was married in the Municipal Building eight

nant by a garage mechanic"

by chance sees Mr. Greenwood

business, the narrator

nizing

him from

hands shook

his photograph:

that [his] flush

in a bar, recog-

"you could see by the way his

was alcoholic"

by emphasizing the

tures pathos partly

Greenwood

487). Then, going to

(p.

wed-

(p.

487). Cheever cap-

men

such

isolation of

one of a "legion" of "prosperous and well-dressed

is

hangers-on who, in spite of the atmosphere of a fraternity" in the

one another" (pp. 487-88) Greenwood extensively. But in his

bar,

"would not think of speaking

and

partly by not characterizing

to

only words, Greenwood exhibits his close kinship to the father of

Do you And

"Reunion": "'Stupid,' he said to the bartender. 'Oh, stupid. think you could find the time to sweeten in the

manner

— "My

and the words (probably

found scrawled on a baseboard of the

hers) that the narrator has

My — 484) "The Seaside Houses" may be regarded

rented house (p.

my

of his daughter's marriage

drink?'" (p. 488).

father

is

a

rat.

repeat.

1

father

as a

is

a rat"

companion

"Reunion," enlarging on the loneliness and pain stemming from affections destroyed

by a

to

filial

father's drinking.

Excessive drinking, then, can lead to grievous ruptures of the

bonds of domestic desirability of

But two of Cheever's stories indicate the

affection.

moderate or

social drinking, in particular as a ritual

that affirms or strengthens domestic ties

mers ily

in the

of "The

Day

the Pig Fell into the Well,"

maintaining closeness tunate pig

When

family,

is

tantrum

During sum-

who at age

its

good

forty

one point but

is

boy once almost

graces,

the Nudds'

he

is

the

a part of the

child, has a

temper

calmed by a drink and a game of checkers

is

Nudds

ceptance and affection.

fam-

included in this drink-

problem

with her father (pp. 233-34). So drinking has the

mony by which

Nudd

whose primary means of

that day, gathers each evening for

Russell Young, a local

reinstated in

at

affections.

ritual retellings of the story of the unfor-

is its

and other events of

drinks.

ing. Joan,

and

Adirondacks over a period of many years, the

quietly reassure

effect of a cere-

one another of

their ac-

71

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever

Similarly,

and even more prominently, the

has beneficent significance in "Goodbye,

one of a couple of Cheever

between

social drinking

stories in

drinking

ritual of family

My

Brother." This

which the contrast or

also

is

conflict

and apparent or actual abstemiousness

is

es-

pecially important.

Through images,

My

and some

allusive hints,

well- chosen names,

Pommeroy family reflects a larger cultural struggle between freedom and Puritanism. As implied by the names of the narrator's sister and wife, Diana and Helen, most of the family has gained emancipation; and

"Goodbye,

Brother" suggests that the tension within the

although he reverts to a

moment

of savagery in smiting his brother

Lawrence (an act obviously meant

to recall the story of

Abel), the narrator binds Lawrence's

wound. The

liberation

is

spirit of

Cain and

beauty and

triumphant as the story ends with Helen and Diana

emerging naked from the sea

after

mer home

Lawrence

in Massachusetts.

Lawrence has is

left

the family's

sum-

associated with Puritan as-

ceticism; he alone preserves the attitude of his ancestors that "all

earthly beauty

is

lustful

and corrupt"

Lawrence's abstemiousness

is

a

(p. 6).

major sign of

this spirit.

He

evi-

dently has a long-standing hostility to drinking; he has avoided

moved out on

neighbors for this reason, and he once

mate with

whom "he

had been very good

a college

room-

friends" because "the

man

drank too much" (pp. 18-19). Reuniting with his family for the first time in four years, he accepts a proffered drink only with indifference

and reluctance, thereby indicating family, for rite

his attitude

whom predinner drinks on

toward the

rest of his

the evening of his arrival are a

of inclusion. Ironically, although the family has

drunk too much

who

speaks with the

while waiting for Lawrence to appear, effrontery of

about a

asks, "Is that the

mother opens

(p. 7).

he

one with inhibitions lowered by alcohol. Inquiring

man who comes

home, he

it is

one

for his divorced sister

she's sleeping

a favorite subject,

asserts that "this

Though she has had

house

too

Diana

with now?"

after dinner,

(p. 6).

improvements on will

much

their

be in the sea in

to drink, she

ing in a harmless fantasy, whereas Lawrence

is

is

at

When

he his

summer

five years"

worst indulg-

egregiously severe in

speaking what he conceives to be the truth. The contrast

is

not in

favor of sobriety.

The story is not simplistically black and white. We see enough of mother to agree in part with Lawrence's judgment that she is

the

72

Equivocal Spirits

and domineering

rather frivolous nitely

drunk

be cruel as

late

well.

(p. 7);

in the evening of his

Her inebriation on

and when she becomes defishe shows that she can

arrival,

however,

this occasion,

a half-

is

conscious contrivance to protect herself against Lawrence's harshness, as is her apparently intentional exclusion of him from an invitation the next day to "have Martinis

narrator

careful to state that his

is

Lawrence's charge that she

is

on the beach"

mother "doesn't

alcoholic

Normally, the family's drinking

(p. 9).

is

moderate; like

is

drunk

get

palpably

Because the often,"

false (pp. 7, 19). its

shared swim-

ming, tennis, picnics, and backgammon, it is both symbol of and aid to its loyalty and warmth. If Lawrence remains outside this circle, it is

by

his

The

own

choice.

chief spiritual heir of a forebear

"who was eulogized by

Cotton Mather for his untiring abjuration of the Devil"

(p. 6),

Law-

rence himself and his narrow abstemiousness are seen as devils that the family

must abjure or exorcise

in favor of light, beauty,

and such

innocent, alcohol-inspired fun as diving for balloons off the dock after the boat-club party (pp.

16- 17). At one point

tices that "the

wild grapes that grow profusely

made

wind smell of wine"

the land

for a family that fosters its solidarity

tent of the scattering

(p. 17).

all

over the island

This touch, appropriate

by drinking,

is

also a fitting por-

and banishment of puritanical sobriety

to the

and Albany, where

hinterlands, to places such as Kansas, Cleveland,

Lawrence has

the narrator no-

lived.

More complex and problematic than "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Swimmer" also employs a contrast between apparent abstemiousness and drinking. The meanings or values of the two sides of this contrast are in some ways difficult to ascertain, and a reader's responses may undergo major adjustments as the story progresses. At tagonist,

Ned

or

Neddy

Merrill,

seems

first

the pro-

largely admirable, like a

Ulysses seeking to free himself from the impurities and beguilements of his Circean suburban environment.

pears to be

its

Its

most marked impurity ap-

dissoluteness. In the opening paragraph, the setting a

summer Sunday afternoon, we about having drunk too much the night pleasant

minutive, "Neddy," raises

hear a litany of complaints before.

some doubts about

So although the

Merrill's

di-

maturity and

therefore about his credibility as a hero in the customary sense,

we

probably approve of his decision to leave the poolside company in

which he

finds himself as the story

opens

—

a

company

already

73

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever drinking again ries

— and He

of pools.

to

"swim" the eight miles

him seem

If,

undertaking at

least

via a se-

like his

slightly absurd, the aspiration

gence of his friends.

home

may be an almost legendary name, this notion may make

fancies that there

quality about this adventure.

to his

and energy required

for his

appear preferable to the torpor and overindul-

He

is, it

seems, becoming a quasi-allegorical

fig-

ure suddenly set apart from the rest of his society by a destiny or quest, even

quest

this

if

is

puzzlingly unlike the quests of traditional

Gradually, however, and finally in ways that drastically

heroes.

change these

clusions: that the difference

nearly as great as he

between him and

may want to

compromised by

Merrill's

reach three con-

his society

is

not

think; that his quest does not repre-

sent a clearly preferable alternative;

ously

we may

impressions of Merrill,

initial

and

that the quest itself

is seri-

confusion about or ignorance of

its

aims or purposes. Water, the

medium

of Merrill's quest, has a

associations and symbolic meanings.

number

In addition to

of established its

salubrious

consumed by the others, Neddy's repeated immersions in the swimming pools may resemble baptisms; 11 his apparent unconsciousness of any desire to wash away his sins does not necessarily make this meaning illegitimate. Another association, lying closer to Merrill's awareness, seems more plausible in contrast with the alcohol being

the context of this story: that of water as a preserver or restorer of

youth. Merrill

seems

to

is

hope

a

little

like a caricature of the faddish jogger

who

endow him not only with

eter-

that his exertions will

nal youth but also with a kind of corporeal immortality. ciation of water in the story

womb; swimming that "to

in his first

.

.

.

pool of the afternoon, Neddy thinks light

green water was less

than the resumption of a natural condition, and he

would have liked

to

swim without trunks"

(p.

an extension of the second one carried

aging,

A third asso-

with the protection and comfort of the

be embraced and sustained by the

a pleasure

is

is

Neddy would apparently go

all

the

604). This association

to its extreme; to avoid

way back

to a fetal state.

Either of the last two interpretations of water helps to the aptness of the retribution that thy,

Neddy

immature longings. In place of youth and

in the course of a single afternoon

make

experiences for his its

clear

unwor-

summery weather,

he finds the season becoming au-

tumnal and himself aging. To put the matter another way, Neddy punished

for

making

a travesty quest.

By trying

to

move away

is

from,

74

Equivocal Spirits

rather than toward, the maturity

and enlightenment

usual goals of a quest, he debases or trivializes rately, Merrill

does achieve a type of maturity

it.

that are the

Perhaps more accu-

— but

it is

punishment. Instead of culminating in enlightenment,

a part of his

the

its fruit is

incomprehensibility of Neddy's finding, at the end of his swim, that his

house

is

abandoned and

derelict,

and evidently has been

for

some

while. By an enormous acceleration, time has taken an apposite

Neddy

harsh revenge on vicissitudes

A

and

hoping

for

to

exempt himself from

in fact to reverse its flow.

couple of scenes are especially helpful for seeing not only

Neddy's swim similar he

is

differs

from a true quest but also

to the rest of his society. Despite the

afternoon, the gathering bleakness of autumn,

and

sive exhaustion like the

journey

aging, his pilgrimage

how

chill of the

and Neddy's progres-

altogether too easy.

is

is

no

most sharply exposed

Un-

unknown

The hollowness

real perils or tribulations.

how

fundamentally

growing

genuine spiritual wayfarer, Neddy ventures into no

realms, seeks

if

its

in scenes reminiscent of

of his

but con-

trasting with the Vanity Fair episode of Pilgrim's Progress. Christian

and

Faithful courageously

ity Fair; for this first

reason and their ability to

smeared with

in irons; Faithful

and unhesitantly

dirt

and displayed

is finally

burned

his brief stops at parties of the

reject the snares of

make

converts, they are

in a cage, then beaten

at the stake.

Grahams and

12

Van-

By

and put

contrast, during

the Bunkers,

Neddy

the epitome of temporizing politeness. Although he continues

on

is

his

swim, he views the practices of these Vanity Fairs not with the aversion of Christian tions ... to be

and

Faithful but as "hospitable

handled with diplomacy." He

customs and

feels "a

tradi-

passing affection

women, and 604-5). Compared

... a tenderness" for the Bunkers' party, kisses several

number of men (pp. Neddy is practically indistinguishable from

shakes hands with an equal to Faithful

and

Christian,

the others at the two parties. Unlike Bunyan's figures,

who

claim their destination to be "the Heavenly Jerusalem"

sneaks off from the gatherings

—

in part,

13

firmly pro-

Neddy just

no doubt, because he could

not formulate his purposes even to himself.

The thoroughly compromised quality of his quest gested by his drinking. At the outset of his sojourn, in

is

also sug-

his apparent

concern with demonstrating or recapturing a youthful vigor or purity,

Neddy seems

to reject the dissipation of his drinking friends,

75

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever but the story as a whole indicates that drinking

him than

to

to the rest.

is

no

gin beside the Westerhazys' pool as the story opens,

perhaps deliberately refrains from drinking the Bunkers',

less

important

Although he may only be holding a

by the time he reaches the

glass of

and although he

at either the

Grahams' or mid-

Levys', at nearly the

point in his journey, he has had four or five drinks (p. 605). Later in the afternoon his desire or

need

one more before his swim three.

A

ciety.

is

drink increases

and he

finished,

pedantically exact count

Neddy's drinking 14

is

for a

is

(p.

609); he has

tries to get at least

unnecessary for showing that

probably no more moderate than that of his so-

There are even a couple of hints (though one

is

highly ambig-

uous) that his behavior has violated limits observed by this society.

He

has had not just a casual suburban flirtation but a mistress, at

whose house he pauses

in the course of his

he overhears the hostess talking about a

one Sunday and asked us

to loan

though she may not be referring Before the end of the story, left

the

company

won

to

five

thousand dollars"

Neddy himself seems

for his efforts not only a

(p.

611),

Neddy. to regret

of his drinking friends (pp. 607, 612).

their excesses, this is his milieu.

has

him

swim. At another house

man who "showed up drunk

Vaguely seeking

having

Whatever

to transcend

it,

he

reminder (possibly two) of his past

turpitude but the most radical kind of displacement. Moreover, a sec-

ond look

opening paragraph may lead

at the

to a suspicion that

Neddy's quest never had adequate warrant. Cheever's tone, the best indication of his attitude toward the excessive drinkers of suburban society, is

one of

drank too

much

or

community

at least

last

that,

half-amused tolerance, and the refrain of "I

night" (p. 603) conveys a sense of commonality

though

far

from

ideal, is better

than the appar-

As the story ends, he seems Adam, shivering, tearful, and own folly from the only Eden he will

ently irremediable dislocation of Merrill. to

be a kind of aged but

infantile

mostly naked, expelled by his ever

know and

with no other world before him. 15

Gee-Gee, the hard drinker of "The Scarlet Moving Van," achieves a transcendence of society that contrasts completely with Neddy's misery. In this story, perhaps for the

whether society (or valid

its

norm by which

first

time,

final

Cheever questions

smaller units, couples or the family) offers a

to

determine or implicitly censure deviations

such as heavy drinking. But Gee-Gee's transcendence

is difficult

to

76

Equivocal Spirits

characterize

and

made more

is

by the

elusive

and Gee-Gee himself evaluate him

wife, his only friend,

Gee- Gee's

fact that

in

ways

that

are inadequate or unreliable.

drunken husband

Peaches's view of her plistic

and

American

and strong and generous," he

his role is

good deal more

a

he manifests any self-awareness, he seems

something

archetypal

he

Although Gee-Gee fronts to society

like the

one Robert C.

Elliott

that of telling his society

satirist:

tifying truths that

may

is

that

he was

interesting

But Gee-Gee, too, lacks proper appreciation of his present

this.

When

self.

the most obviously sim-

she just wants him to return to being the All-

unrealistic;

football player, "fine

in college (p. 361). Fortunately,

than

is

is

is

such dangerous or mor-

often turned into a scapegoat

move

driven to

and the

to believe that

has ascribed to the

and banished. 16

frequently because of his af-

resulting ostracism (the

title

of the story

also suggest a branding or stigmatizing like Hawthorne's scarlet

letter),

Gee-Gee's criticisms of society are extremely rudimentary

They consist mainly of his repeated have to teach them" (pp. 360, 362, 363), together with declaration accusations of stuffiness and such outrageous actions as stripping to even for an archetypal

satirist.

"1

his undershorts at parties (p.

362). These words

Gee-Gee as a

satirist

and

setting fires in a hostess's wastebaskets

and deeds

scarcely justify any attention to

or critic of society.

Charlie Folkestone, the friend

and neighbor

Gee becomes uproariously drunk on equally unsuccessful at

making

at

whose house Gee-

his first night in town,

is

a satisfactory appraisal of him. Evi-

dently believing in Gee-Gee's self-professed role of teacher, Charlie at

one point attempts

to define

it:

"Gee-Gee was an advocate

lame, the diseased, the poor, for those

own

live

their comforts,

and

pangs of anger and

somewhat

him

—

lust

that for all their affection,

and the agonies of death"

own

a didactic weight

any lessons

offer

fails to clarify,

Gee-Gee

for the

fault of their

would not be spared the

is

certainly

of income, he

is

(p.

363). In a

way

error of self-judgment, these re-

and

a moral authority for

not nearly enough supporting evidence.

be thought to Charlie

this to say

their privileges, they

similar to Gee-Gee's

flections give is

through no

out their lives in misery and pain. To the happy and the

wellborn and the rich he had

there

who

to the

which

How Gee-Gee could

wealthy

is

a mystery that

and, as a representative of the poor or wretched,

an odd choice. Though without a

scarcely

one of the poor:

visible source

his frequent

moves must

77

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever cost a

good deal of money and seem always

be from one upper-

to

middle-class suburb to another, and one Christmas he his wife

and children

to the

Bahamas

is

able to send

(p. 364). If Charlie's reference is

not to material want but to loneliness or isolation, a poverty of soul or

Gee-Gee appears

spirit,

when

to

be in circumstances that make

this

pov-

him one Christmas in another suburb. Gee-Gee is alone; having broken his hip, which is in a huge cast, he can move about only with the aid of a crutch and a erty inevitable

child's

wagon. His home

surrounding houses

and

ugly.

tries to fact,

and

Charlie goes to see

still

is

in a

new

subdivision, with

unoccupied and looking,

most of the

to Charlie,

raw

Oppressed by a sense of dreariness and desolation, Charlie

convince himself that these must be Gee-Gee's

however, Gee-Gee

insists that

feelings. In

he does not mind being alone,

364-65). To be

his heartiness confirms his assertion (pp.

sure,

home Charlie receives a telephone call from a frightened Gee-Gee, who has fallen out of his wagon and beseeches his friend to return. Although Charlie fails to go, we learn at the end of the story that Gee-Gee next called the fire department, one member

after

returning

bourbon every day" with Gee-Gee Peaches and the children came back from Nassau (p. 369).

of

which drank

"a quart of

until

Gee-Gee, then, simply refuses to be victimized by the conven-

some misfortunes, he recovers with amazing speed and resilience. Nowhere is Charlie quite so wrong as when he associates Gee-Gee with death or dying. He is correct, however, in attributing to Gee-Gee "some tremendous validity" (p. 363) even if he never comes close to defining it. One clue may lie in Gee-Gee's name, which, as his wife explains, is a contraction of "Greek God," a designation given him by admirers in tional horrors or disasters of the alcoholic. If

college (p. 361). Later in the story, tices

suffers

Charlie visits him, he no-

Gee-Gee fumbling with some matches and observes

that "he

might

"there might be

with

when

he

fire" (p.

easily

burn

If

the last phrase sounds a

Prometheus, Gee-Gee's

nor by liquor. But

differentiated

life

(p.

liver is

later

little

like a reference to

being consumed neither by vultures

more illuminating simply

to identify

to see

him

force or spirit, presided over, as he says,

369).

to himself

he thinks that

clumsiness, his playing

we are probably not supposed

it is

ian angel (p. 365) that

sheveled"

moment

some drunken cunning in his

365).

a specific god;

to death"; a

him with

as

an un-

by a guard-

Cheever characterizes as "boozy" and

We may be

further enlightened

"di-

by remembering

78

Equivocal Spirits

that

an old name

itability,

for alcohol is "spirits."

power of

his sheer

Waugh's Decline and

who

Fall,

Because of his indom-

Grimes of Evelyn

survival, Captain is

also

something of a drinker, seems

remarkably similar to Gee-Gee even though more a novelistic character.

conveyed by his

needed

If

Waugh

than by his

ness of society.

18

them

—

But the

trivial

developed as

social critic,

words or

it is

actions. Per-

suggest that in the almost preternatural

Gee-Gee and Grimes

to invent

fully

Gee-Gee has a function as

spirit rather

haps Cheever and vitality of

17

lies

fate

— or

in the creative imagination

hope of surmounting the deadof Charlie, who by the end of the story

the best

has apparently begun to experience

degradation that Gee-Gee avoids,

all

may

and

the alcoholic suffering

represent Cheever's warning

that Gee-Gee's transcendence of society will not always succeed.

In three later works, including the novel Falconer, Cheever further utilizes characters

ciety that either

whose excesses or aberrations

fails to

are better than a so-

function as a positive standard or

is

As "The Fourth Alarm" begins, the anonymous narrator

corrupt.

sits

drinking gin at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning. Although he yet intoxicated, his isolation

naturalness of the hour

seems ripe

and the day

for excess,

for drinking

church, or at least innocently playing golf?) portrait of a

man justly

seems

that his drinking, even

is

to

is

he not

in

promise the

expelled from society. But perhaps the chief

surprise, in a story of surprises that

adroitness,

not

and the un-

(why

may seem

alone is

Cheever handles with unusual if it

should become excessive,

entirely justifiable as a defense against pain. His wife has virtu-

ally

abandoned him and

in a

nude Broadway show

their children in order to play a leading part

that features simulated copulation

and au-

show suggests its eager approval by the rest of the narrator's society. He attends and undresses, as bidden, in an attempt to understand his wife; but when his bourgeois instincts prompt him to carry his valuables on stage, the entire cast jeers him (pp. 648-49). Although a solitary drinker, the narrator is the only embodiment in the story of the old social decencies dience participation. The success of the

and

proprieties. His

abstemious wife,

who now and

then will drink a

Dubonnet (p. 646), represents the madness of sexual more corrupting to society than any conceivable alco-

polite glass of

freedom,

far

holic excess.

One

of the several unconnected stories in Cheever's "The Leaves,

the Lion- Fish

and the Bear" focuses on

a one-night

homosexual

rela-

79

Drinking in the Fiction of John Cheever

Though

tionship, with excessive drinking a facilitating agent.

story

is

unconvincing as a look

moral implication perhaps

homosexuality or

at

fares better. In a society of solitary travel

and strange motels (two components encounter

may be

the

causes, the

its

in the setting) a

homosexual

and warmth against other-

a defensible protection

wise overpowering loneliness. The two men, Stark and Estabrook, are conventional

enough

must

that they

drunk before the en-

get

counter in order to lower their inhibitions; but their experience has

redeeming social value, to find his wife lovelier

Cheever seems

for

when Estabrook

than ever.

returns

show some nervousness

to

home, he

said

is

19

handling of the subject matter of this story.

or uncertainty in his

He

is

a

little

too insistent

on the innocence of Stark and Estabrook. Because Cheever remained uneasy and circumspect about his

own

allowed himself to face and act on only

had grave misgivings about Falconer, however,

it is

also Cheever's

cesses. Farragut, characterized is

also

by

and other

his wife as suffering

and more prominently

20

most extended

representation of the positive value of alcohol, drugs,

alcoholism,"

he must have

treating the subject at all in his fiction.

more assured;

is

homosexuality, which he

late in his life,

from

ex-

"clinical

a drug addict; he

is

in

prison for having murdered his brother "while under the influence of

dangerous drugs." 21 But in Farragut's several mental returns

to the

perhaps wholly extenuating

slaying, a reader finds mitigating,

cir-

cumstances, including the brother's odiousness. In this he resembles

Lawrence of "Goodbye, of that story, saves

who

him from

My Brother," but, unlike the narrator-brother

after striking

the ocean's

Lawrence a potentially

undertow and binds

lethal

manifests not the slightest compunction about his deed. presents

no reasons

to

condemn

his attitude;

Farragut sometimes seems ambitious of

when, his

blow

his head, Farragut

The novel

on the contrary, though

more than shock

little

in a flashback to his professorial days,

he

recalls

how

(as

he and

department head "would shoot up before the big lecture," or

when he imagines cant's

tongue and saying "Take

ful"),

there

that "drugs

is little

served, so flicts

South

now

this

material in the

belonged

just as in the

amphetamine on a communiin memory of me and be grate-

a priest placing an

book

to dispute Farragut's claim

to all exalted experience" (pp. 44, 46). Instead,

Pacific battles of

World War

in the usually less violent but

II

in

more

which Farragut corrosive con-

between prisoners and guards, drugs or alcohol seems almost a

80

Equivocal Spirits

sane, civilizing force.

guards or the

The

alternatives are the

futile rioting

some

of

sadism of some of the

prisoners, behavior that simply

imitates the barbarity or senselessness of

most of the world outside

by Farragut's wife and brother.

the prison walls, as illustrated

Apart from Farragut, the only heroes of Falconer are Jody (his

homosexual

unnamed

whose escape foreshadows

lover,

own) and

ragut's

the

first

the ingenuity of Far-

person Farragut meets

stranger, impoverished (though

This

after escaping.

he denies

crude of

it),

speech, physically unattractive, and smelling of whiskey, has just

been evicted from his lodging, probably his

way

to stay temporarily

less, this misfit is

Farragut's

bus

with a

sister

for

drunkenness, and

whom he

hates.

fare, inviting

modern Samaritans, he

him

to share his

therefore minimizes

is

embarrassed about his

When

it).

new

quarters, even giv-

— but perhaps,

Farragut leaves the bus before he

is

"Rejoice

the time he wrote Falconer, Cheever

novel ters

—

is

member

most of

the

fugitive

all right." It is

that at this point, as the novel ends, the thought

through Farragut's mind

all

.

.

was

rejoice" (pp.

.

self- forgiveness.

no

running

223-26). By

a recovering alcoholic

of AA; so Farragut's benediction at the

Cheever's

most

like

own goodness and

does, the stranger extends his blessing: "Well, that's

successful

on

is

Neverthe-

Cheever's version of the good Samaritan, paying

ing Farragut a coat (one of four, he says

wonder

22

and

a

end of the

But these two charac-

drunken outcast from society and Farragut, murderer,

from justice, and drug and alcohol addict

casions for rejoicing

when one remembers

— seem

strange oc-

Cheever's earlier fiction.

Although, as Glen M. Johnson points out, Farragut breaks his drug addiction while in prison, 23 he

an addict. This

fact sets

is

the hero of Falconer even while

him sharply

Yorkers or suburbanites for

whom

apart from the prosperous

New

heavy drinking was a regrettable

departure from desirable social norms in

work.

still

much

of Cheever's earlier

FIVE Allbee's

Drinking

Bellow's The Victim

ike

most

Bellow

writers, Saul

tends to be fascinated with and to

work

variations

on

certain

recurring patterns, relation-

and character

ships,

types.

Von Humboldt

in Humboldt's Gift is a

expanded and complicated version of Kirby Allbee in The Vicwith even more of Allbee's eloquence and of his significant, spec-

greatly tim,

tacular failure. Charlie Citrine, in his responses to

more There

Humboldt,

is

a

and sympathetic version of Leventhal in The Victim. be sure, more differences than similarities between

intelligent are, to

Allbee and Humboldt; yet something of Allbee's natural appeal and attractiveness emerges, enhanced,

boldt as "that grand face, that

charming

fluent

experiences the fate

imagines for Allbee.

from such descriptions of

Hum-

handsome person with his wide blond deeply worried man." Humboldt actually

erratic

— death

in a flophouse

—

that Leventhal only

1

Even though Humboldt's

Gift

seems

to

be better liked by

critics

and

readers than The Victim, Bellow's earlier novel deserves attention as

commentary on drinking, the attitudes toward it and reasons for it. Of the two main characters, Asa Leventhal furnishes many of the attitudes and reactions; but Kirby Allbee, a supposed problem drinker, has a good deal to say on the subject himself. The richness comes in part from the fact that Leventhal has not one but several attitudes, which collectively undergo a real though not total change. Allbee, moreover, suddenly and (it seems) easily quits drinking, thus adding to doubts about the reality of his problem and raising questions about the adequacy of some common views of alcoholism. But the -ism and the clash of culturally conditioned attitudes toward drinking are not of paramount interest to Bellow. What absorbs him a rich

are the half-hidden roots or sources of Allbee's excessive drinking,

82

Equivocal Spirits

Leventhal's terror-stricken reactions to

able failure,

and

who

To Allbee, sponds

in

is

it

as an

emblem

of irredeem-

of vanquishing this fear.

has lost everything and hit bottom, Leventhal

some ways

stereotyping

means

Leventhal's

that are quite predictable

re-

and stereotyped. The

partly an unconscious defense against Allbee's accusa-

tion that, years before, Leventhal

was responsible

for Allbee's losing a

good position by being deliberately offensive in a job interview that Allbee had arranged for Leventhal with Allbee's boss. But Leventhal would probably resort to most of the stereotyping in any case; it is an easy

way

to limit Allbee's

humanness,

to "package"

who

used by Schlossberg, an elderly Jew

him

(a

metaphor

supplies several thematic

terms and concepts in the novel) and thereby to control or circum-

own feelings about him. Stereotyping is especially when Leventhal's antipathy, fear, or anger is strong. At one when Allbee accuses Leventhal of having ruined him and even

scribe Leventhal's

tempting point,

clutches his shirtfront, Leventhal shouts, "You're a crazy stumble-

bum.

.

.

The booze

.

is

eating your brain up." Reflecting

dent afterward, Leventhal decides that Allbee

drunk

to hide his feelings."

2

Even

is

this inci-

that his overriding,

uncon-

pp. 145, 201, 204, 209), although definitely drunk at only one of their frequent encounters.

trollable desire is to

Allbee

on

"too degenerate a

Attributing to Allbee an insanity caused

by alcohol, Leventhal repeatedly assumes drink

is

(e.g.,

after their relationship

has been complicated, deepened, and

ended, Leventhal maintains a belief in the inevitability of Allbee's coholic pital,

fate:

"By

now he was

an

institution, perhaps, in

Broadway

theater;

acquaintance

viewing

is

doom and

briefly encounters Leventhal at a

one of Leventhal's few observations

that

he

this fact as the

still

key

drinks

(p.

him

as

to his

former

292). Leventhal persists in

to Allbee.

Leventhal continues to treat Allbee as less than

aging

some hos-

or even already lying in Potter's Field" (p. 287). In the final

chapter, Allbee belies his

If

in

al-

an incorrigible drunk, Allbee has his

human by packown ideas about

more than once delivers these opinions to a skeptical or hostile Leventhal. The stereotypes used by both men perhaps tell us more about the user than

stereotyped Jewish attitudes toward alcohol and

about the intended object;

Allbee's, for instance, reveal

able tinge of anti-Semitism but also

edge of an alien culture. There the stereotypes held

is

some

an unmistak-

rather unexpected knowl-

one important difference between

by the two. Allbee, though he several times be-

83 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's

The Victim

wails his inability to gain control of himself,

word when he

his

asserts that

he

is

must

finally

be taken

at

not really an uncontrollable alco-

holic (p. 204), for he not only stops drinking (p. 224) but just as

suddenly appears to halt the deterioration of his

life.

In contrast, the

general or stereotyped attitudes toward drinking that Allbee ascribes to

Jews are of some value in illuminating Leventhal's particular

attitudes.

Jewish culture and history have tended to

make Jews more

tent in their disapproval of excessive drinking than

consis-

most other ethnic

groups. Allbee cites an Old Testament story to demonstrate this disapproval:

"When Noah

— you remember

drunk

lies

that story?

—

his

gentile-minded sons have a laugh at the old man, but his Jewish son horrified. There's truth in that story.

is

It's

a true story" (p. 76).

Leventhal reacts with enough animosity to suggest that Allbee has struck a nerve. Earlier, Allbee had evinced a knowledge of Jewish attitudes

much more unusual

refrain

from a Yiddish song: "You Jews have funny ideas about drink-

one — 'Drunk he

.

song about .

.

it

Schickef"

(p. 34).

does not necessarily

is,

few moments

mean

later that

born drunkards. You have

drink he must, because he

that

he

seems

is

a

Goy

is 3 it.

unfamiliar with the song or inIn fact, he

makes

a

remark just

to validate Allbee's charge; Leventhal

automatically assumes that Allbee his drinking (p. 35).

to Leventhal the

Leventhal reacts "contemptuously," but this

nocent of the attitudes implied by a

by quoting

that all Gentiles are

ing. Especially the

a

for a Gentile

was

To be sure, even

fired

from his job because of

this early in the

novel and at the

very outset of his relationship with Allbee, Leventhal has compelling reasons for his hostility and

fear,

reasons that have nothing to do

with his being Jewish. But stereotyped thinking about Gentile drunkenness does influence his attitudes toward Allbee. Leventhal finds himself taking a conservative position, against

Jewish "assimilation," during a discussion of Disraeli with several other Jews in a Fourteenth Street cafeteria (Ch. 10). Leventhal's only friend,

Harkavy,

is

appalled by Leventhal's position, so one might ex-

pect Harkavy to manifest a less rigorously condemnatory attitude to-

ward drinking when

his friend gets drunk.

jocularity he directs at Leventhal (pp.

Leventhal's

Although the needling

249-51, 259)

is

different

sometimes vehement disgust with Allbee, Harkavy's

from atti-

tude toward drunkenness seems basically no less disapproving than Leventhal's.

Both Harkavy and Leventhal appear to assume a great

84

Equivocal Spirits

between the drunken and sober sides of the same person,

disparity

and an almost complete incapacity of the person who has imbibed to conduct or heed rational discourse. Thus Harkavy wishes to discontinue a serious discussion with Leventhal until his friend's "head

is

251); Leventhal thinks that Allbee's supposed drunken-

clearer" (p.

an adequate reason

ness at a party years before

is

he expressed then

and he

(p. 34),

views

to ignore the

later is surprised that Allbee dis-

same pleasure in philosophical speculation when sober as he does when drunk (p. 227). While these attitudes are by no means uniquely Jewish, they do sharply separate Leventhal and Harkavy,

plays the

who

are quite different from each other in several respects, from

Allbee.

Allbee accuses Leventhal of having one other stereotyped Jewish attitude

when he

blame him

asserts that Leventhal has to

for his

drinking:

"You won't assume that

it isn't

enter your mind, does

—

being

it

himself? No,

if

man

a

down,

a

man

like

God

It's

It

make

doesn't

If

come and

doesn't

me,

it's

help

can't

he

his fault. If

And do

evil in life itself.

a Jewish point of view. You'll find

weights and measures. job's friends

....

not be able to help

Maybe he

say?

being punished. There's no

you know what? the Bible.

is

fault

man might

hammered down? What do you

suffers, he's

my

entirely

that a

over

it all

mistakes. He's the department of

you're okay, he's okay, too. That's

say to him. But

tell

I'll

what

you something.

We do get it in the neck for nothing and suffer for nothing, and no denying

there's

that evil

me,

I

know what

that

I

must deserve what

it's

as real as sunshine. Take

I

get.

Leventhal fall

this is scarcely impartial:

feel guilty

and

it is

[p.

First,

he

is

do two other

is

146]

calculated at once to

to exonerate Allbee

from any blame

Nevertheless, Leventhal's near speechlessness

after

from

make

for his

by depicting him as the victim of some inexplicable

Allbee's claims, as ior.

it

That leaves your hands clean and

unnecessary for you to bother yourself."

Admittedly

own

is

I'm talking about. To you the whole thing

may seem

evil.

to validate

characteristics of Leventhal's behav-

tenaciously reluctant to "bother" with Allbee even

acknowledging responsibility

for his losing his job.

Second, he

manifests a recurring compulsion to blame Allbee, as in the conversation of Chapter 18 with

Phoebe Williston, although

in this instance

85 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's

Leventhal

and

is

in part

also motivated in part

by annoyance

To the Jew who, however

and a just punishment 4

by a desire

to exculpate himself

Phoebe's apparent determination to pre-

more charming

a younger,

faintly or

Allbee.

unconsciously, regards his people

drunkenness may seem both a chief symptom of

as God's chosen,

tile.

at

unchanged her memory of

serve

The Victim

for the

moral degeneracy of the profane Gen-

Leventhal evidently possesses at least a vestige of such thinking.

Allbee, however,

is

not simply a profane Gentile.

thal thinks) a skid- row

bum,

He

(so Leven-

is

the lowest of the low. Although the

slums of the destitute can usually be avoided and the dangerously

commonly kept out

insane are

often impinge

on the

zens are therefore perhaps the

blems of stark

failure

of sight in institutions, skid rows

central business districts of cities; their deni-

—

last

conspicuous and inescapable em-

a reminder uniquely

unwelcome

obsessed with success. Allbee, the embodiment of this especially intense source of fear for Leventhal. derelict seeking a in this

"package"

If

in a society

failure, is

an

Allbee were merely a

handout— he could be wholly contained — he would be easy and what

troubles Leventhal

that

is, if

dismiss;

to satisfy

his inability to

is

understand

of panhandling, seems to be holding justices of society (pp.

him

why Allbee,

responsible for

79-80). Leventhal, moreover,

sensitive or vulnerable to

such

issues, for

he

is

is

instead

all

the in-

unusually

aware that his

own

modest prosperity, instead of being a vindication of the just workings of the social luck.

and economic

Although he

is

reticent or actually objects stresses the

order,

is

largely or

wholly a matter of

ready enough to admit his luck to his wife, he

on the

several occasions

when

is

Allbee

importance of luck in determining success. Evidently Le-

venthal fears that,

if

he conceded any truth

to Allbee's contentions, a

simple turn of the wheel of fortune could bring him to Allbee's position of utter failure.

Heightening possibility

is

this fear

the fact

and making

.that

it

seem more than an

abstract

Leventhal was formerly in an economic

condition uncomfortably close to Allbee's. After the death of his early benefactor, the elder Harkavy, Leventhal found himself "beginning to drift"

and

and

"living in a dirty hall

thin." Later, "for

on lower Broadway" imity,

bedroom on

the East Side, starved

about a year, he clerked in a hotel (p. 14), a

for transients

job that brought him into close prox-

both geographically and materially, to the Bowery and that

doubtless accounts for the extraordinarily detailed and exact images

86 Equivocal Spirits

with which he

is

summon up

able to

the

he imagines Allbee has

life

been leading:

men

.

.

on the

.

sleeping off their whisky

cellar hatches,

straight blaze of the

dead

sun

lance.

.

.

.

sheets

and

lying in the

.

.

.

living in a

on mission benches waiting .

seemed

that

to eat

up

in the dark. [pp. 28, 38, 69]

When (p.

.

for

flophouse

.

hideous cardboard cubicles painted to

resemble wood, even the tungsten in the bulb like

worms

moldy

whole days,

in bars, sleeping

smeared and bleary winter sun

filthy pillows;

doorways or

by the paddywagon or the ambu-

wearily sitting

their coffee in a

.

in their faces.

off the streets

men

.

to the cold or the racket or the

hotel somewhere, hanging out

picked up

.

little

burning

rather than give light. Better to be 5

Leventhal envisions Allbee's place of burial,

it is

Potter's Field

287), not the generic cemetery for the destitute but a specific lo-

cation

on

known only to

New

6

would be someone with an exceptionally thorough and intimate

Hart's Island in

knowledge of the

York

City,

a place that

New York derelict.

Because Leventhal clerked in a hotel for transients, his dread

is

derived from firsthand observation. The strength of this fear can scarcely be exaggerated; the only other fear that terror of seemingly uncontrolled emotion,

may

equal

it is

his

such as he thinks more

than once that his sister-in-law displays. This fear stems from an

imagined resemblance between Elena and his mother, pitalized for insanity,

ture or duration of her illness. His fear of the also involves his "deepest feelings."

how

close he

outcast, the

who was

had come

He was

life

Allbee represents

"frequently mindful" of

to the irremediable failure of "the lost, the

overcome, the effaced, the ruined"

(p.

20)

—

the luxuri-

ance of synonyms here, rare for the taciturn Leventhal, drives the strength of his fear like the thudding of blows. pears, Leventhal

hos-

though Leventhal does not know the exact na-

seems almost

to sense that,

by

home

When Allbee

ap-

suffering his pres-

ence, he will be infected with the contagion of Allbee's failure.

Although Leventhal bee's present condition

is

terrified

and

by the resemblance between

hotel for transients, his fear does not reach a difference

All-

the images from his year as a clerk in a

beyond or beneath

this

its

peak

until

he perceives

resemblance. The perception oc-

curs in a scene of unusual interest because Allbee, ordinarily lo-

-87 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's

The Victim

quacious, needs few words to convince Leventhal of an error and be-

cause Leventhal

is

surprisingly

open

to correction. After Leventhal

he too has been "down and out," Allbee responds with more than "a tolerant smile" and "a gesture of passing the comparison away." The denial immediately triggers in Leventhal's mind a train of "the most horrible images" of derelicts and their haunts (p. 69), followed by Leventhal's admission, to himself, that Allbee was right. The horror, though brief, is intense, because it signifies Leventhal's realization that his former degradation was not closely similar to Allbee's, that still deeper abysses may yawn for him if he lets Allbee into his life. The difference beneath the similarity seems to involve asserts that little

Leventhal's recognition that, even

he has experienced a material

if

poverty close to Allbee's, the great horror Allbee represents

economic but metaphysical or

is

not

spiritual, the inner defeat or despair of

which poverty and alcoholic drinking are only manifestations. 7 Leventhal grasps this source of his fear only dimly at best, and there

seem

to

be important reasons behind Allbee's drinking that are

so strange or alien to Leventhal, so far

removed from

his stereotyped

ideas about alcohol or alcoholism, that they completely elude his

comprehension.

One

of these reasons

is

revealed by Allbee, shortly after he accuses

Leventhal of just this ignorance, in the course of a stunningly harsh attack ent,

on Jews. Because of

however, than

real

its

—

apparent anti-Semitism

— more appar-

that attack can easily distract attention

from the cogency of the revelation: "You people take care of yourselves before everything.

That's the sistant,

risky.

you

way

and

it's

You keep your

you're brought up. safe

spirit

under lock and

You make

it

your business

key. as-

and tame and never leads you toward anything

Nothing dangerous and nothing glorious. Nothing ever tempts

to dissolve yourself.

(p. 146).

What

for?

What's in

it?

No

percentage"

Leventhal seems to miss the irrelevance of his reply that

millions of Jews have been killed (p. 147), an apparent reference not

only to Hitler's exterminations but also to innumerable pogroms. All-

bee

is

referring not to collective suffering inflicted

by persecution but

to a deliberate, individually willed courting or risking of dissolution.

Alcohol

is,

for Allbee, a chief

means

to this end;

if

at times

he

is

out of

control and behaves like Leventhal's stereotype of the drunk, it is far more important to see that Allbee lets himself behave in this way be-

cause he wishes to

flirt

with his

own

destruction.

88

Equivocal Spirits

There are some obvious reasons

by

wife, followed

his destitution

for this wish: his loss of

and near

despair.

job and

Other reasons may

not be readily apparent because they seem largely independent of All-

When

bee's misfortunes.

Leventhal awakens one morning to observe

which a husband is attempting to assault a wife who has evidently been out drinking and fornicating all night with a couple of soldiers now standing nearby, he reflects that the scene, like Allbee, a scene in

represents those "strange things, savage things" (p. 94) that con-

A bit later, somewhat more

stantly threaten him.

that the

woman was

calm, he concludes

simply trying to be herself "to the

limit.

... in

whore" (pp. 98-99). But, since both are alien to Leventhe woman is probably no more simply a whore than Allbee is

this case, a thal,

simply an alcoholic.

It is

likely that, for both, alcohol is a species of

courage or virtue, a means of exploring limits and establishing a

self-

definition.

For Allbee, fail,

this

quest requires having the courage to

let

go and to

completely and resoundingly enough that recovery becomes

problematical.

He

is

a quixotic figure with

no appropriate

outlets for

his antiquated, chivalric idea of honor; instead of signalizing his valor

by helping the

distressed,

he can do so only by becoming distressed

himself, through a spectacular failure abetted failure

by alcohol. That such a

could be a deliberate, courageous choice

comprehension of Leventhal,

is

would have done anything, taken any kind of job, tremity. In a general way, Leventhal

taking risks in

is

to avoid that ex-

able to appreciate the need for

in

running with an egg in a spoon. But he ure, the result of his risk-taking,

Although Allbee is

beyond the

one long, ruminative passage (pp. 98-99) he in the metaphorical terms of flashing a mirror and

life;

puts these risks

well

who more than once tells Allbee that he

is

no more

is

fails to

Williston, "influences to

If

fail-

a practicing Christian than Leventhal

a practicing Jew, Allbee had, as Williston

"ministers in his family."

see that Allbee's

admirable or even necessary.

once informed Leventhal,

these are also for Allbee, according to

throw

off" (p. 42), certain Christian values

seem a deeply ingrained part of Allbee's code of conduct or honor, and alcohol plays a role in his attempt to fulfill these values. Occasionally Allbee refers to his deceased wife, Flora, with seeming lack of emotion, as is

dead"

(p. 74).

when he remarks

But here he

her funeral; as he comes to

is

of her, to Leventhal,

"Dead

trying to justify his failure to attend

know Leventhal better and

to reveal

more

89 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's

of himself,

it is

clear that Flora,

The Victim

who died more than

the time of the story, remains a source

four years before

and object of some of Allbee's

strongest feelings. Specifically, he seeks to expiate his

wrongs against

her, a cleansing process that he begins while drunk by confessing his

blame last

to Leventhal (p. 196)

the rest did.

It

dime

differently

of

to

it

and

that

money on

from the

first.

liquor.

...

advance myself with. ...

expense.

I

Leventhal

he completes by spending the

"The money had to go the way would have been cheap and dishonest to use the last

of her insurance

didn't

become what

I

I

wasn't going to use a single cent

I

didn't

if

some

rationalization

plaining the use of Flora's money, there that Allbee

honest or even that his

is

him

a success at her

to say the least, skeptical of Allbee's sincerity in

is,

these instances; but even

sense to

become

wasn't before she died" (pp. 201-2).

as a

way

is

logic,

for the separation;

to

doubt

though eccentric, makes

He was

of relieving his guilt.

it is

both of

involved in ex-

no good reason

before his separation from Flora; his drinking

well as his notion of

is

was

a heavy drinker

partly responsible

therefore consistent with his sense of sin as

honor

that

he should drink

still

more

heavily to

atone for his wrongs to her. His ability to do so with her insurance

money makes

his

atonement even more exquisitely just. 8

Allbee also becomes aware of his

one occasion when he

is

more general wrongs and, on

definitely drunk,

three different but related ends: to

as

some Indian

that

tribes

and

to achieve spiritual truth or insight,

ticular. is

—

many

to

might

much

have used peyote and other drugs. The wrongs this

scene are his wrongs against society; they

are rooted in his sense of alienation or dislocation,

terizes as so

that

difficult subject; to effect a

9

concern Allbee in

genders hostility

the

to use alcohol for

overcome inhibitions

have kept him from grappling with a cleansing of his soul;

seems

Jews in general,

whom

he

at

which

in turn en-

one point charac-

Calibans (pp. 144-45), and to Leventhal in par-

No doubt one reason why Allbee chooses to pursue Leventhal

so that he can test the validity of these feelings of hostility. But the

problem is larger than antipathy to Leventhal or the Jews; world, in which every

man

in a

crowded

has a right to exist and an equal right to a

limited or dwindling supply of material goods,

it is

hard to

feel

any-

thing except fear or hostility toward everyone else. Allbee, having

gained awareness of the power of such feelings,

moral obligation to struggle against them and

is

also aware of a

to replace

them with

nobler ones, feelings of tolerance or brotherhood (pp. 193-94).

90

Equivocal Spirits

Allbee speaks in a

somewhat exasperated tone

understanding his neighbor.

He may

need of

of the

him

realize that, in order for

carry this spiritual quest to successful completion, nothing less

to

is re-

quired than repentance or rebirth, a subject on which he discourses at

some length

Chapter

in

effecting this radical

But while alcohol has no place in

19.

metamorphosis,

sary agent in bringing Allbee to see

it

most people without

experiencing terrible pain

first

As he observes,

want sweeping change

will not accept or

meant heavy drinking and

has evidently been a neces-

its desirability.

227)

(p.

hitting bottom.

in their lives

— which

for

him has

10

Leventhal understands almost nothing of these reasons behind Allbee's drinking. Indeed, at a conscious level

own

about the sources of his tion,

and

he understands very

fears, hostilities,

therefore he takes very

little

and

action to

little

feelings of aliena-

combat or overcome

them. Nevertheless, gradually and unconsciously he makes headway against them. This entails

more than

toleration or sympathy;

quires entering into a feared role or even a feared identity. extent Leventhal

must become what he

fears; that

tering into Allbee 's identity, seeing things as

is,

11

in the

re-

he must

risk en-

he does, and allowing

himself to be invaded or "penetrated" by Allbee just as he

crowd

it

To a great

by the

is

park (pp. 183-84), that sea of alien humanity, similar epigraph to the novel from De Quincey's Pains of

to the faces in the

Opium, of which Allbee

is

the individual representative.

In spite of their very different thal

backgrounds and cultures, Leven-

and Allbee have some surprising

perience. Although Leventhal

is

similarities of character

and ex-

seldom consciously aware of

these,

they are important in suggesting that a basis exists for the entry and penetration that Leventhal must experience in order to surmount his fears.

Some

modes

of his

loss of control

of thinking or behavior

seem

to exhibit the

supposedly typical of the alcoholic.

Leventhal assumes loss of control to be a definitive

trait

because of his alcoholic drinking; yet Leventhal, for passivity,

exposes

this

same

disastrous points in his restaurant booth

man;

his act

life.

on learning

ended

quality at

some

He pushed that she

and

crucial

his future wife

had continued

their relationship for

two years

once perpetrates

it;

his im-

potentially

down

in a

to see

another

(p. 16).

Several

times Leventhal meditates violence against Allbee and

hallway

of Allbee

all

more than

when he slams Allbee into a wall of his apartment

(p. 78), his loss

of control could well have produced

more

91 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's The Victim

trouble than Allbee ever

manages

him. Moreover, dur-

to contrive for

ing his periods of job seeking after he rashly

left

the civil service, the

sober Leventhal nevertheless manifested several of Allbee's

traits:

"he

became peculiarly aggressive. ... the provocations and near-quarrels continued. ... he was despondent and became quarrelsome once again, difficult, touchy, exaggerating, illogical, overly familiar" (pp. 19, 41).

To a great extent these

feelings

holics unless brought

under

founder of Alcoholics

Anonymous

no trouble perceiving

(AA, pp. 64, 66). Leventhal has

this quality in Allbee,

wrongs against himself"

see the connection

The major ments was

between

tial

faults of his

(p. 38);

this self

and

blackout or

common

memory blank, and

sion" (p. 44) or,

one might

to

his family.

his

former

self.

and

resent-

to alcoholic drinkers: a par-

—

"like a seizure or posses-

say, intoxication.

shocking evidence of Leventhal's is

turned

a loss of control so complete that

involved a total change of personality

control

own which he

but he lacks the sympathy to

conduct during the job interview with Rudiger. Here

Leventhal had two experiences

it

whom he imagines to be

result of Leventhal's cumulative frustrations

his

at-

of alco-

control, according to Bill Wilson, co-

"haunted in his mind by wrongs or into

and actions could be

number one enemy

tributed to a single cause: resentment, the

12

Perhaps the most

failures of rational or

emotional

be found in several of his judgments of his brother and

At one point he thinks of Allbee as "an idiot"

(p.

41) for

supposing that he could have so exaggerated a minor anti-Semitic

embarrassment caused by Allbee that he would seek revenge through his interview with Allbee's employer. however, what

label,

is

one

If

for

to think of Leventhal,

who

at various

points in the novel blames his brother for being a neglectful father,

convinced of the insanity of his sister-in-law

it

Allbee deserves this

(p. 182),

and

is

refers to

her mother as "the old devil" (p. 240)? Leventhal is completely wrong in each of these judgments, as he later realizes. With falterings, regressions, and a resistance that never disappears for

long or for good, Leventhal comes to accept and, at fleeting inter-

vals,

even to

feel close to Allbee.

He becomes

a provider, a

maritan, and even a confessor. In order

more thoroughly

come

allay the

his fears of Allbee,

however, and to

extinction or annihilation

good

horror of his

by being dragged down

Sa-

to over-

own

to Allbee's level,

Leventhal must undergo experiences of near-union or identification

with Allbee. By losing our lives

we

find them, according to the Chris-

92

Equivocal Spirits

tian paradox. Leventhal

his

own

drifter is

by risking

life

must incorporate loss in

its

and apparent alcoholic

a version of this paradox in

union with Allbee, the homeless matters

failure. It

almost entirely unconscious of this process or

important thing

is

that he

fears but, for the first time,

little its

that Leventhal

significance; the

emerges not only largely

free of his old

whole.

The elements in the process are by no means consistently subtle or solemn; some casual, almost humorous touches (though Leventhal, predictably, is not amused) suggest his readiness or involvement. Leventhal almost has hallucinations in which mice dart across his

apartment (pp. 25, 77); ironically, Allbee, who has presumably been drinking heavily for years before reentering Leventhal's life, is clear-

headed most of the time and has apparently never had hallucinations. is

13

The morning

after his first

encounter with Allbee, Leventhal

not feeling well: "His legs were

eyes

head ached, and his

tired, his

— he examined them long mirror — were bloodshot; he looked drawn"

in the pillar before the

in the

coffeeshop

toms of a hangover

(p. 37).

These symp-

(a cashier in a cafeteria later asks

Leventhal

whether he has one) somehow seem more than accidentally assigned to Leventhal;

and the weary

less derelicts

walking the Bowery, foreshadow a restlessness or root-

lessness that

becomes increasingly marked

legs, as if

he had been one of the home-

in Leventhal's

life.

One important and fundamental experience of union with Allbee occurs at a moment of extreme fear, aroused by a sequence of images of derelicts

and

their habitations.

and unanswered question: "And house] sheets, winter sun, (pp.

his lips

his

It

culminates in an uncompleted

if it

his flesh

his

on those

back and thighs

[flop-

in that

eyes looking at the boards of the floor ... ?"

69-70). Unwittingly, Leventhal

come

were

drinking that coffee,

his dread of a

fall

is

to Allbee's level

already beginning to over-

by the

intensity of his imagi-

native, almost sympathetic identification with him.

The union with Allbee comes closest to completeness in Chapter Oddly enough, Allbee is not present in this chapter except marginally, asleep, at its outset; most of it involves a birthday party for Harkavy's niece. In Chapter 13 Leventhal had permitted a homeless Allbee to share his apartment, into which he has introduced the squalor of a Bowery cubicle. Now, from a desire to avoid his guest, 21.

Leventhal himself becomes a homeless wanderer for a day. In the

ternoon he spends a few hours in the library

—

the

New York

af-

Public,

— 93 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's

well

known

resorted (p.

as a shelter for drifters

145).

14

and one

to

After arriving at the party

comment on

Harkavy's mother

The Victim

which Allbee has and listening to

a predicted scientific conquest of

death, Leventhal seems to reject this idea as ridiculous (p. 248), per-

haps under the influence of one of Allbee's more strikingly unusual

"And

opinions:

when

I'm not letting you in on any secret

life,

on dying"

tudes toward

is

it

in

—

man

this

is

now

is

of intoxication,

who

getting

the condi-

it is

her idea that

are primarily fear or disgust,

has never been drunk

But

(p. 194).

when he responds to The man who sternly disapproves

tion Leventhal esting.

as for eternal

say most people count

I

most

whose

so far as

drunk

interatti-

we know

himself.

15

In

248) seems a direct legacy of Allbee's most

this condition, his grin (p.

characteristic expression. Just as Allbee's grin or smile often indicates

or implies an

assumed superiority of insight, so Leventhal now

at the absurdity of Mrs. Harkavy. Leventhal at this

his closest

reaches

resemblance to Allbee and, consequently, his greatest

trangement from his

The

moment

grins

own

es-

self.

marks the beginning of

alienation from or loss of self also

its

recovery; or perhaps one should say discovery, for Leventhal has hitherto been too insecure

ery or discovery

is

and anxious

know

himself.

The recov-

symbolically furthered by rites of purgation

(rather like a gigantic metaphysical in

to

bowel movement) and ablution

Chapter 22, 16 though the actual expulsion of Allbee from his

apartment comes in the following chapter. The most salient evidence that Leventhal has

plunged

comes

overcome the

central fear of his

and

to the degradation

failure

life

—

fear of

being

symbolized by skid row

in the following passage:

Both of them, Allbee and the

woman [whom Leventhal has also moved or swam toward him out

expelled from his apartment], of a depth of

life

in

which he himself would be

ended. There lay horror, In the days

when he was

he had been as near to seen

it

face

evil, all that

on

then.

clerking in the hotel

it

And

lost,

on the East

as he could ever bear to be. since,

out of the corner of his eye. His heart was what caught

Side,

He had

he had learned more about

Why not say heart, it,

choked,

he had kept himself from.

it

rather than eye?

with awful pain and dread, in

heavy blows. Then, since the fear and pain were so great, what

drew him on?

[p.

277]

— _

94 Equivocal Spirits

At a glance,

passage seems quite similar to

this

one (pp. 69-70), in which a

earlier

ages" of skid-row

presented. But the difference in Leventhal's

life is

responses, though relative,

horror

is

less vivid than an most horrible im-

if

series of "the

fundamental. In the

is

unmitigated; in the second, Leventhal

what more detached or

analytical.

Thanks

is

passage his

first

able to be some-

involvement

to his close

now possesses a clearer definition of self; he knows his limits. He now answers the question left unanswered in the earlier passage: What would be his fate if he were in Allbee's position on

with Allbee, he

skid row?

The answer

Even

simple perception would not be possible

still

this

overwhelmed with

as

which the plicit

answer

is

is

would

it; it

if

kill

him.

Leventhal were

he had been. The question with

terror as

provided. But

surely lies in the cumulative experi-

it

"What drew him

to enter Allbee's identity

that he could

what

he could not stand

passage ends seems curious, for no apparent or ex-

later

ences of Leventhal.

need

that

is

surmount

on," unconsciously,

was the

with sufficient intimacy or intensity

his fears of

it.

Only

in this

way can he

refute

perhaps Allbee's most damning accusation against him, that

he timorously keeps his soul "under lock and key"

146).

(p.

Nor

does Leventhal suffer any longer from guilt about his modest prosperity (p. 285);

though he does not

fully

understand how, he has

earned that prosperity by risking loss of success, and even entering Allbee's

self,

in

self.

The major irony of The Victim

is

that Leventhal

—

rigid, impassive,

stubbornly reluctant to change throughout most of the novel

grows more than Allbee,

who

the importance of repentance

at

one point discourses eloquently on

and

spiritual rebirth.

impressed by Allbee's look of well being

17

Though

at their last

initially

encounter, Le-

venthal quickly perceives something wrong. Allbee has not "become a

new man"

(p.

228)

—

certainly not the kind implied

repentance or by Phoebe Williston

bee as "very promising" "decay"

seems

(p.

to

(p.

when

by

she refers to the young All-

214). In particular, Leventhal notices a

292) in Allbee's appearance; his resumption of drinking

be one sign of

this decay. Paradoxically, Allbee's failure,

while he was drinking heavily and living at the Bowery eral respects

novel

is

his talk of

more

ennobled him; his worldly success truly a decline or

fall.

level, in sev-

at the

end of the

Whereas he now drinks

for rea-

sons of social conformity, as he admits to Leventhal, he once used, or

was used

by, alcohol for

more compelling and honest

reasons: to

-95 Allbee's Drinking: Bellow's The Victim

fulfill

a sense of honor, to help

him experience

failure

destruction, to facilitate the expiation or purgation of his wife

and

it

to risk

wrongs against

society.

The Victim surface

and

is

concerned

presents an

at several levels

with drinking.

On

the

interesting clash of culturally stereotyped atti-

tudes about alcohol and drunkenness. These, however, soon appear

inadequate to account either for Allbee's drinking or for Leventhal's

The problem or concept of alcoholism seems at most only a starting point for a deeper exploration: Allbee comes to be seen in his full humanity, and Leventhal to a great extent overcomes his stereotyped attitudes toward alcoholic drinking, and his fears of the failure it emblematizes, by entering the being of the fallen reactions to

derelict.

it.

The Winding Road to Pat Hobby Fitzgerald Confronts Alcoholism

.

Scott Fitzgerald

|holic. Sheilah

knew him life

and who writes more

comments on

other biographer,

fully

alco-

during

intimately

the last three of his

was an

Graham, who

and a

half years

about his drinking than any

Fitzgerald's

change from Jekyll

to

Hyde when he was drinking, a personality transformation that is one definitive mark of the alcoholic. One example of this change is espe1

cially striking: sober, Fitzgerald

was almost

guage; drunk, however, he once told a film a "cunt." There

is

himself, that his

Graham making heard

that

Graham was

critic that

abundant testimony, some of

problems with alcohol began

it

from Fitzgerald

early:

he once told

he was suspended from Princeton's Cottage Club "for

drunken

a

puritanical about lan-

how an

fool of himself,"

2

and from Robert Benchley she

intoxicated Fitzgerald, while living in France, once

wantonly kicked an old vendor's tray of sweetmeats out of her hands.

Graham affords of

its

further evidence (though she

seems not always aware

significance) that Fitzgerald manifested traits typically or fre-

quently found in alcoholics: he often had blackouts, rarely

remem-

bering what he had done on a binge; he deceived himself, thinking that

he could stay sober by drinking beer;

ently

when drunk, he

appar-

sometimes sought low company. (Graham once found him

in

money and best clothing.) 3 Fitzgerald's alcoholism is too well known to require further recitation or proof. What is much less well known and, in my opinion, much more interesting and deserving of study is how Fitzgerald's the process of giving two tramps his

— —

experience of alcoholism or his attitudes toward his work.

4 1

it

appear in or shape

believe such a study can trace an intelligible pattern that,

though complicated and sometimes speculative, can do

much

to re-

97

The Winding Road and account

veal

to Pat

for the peculiarities

and

Hobby

much

difficulties of

of

Fitzgerald's writing.

second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922),

Fitzgerald's

such a powerfully authentic portrayal of alcoholic decline and perhaps

that

it

could only have been written by an author rapidly

becoming alcoholic Patch

is

himself.

5

The

from Anthony

to his wife

of his inexperience as a novelist.

seems rather sudden, scenes;

fails

in fairness

it

need

in part because

of Anthony's alcoholism

prepared for or supported by ear-

to establish firm or convincing con-

some of Anthony's other qualities

and self-indulgent aestheticism, though

Fitzgerald's

and back,

The onset

insufficiently

and Fitzgerald

nections between

Anthony

portrait of the alcoholic

sometimes weakened, in part no doubt by

to shift the focus

lier

is

fall

for

example

— and

—

his indolence

his alcoholism,

should be admitted that even expert students of

alcoholism have had trouble establishing this kind of relationship. Occasionally, too, Fitzgerald alcoholic scene: one,

lucinatory picture of a

grotesque

in

fails to realize

which involves the

room

full

of

the full potential of an

sinister Joe

Hull and the hal-

drunken houseguests "staggering

fourth-dimensional

gyrations

through

intersecting

planes of hazy blue," 6 ends at a railway station with a friend of Anthony's,

Maury Noble,

The strengths of however,

far

delivering a comic monologue.

Fitzgerald's portrayal of Patch's deterioration,

outweigh any weaknesses. In the novel's

first

detailed

depiction of the intoxicated hero, Fitzgerald unerringly reveals three of the

most

common and

disturbing characteristics of the alcoholic:

his

tendency to self-deception about his condition, his violence, and

his

change of personality. Gloria, Anthony's wife,

a party, rightly accuses her

only denies

it;

although he

is

who wants

to leave

husband of being drunk. Anthony not naturally dependent

and

gentle,

he also

conceives a sudden desire to dominate Gloria and, to keep her from leaving without him, grips her first,

arm hard

(pp.

197-98). From

their

relatively brief

appearance, Anthony's personality changes and

become

uglier as his alcoholism deepens, finally result-

his violence

ing in the Jew-baiting of a character

named Bloeckman

(p.

437) and

in his increasingly frequent flashes of hatred for his wife (p. 389).

The mutual self-deception or

rationalization of

also increases as Anthony's drinking

Anthony and Gloria

grows worse. Having lost most of

their old friends, they prefer to think this the result of their

reduced

98

Equivocal Spirits

income, rather than ascribing

downward

spiral

quent attempts

to

it

to its

more probable

cause. In his

toward poverty, Anthony makes one of his

infre-

work, instead of waiting to inherit his grandfather's

fortune. In so doing,

he

illustrates

an observation of Alcoholics

Anonymous

that alcoholics display a "positive genius" for getting

drunk

most inopportune times (AA,

at the

called "Heart Talks,"

Anthony

them

plies

first

p. 21). Selling

something

to bartenders

along

Lexington Avenue, then, totally inebriated, to the customers of a delicatessen,

from which he

early in his writing

of course ejected (pp. 385-87). Even this

is

and drinking

career, Fitzgerald

was capable of

extraordinarily subtle perceptions about the alcoholic. Late in the

up and witnesses

novel, Muriel, an old friend of the Patches, turns

the couple quarreling, after

which Anthony

ment. Gloria remarks, "He's just drunk." credulity

— "Drunk? Why,

"Oh, no, he doesn't show

and he

he does when (p.

he's sober.

Muriel expresses in-

he's perfectly sober"

it

—

Gloria interrupts:

any more unless he can hardly stand up,

he gets excited.

talks all right until

stalks out of the apart-

When

But

been

he's

He

talks

much

sitting here all

better than

day drinking"

411).

we

If

set aside the excessively

The Beautiful and Damned appears; he

may

wins the lawsuit

(or

may

melodramatic, contrived ending of

— an old

not)

lover of Anthony's suddenly re-

murder

her; against all probability

he

—

the

for his grandfather's fortune;

more appropriate ending

is

he goes insane

an extended drunk scene, the most

powerful in the novel, culminating in and completing Anthony's

Now

have other drink.

fall.

advanced stages of alcoholism, Anthony has ceased

in the

interests; his

to

whole existence centers around obtaining

Having discovered that his bank account has been closed be-

pawn his watch, stopping on the up a little remaining pocket money at a speakeasy in the raffish company he has already begun to keep. Drunk, broke, and finding the pawnshops closed, he tries to take advantage of a chance

cause of overdrafts, he sets out to

way

to drink

encounter with his old friend Maury, thinks of getting

who snubs him. At this point he

money from Bloeckman, whom he had

previously

regarded only with resentment and jealousy because of his supposed attentions to Gloria. Nevertheless, after considerable effort fusion,

he locates Bloeckman

at a nightclub.

viously mentioned then occurs.

Anthony

and con-

The Bloeckman smashes Jewish insult pre-

Retaliating,

several times in the face.

A

seedy but friendly passerby

99

The Winding Road

to Pat

Hobby

Anthony home, but becomes infuriated when Anthony cannot taxi fare; cheered on by the driver, he beats Anthony as

takes

produce the

Bloeckman had. Regaining consciousness on

severely as

ment

from his

And on

Anthony hears

though suitable

cultivated taste

and

from the gutter

may

"a distinct

lips it was like a pitiful retching of the The irony perhaps unnoticed by Anthony is to his former self, the young man of carefully

and bleeding

his torn

soul" (pp. 424-41). that,

sensibility,

bum

such laughter

sizing the dizzying completeness of his

"No

title,

fall,

nothing of the former Anthony

is

shockingly grotesque

is

he has almost become. This metamorphosis

point also to the irony of the chapter

there

his apart-

and peculiar murmur" coming own mouth: "the unmistakable sound of ironic laughter.

steps,

the

left,

Empha-

Matter!"

title

reminds us that

"no matter," only the

ghost of his manner disappearing on the night.

One might contend would be more

that the utter degradation of this

fitting for a naturalist

haps Fitzgerald realized

its

inappropriateness for him. But an appre-

ciation of the effectiveness of his portrayal of alcoholism

on

a particular

depends not

ending or scene, but on two other qualities not yet

mentioned and on our perceiving differences between The and Damned and two Fitzgerald's tail

later novels. In contrast to Tender Is the Night,

asserted than demonstrated.

And

Diver's addiction

The

Anthony Patch with

detachment rather than through a haze of enchantment. In

it is

surprising that Fitzgerald, inexperienced as a novelist and,

one might ing with as It

seems more

in contrast to his next novel,

Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald views the drinking of

short,

Beautiful

second novel has that large accumulation of specific de-

on alcoholism without which Dick

critical

ending

such as Dreiser, and that per-

say, as

much

an alcoholic, never again wrote

at length of drink-

trenchant honesty as in The Beautiful and Damned.

would, of course, be inadequate to dismiss Fitzgerald's treatment

of drinking in The Great Gatsby with a phrase about enchantment,

but there he presents heavy drinking in very different ways. Martin

Roth has examined some of these ways. 7 Of particular interest

is

the

tendency of the drinking to be curiously invisible to the narrator despite its pervasiveness.

The novel

for all Nick's fascination

glects to

with

make connections

is

almost drenched in alcohol, but,

this drinking,

he characteristically ne-

or see consequences. For example, he

does not perceive that Tom's heavy drinking probably fostered his racism and violence. As an extreme example of this detachment of

—

—

100

Equivocal Spirits

drink from source or agency, Roth notes a scene in which a tray of cocktails appears as light.

8

The

through the twi-

floating in

Great Gatsby, in fact, establishes

modes

recurrent

from nowhere,

if

some

of Fitzgerald's

most

or patterns of treating drinking in the rest of his

work. These include a tendency toward dissociation or detachment

and an

between cause and

inability or refusal to see connections

effect, to trace

consequences and reach conclusions where alcohol

is

concerned. They also include several forms of what might variously

be called denial or evasion, including a preference for oblique glances at rather

than sustained examination of drinking, and a tendency to-

ward softening by sublimating or romanticizing

the effects of drink.

(Roth cites the example of Nick, who, having had "two finger-bowls of champagne," finds the scene before

him "changed

.

.

.

into

some-

thing significant, elemental, and profound.") 9

The

differences

between treatments of drinking

and Damned and The Great Gatsby

may

in

The Beautiful

of course be attributed to a

conscious desire on Fitzgerald's part to avoid repeating himself. The

however,

truth,

is

A

probably more complicated.

further attempt to

Damned and most of may have to take into acFitzgerald's own drinking in the early

explain the difference between The Beautiful and Fitzgerald's other treatments of drinking

count the rapid worsening of

1920s and his development of certain attitudes toward drinking that

commonly accompany

this

kind of change. More

haps only before the development of Fitzgerald's complete

—

that

is,

The Beautiful and Damned

in

specifically, per-

own alcoholism was

— was he

willing

and

able to examine drinking with something close to unflinching honesty.

Although start,

Fitzgerald's drinking

more than one

critic

was evidently abnormal from the

or observer has noted that, by about the

time of The Great Gatsby, his drinking had become unmistakably coholic.

10

One

person and as a writer, was a change that holic: a

is

sometimes referred

both because the alcoholic finds illness

even

effort to

to take.

befalls virtually every alco-

powerful, often unconquerable urge to deny his alcoholism.

Indeed, alcoholism

an

al-

of the most significant changes in Fitzgerald, both as a

11

to himself

it

to as a disease of denial,

extremely painful to admit this

and because admission would

stop drinking, a step that he

Two striking examples

is

logically lead to

often unwilling or unable

of the strength of Fitzgerald's denial

of his alcoholism are mentioned by Sheilah Graham. Right after the

drunken

fiasco of

March 1939, when

Fitzgerald

went

to

Dartmouth

101

The Winding Road

to Pat

Hobby

work on the film script of Winter Carnival, Graham arranged for him to talk to a psychiatrist about his drinking. Even apart from Budd Schulberg's memorializing the bender in his novel The Disenchanted, it was in fact one of Fitzgerald's worst. Combined with the flu and exposure to the New Hampshire winter, it could easily have killed him; by causing him to be fired from the job by Walter Wanger, it deprived him of money that he desperately needed. If Fitzgerald was ever going to be receptive to help, this would have been the time. Instead, entering the room near the end of the session, Graham found Fitzgerald psychoanalyzing the psychoanalyst. In the second example from the same period, following what she terms anto

other "bad drinking period," he rejected Graham's suggestion that he

Anonymous, which was then a fledgling organizaThough he probably knew very little, if anything, about AA, he

join Alcoholics tion.

dismissed lings

with confident contempt as being of use only for weak-

it

— implying,

was strong enough to stop drinkwould be a mistake to think that to. denied a drinking problem only late in his life: in another of course, that he 12

ing any time he chose Fitzgerald plausible

shows

(if

It

overdramatized) example from the '20s,

that Fitzgerald's

Hemingway

tendency toward denial was already in place. 13

Premature death was the worst result of Fitzgerald's alcoholic tionality

and

diate cause,

self-deception. (Although a heart attack

many

now

doctors

recognize that alcoholic drinking can

be a major cause of heart trouble as well as of a host of other tions.

14

)

He must

when he

refuses to accept the reality of his alco-

thereby violate the principle of not lying to himself,

a principle that he thought important

scoring in his notebooks. ently

afflic-

But what happens to the work of a writer as autobiographi-

cal as Fitzgerald

holism?

irra-

was the imme-

found

it

15

enough

to record

with under-

After the early 1920s, Fitzgerald appar-

too painful to write a

full

and honest

portrait of a

heavy or alcoholic drinker; except for two or three of the shortest portraits, there are

always signs of evasion, of a desire to mitigate the

harsh ugliness of alcoholism. In short, Fitzgerald's denial of his alcoholism had a consequence disastrous for any writer:

mised his

it

own

compro-

integrity.

Like most alcoholics, Fitzgerald

may have swung between two

tremes: brief periods of admitting his

followed by

more

characteristic

Fitzgerald's changeableness

on

problem

(at least to

and protracted periods of

this subject

ex-

himself) denial.

can be traced in his corre-

102

Equivocal Spirits

spondence. In a stance,

he

letter to

virtually

Hemingway

though

when he

during a period of hard work

ior

of 9 September 1929, for in-

facetiously confesses to alcoholic behavrefers to his "usual

nervous depressions and such drinking manners as the lowest bistro (bistrot?)

My

boy would scorn.

latest

tendency

11:00 and, with the tears flowing from their level

that

I

and leaking

over,

tell

erally including

Zelda

:

to collapse

about

eyes or the gin rising to

interested friends or acquaintances

haven't a friend in the world "

my

is

and likewise

care for nobody, gen-

Yet in a letter written to Maxwell Perkins

on

19 January 1933, by which time Fitzgerald's drinking was almost certainly worse,

he

is

clearly pleased at the prospect of disproving

Hemingway's opinion of

wagon from

the

first

his alcoholism.

of February to the

"Am

going on the water-

of April but don't

first

Ernest because he has long convinced himself that alcoholic his

due

to the fact that

we

am an

is

mine and do not want

must be done

tell

incurable

almost always meet on parties.

alcoholic just like Ring [Lardner]

lusion him, tho even Post stories

I

I

am

to disil-

in a state of sobriety."

Ober expressing concern about December 1934) writes a series of rationalizations that deny any real alcoholic problem. Matthew Bruccoli, moreover, correctly describes as "minimizing his dependence on alIn replying to a letter from Harold his drinking, Fitzgerald (8

cohol" a letter Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda's psychiatrist, Dr. Forel, in

When

1930. 16

addressing only himself, however, Fitzgerald could

sometimes be more honest. In a chart of how or where he spent each quarter of each year from

fall

gerald's entries for the spring

1931 through summer 1938,

and summer of 1934 and

of 1936 are laconically the same: "Drunk." Let us turn again to his writings tions.

Even though Dick Diver,

17

and begin

like

Fitz-

for the spring

to test these generaliza-

Anthony

Patch,

is

an alcoholic

and Fitzgerald was a much more experienced writer by the time of Tender

novel

Is the is

Night (1934), his depiction of alcoholism in the later

much

weaker. Fitzgerald had once entitled his later novel

The Drunkard's Holiday his change ;

impact of alcoholism.

One

may

reflect a desire to soften the

oddity of the novel

is

that Fitzgerald di-

vides the alcoholism between the hero, Diver,

and Abe North, with

most of the

traits

stereotypically crude or

obnoxious

of the alcoholic

going to North. This division exempts Diver from any strongly objectionable behavior; in spite of his alcoholism, he remains an attractive

though somewhat puzzling and

lifeless figure.

His appeal stays intact

103

The Winding Road partly because his alcoholism

to Pat

becomes

Hobby

clear only

when

the novel

nearly two-thirds finished, erupting in a scene of violence in

Diver strikes a policeman and lands in

jail.

Diver's previous drinking

had demonstrated no tendency toward violence; indeed, problem had seemed

to

might help explain that

similar

though

less

it is

pronounced

failure of

any

it

we

see Anthony's intoxication

after Diver's arrest for

him

as

faults of Tender Is the

becomes important

ing changes of character in repeated

of

A

connection can be found in

is

revealed,

in the novel.

an incomparably more convincing delineation

of alcoholism, because

even

characteristics that

which Anthony's alcoholism

and the abruptness with which is

major

never properly attached to them.

The Beautiful and Damned, as can two other Night: the belatedness with

But the early novel

his

be an excess of control or propriety. More-

over, Diver's alcoholism surfaces so long after it

is

which

and abundant

and

his result-

detail. In contrast,

drunkenness, Fitzgerald's representation

an alcoholic simply

fails

For example, Diver's

to develop.

discharge from his position in a psychiatric clinic on the grounds of

alcoholism seems almost trumped up, because there

is

no depiction

of his supposed misconduct at the clinic.

The

flaws in Fitzgerald's portrayal of Diver are in fact so radical

that they

should be ascribed to Fitzgerald's probably inconsistent and

conflicting attitudes

way

other

Diver at all

the

—

own

toward his

to explain the major, almost

his alcoholism should

important

— than

most extreme

to

alcoholism. There seems

no

incomprehensible anomaly of

be highly important, yet

it

seems not

suppose that his creator was going through

tergiversations regarding his

own

addiction during

the novel's long gestation. If such confusion could not have been easy for Fitzgerald to live with,

it

was even more of an obstacle

to his

and

critics

presentation of Diver as a believable character. Readers

have experienced

difficulties in trying to

make

sense of Diver or to

understand the place of alcoholism in his character. 18 Their attempts have generally

failed

because Fitzgerald was apparently able to go no

further than to assign alcoholism to Diver.

To give a

full,

convincing

picture of Diver's alcoholism might have been as intolerably painful to Fitzgerald as fully

accepting his own.

These attempts to elucidate the problems of Tender

may seem

a

little

easier to credit

if

Is the

Night

they are supplemented by a brief

look at two of Fitzgerald's short stories, both written while he was at

work on

the novel. Like Tender

Is

the Night,

"One Trip Abroad"

104

Equivocal Spirits

which alcoholism assumes great importance, yet lacks concrete illustrations of the drinking problem of the hero,

(1930) it

is

Nelson

a story in

The strangeness of

Kelly.

the story

lies

much

not so

in this

dearth of evidence as in the suddenness with which the drinking

problem achieves importance. This

results in

what appears

to

be a

serious inconsistency, almost a contradiction: after explicitly being told that Kelly

"was not a drunk, he did nothing conspicuous or sod-

den," at the climax the reader finds a terror-stricken Kelly staring

with recognition

the

at

another character, his double, with "the kind of

needs half a dozen drinks

face that

mouth up

to normal."

eral stiff drinks in the

19

really to

open the eyes and

stiffen

Because the double seems to require sev-

morning, he would certainly qualify as a sod-

den drunk. One might interpret the second passage referred representing Kelly's

moment

of honesty

and

truth, his

to as

admission of

alcoholism, sudden because of his previous denial. Because this rather long story pays scant attention to Kelly's drinking, there

support

was life

vacillating, unwilling to

and

Another

for this interpretation.

is

in Tender Is the Night)

just as likely: Fitzgerald

may have been

decide (as he

is little

whether drinking was a

in his

trivial

own

pastime

or a terrifying problem.

Another story written while Fitzgerald was working on Tender the Night is is,

like

ing,

"Family in the

Wind"

(1932),

whose

Dick Diver, an alcoholic doctor. His alcoholism notwithstand-

Janney

is

a revered figure in a small Southern town; he performs

admirably in helping those injured by a tornado, and

about

Is

hero, Forrest Janney,

to

become

a volunteer

father to a girl

Kenneth Eble evaluates the story excessive

sympathy

orations of plot

at the

aptly: "it is

which

more

elab-

is

too mild

—

the

and sentimental. As an alcoholic anxious

story

is

deny

his alcoholism, or at the least to deceive himself

portance, Fitzgerald

and by

painful, examination of

that character" (p. 44). If anything, this assessment

insufferably false

was capable

is

marred by the author's

for the alcoholic central character

evade a simpler,

end he

orphaned by the storm. 20

of writing a story in

about

its

which the

to

im-

alco-

holism of a central character was only a minor blemish, no more important than mention of his favorite brand of toothpaste. This belief, of course, also helps to explain

credibly untouched

more realistic coholic—any

by

why Dick

Diver

his alcoholism. Sheilah

in noting the Jekyll-to-Hyde

is

essentially

and

in-

Graham was much

metamorphosis of the

alcoholic, not just Fitzgerald. Alcoholism

is

al-

not a

105

The Winding Road small, incidental bit of character; lasts,

the

more

it

is

The longer

a total illness.

all

it

virtues or

a truth that Fitzgerald, after The Beau-

and Damned, was never able

Some

it is

Hobby

submerges and eventually extinguishes

strengths of character. This tiful

to Pat

to see for long or for

good.

of Fitzgerald's later fiction continues to afford precious

glimpses of these and other truths about alcoholism. However precarious his hold

on

serted an honest

and

it

may have become,

Fitzgerald never totally de-

Two

view of alcoholism.

realistic

of his shortest

stories about alcoholism, freed of the exigencies of romantic padding for a

popular readership, achieve an impressive power; and two of

his longer stories deserve respect,

by

though one

is

somewhat

vitiated

evasion.

"The Lost Decade" 21 seems

to

is

more

when

Trimble,

being

shown

who

The piece

has been absent from America for a decade,

the sights of

New York,

1928. Trimble responds, "Yes that year

of a sketch than a story.

have been written for the sake of the shock administered

—

—

I

is

including a building erected in

designed

every- which- way drunk. So

I

it.

But

was taken drunk

I

never saw

it

before now."

Trimble's guide neatly conveys the reader's reaction: "'Jesus,' he said to himself. of-fact

more

'Drunk

hyperbole

for ten years.'"

is

architect's

often, his fictional treatments of drinking

carry a greater impact.

cause

The

it

unexpected, matter-

highly effective: had Fitzgerald written this

The hyperbole

is

way

and alcoholism might

acceptable, even honest, be-

has a basis in the reality of alcoholic blackouts.

And

it is

not

more exact dates, the jazz clarinetist Pee Wee Russell once told Whitney Balliett that, after nearly ten years of a diet consisting mostly of whiskey and "brandy milkshakes," there was a period of a year or more during which he remembered nothing: "Everything ... is a blank, except what people have told me since." 22 Another Esquire story, "An Alcoholic Case," is less effective. The so extreme as

it

might appear: though one could wish

for

which is not much greater, but in on the reactions of the alcoholic's nurse,

trouble lies not in the length, Fitzgerald's decision to focus

a character of

minimal

intelligence

and no

intrinsic interest.

There

is

even a bafflingly extraneous dialogue between the nurse and her supervisor, a Mrs. Hixson. Nevertheless, the story offers genuine re-

wards as a discerning study of alcoholic psychology.

When the nurse,

deciding to remain with her alcoholic "case," returns from her agency to his hotel

room, she discovers that although he

is

pale

and

feverish,

106

Equivocal Spirits

he

He

dressed "in dinner clothes" to go out.

is

help

him

find his studs

and even

invites her to

casually asks her to

accompany him. The

dinner clothes are evidently a gesture of imaginative self-deception, for all the alcoholic really

wants

is

more

drink. This scene

is

powerful

mainly as a disturbingly authentic revelation of the irrationality of the alcoholic.

sudden and

23

Another authentic touch follows almost

mood

characteristically alcoholic

and

case abruptly loses his desire to go out

him. Unfortunately, this penetrating scene

lets

at once, in a

change: the nurse's

her start to undress

marred by some ensu-

is

ing fustian about the alcoholic's "Will To Die" (Fitzgerald's capitals,

apparently) and about "death" lurking in the corner of the bathroom,

where the alcoholic had holics have

such a will

language, however, ing

is

is

earlier

smashed

a bottle of gin. That alco-

beyond question;

Fitzgerald's

unworthy of the vividly rendered scene preced-

it.

Of Leaf"

Fitzgerald's longer stories dealing with alcoholism, 24

the eyes of a

Dick Ragland,

woman, Julia. Because she

is

is less

Case." In

irritating

fact,

Fitzgerald

and

is

seen through

and Dick, the focus on

than the focus on the nurse in "An Alcoholic

the story of Julia's responses to Dick sheds light his alcoholism.

drunkenness when he arrives

immensely susceptible

to his

ber; she has fallen instantly

Though

revolted

remains

charm and good looks when he is soin love with the sober Dick and later

marry him

reactions

seem prophetic of Sheilah Graham's

if

on

by Dick's extreme

to take her out to lunch, Julia

agrees to

he can maintain that condition

was repeatedly and deeply offended by

for a year.

attitudes

Fitzgerald's

(Her

— though she

drunken behav-

she always returned to him and would probably have married

him had

it

not been for Zelda.)

Julia's reactions also anticipate

resemble the story told by Tony Buttitta, in After of

New

and because an

intelligent

intimate relationship develops between her

ior,

"A

perhaps the most honest and convincing. As in "An Alco-

is

holic Case," the alcoholic of this story,

her

melodramatic

the

and

Good Gay Times,

how Fitzgerald was hotly and tenaciously pursued by two attracwomen when he was living in Asheville, North Carolina, in the

tive

summer

of 1935, even though this

his drinking. But

of the worst periods of

even by 1931, Fitzgerald seems to have

his attractiveness to

Quite possibly

was one

this

women was

known

that

not effaced by his drunkenness.

knowledge enabled him

and the self-deception connected with

it.

to maintain his drinking

107

The Winding Road "A

New

Hobby was

Leaf" illustrates another quality of Fitzgerald's that

and may have abetted

related to his alcoholism tation of being to

to Pat

namely, his expec-

nursed or mothered in his alcoholism, a characteristic

which Kenneth Eble

which Julia

it,

"A

satisfies in

46-47) and

calls attention (pp.

New

Leaf."

Although there seems

a desire to

be no

biographical evidence to confirm the existence of this desire as early as 1931, Sheilah

Graham

noticed that Fitzgerald "craved infinite suc-

cor from the world, especially from the

she claims she never nursed

him

women he loved." 25 Although

after a spree, she

him

realized that her willingness to return to

ness of which Fitzgerald took

full

seems not

to

have

repeatedly, a willing-

advantage, constituted a kind of

him to continue alcoholic drinking and to amelioor avoid some of its worst consequences. As John Henry Raleigh

nursing, enabling rate

suggests, Fitzgerald's expectation of nursing

might even have been

typical of the Irishman or Irish -American of a

few generations ago.

Hogan in may seem mis-

Raleigh instances the drunkard Jamie's mothering by Josie O'Neill's

A Moon for

the Misbegotten,

an instinct that

directed to later twentieth- century audiences cut off from the Irish heritage.

One

26

other view of the alcoholic Ragland seems to have had a

sound and authentic biographical appearance

—

"face

.

.

.

basis.

Disgusted by his drunken

dead white. ... the

fixed eyes, the

drooping

mouth ... the chin wabbling like a made-over chin in which the paraffin had run" Julia nevertheless finds on next meeting him that Ragland has completely regained the handsomeness with which she fell in love, "a fine figure ... in coloring both tan and blond, with a

—

Even during the

peculiar luminosity to his face" (pp. 300, 303-4).

worst of his drinking alcohol to

work

a

it

evidently required only a few days without

comparably remarkable metamorphosis on

Fitz-

gerald himself. After one such brief spell of abstinence, Buttitta describes Fitzgerald, previously seen to as "once

him the

more

be pale, sweating, and shaking,

the college athlete or stage juvenile. There

quality of a phoenix rising from

its

In addition to the authenticity derived

ashes."

from the reader's knowl-

edge of the alcoholic Fitzgerald behind Ragland, "A thentic in is

its

presentation of truths

the Jekyll-and-Hyde contrast

was about

27

common

New Leaf"

to all alcoholics.

between Ragland's sober

self

is

au-

There (hand-

some, courteous, charming, appealingly vulnerable) and his drunken alter

ego (scandalous, sneering, contemptible). Even

if

Ragland's sui-

108

Equivocal Spirits

cide while drinking has

some

no

literal parallel in Fitzgerald's

known

Fitzgerald must have

level

death, at

that alcoholic drinking

is

a

type of suicide.

"Babylon Revisited" 28 seems conscientiously to strive toward an honest treatment of and a holism.

but

it

It is

seems

one of

critically objective attitude

Fitzgerald's

less successful

most praised and celebrated

than "A

New

The alcoholism of Charlie Wales,

holic.

cause his drunkenness

is

toward alco-

past, the reader

stories,

Leaf" as a study of an alcothe hero, is

spared

dormant; be-

is

sordid details.

its

To be sure, the retrospective view of Charlie's alcoholism largely justifies

these omissions, but one

easy on

anger"

seems

him when he

(p.

to

223)

recalls his wife's

way

is

too

that "wild

own drunkenness

than his

have been Charlie's reason for locking her out one night, in

Despite his

last

feature (p. 212)

her death, according to Charlie's sister-in-law.

to

name, Charlie has a handsome

and bears other resemblances

credit, Charlie accepts

drunken deeds of his its

Fitzgerald

death in such a

at his wife's flirting rather

an action that led

of

may wonder whether

much

past;

"Irish mobility" of

to Fitzgerald.

responsibility for the

he also has a powerful

if

To

his

drunkenness and low-keyed horror

emptiness and waste. But Fitzgerald also exposes the incom-

pleteness of Charlie's otherwise tains a link

commendable change. Charlie main-

with his past by continuing to have one drink a day for a

reason that sounds suspiciously like alcoholic self-deception or rationalization: "so that the idea of alcohol won't get too big in

imagination"

(p.

219). By leaving his address for

Duncan

my

Schaeffer at

the Ritz bar (p. 210), he enables the dissipated past to reenter his

present and thus to end, at least for the time being, his chances of regaining custody of his daughter, the only goal that really matters to

him any

longer.

There are other possible flaws Fitzgerald himself

may

in the story

and

in his

hero of which

not have been entirely cognizant, perhaps be-

cause he failed to accept fully the consequences of his holism.

The reader

is

It is

and

him to have his made even more appealing by

that his sobriety entitles

a touching desire,

the attitude of his daughter's guardian, his sister-in-law Marion, is

alco-

evidently intended to agree that he has suffered

sufficiently for his past

daughter back.

own

who

represented as being excessively suspicious and perhaps vindictive

in her reluctance to surrender her

ward

to Charlie.

Because Fitzgerald

has unwittingly or deliberately blurred the part that Charlie's drink-

109

The Winding Road

Hobby

to Pat

may have played in his wife's death, the reader's sympathies in this tense conflict may all go to Charlie. On reflection, however, the sufficiency of Charlie's atonement for his drinking may seem both ing

problematic and dubiously relevant.

It is

not hard to imagine

how

a

different writer could have portrayed Marion's attitude toward Charlie

as estimably prudent in light of the ravages of Charlie's alcoholic be-

havior,

which she correctly sees

past and which

for her

drunken

Charlie's

no

as lying at

great distance in the

resumes importance in the present when

friends

Duncan and Lorraine

intrude into her

apartment in search of him. As the story ends, Charlie

feels

keenly

is unnecessary and The reader may be more aware of Charlie's limitations, however, especially the limits of his change and his acceptance of responsibility, than is either Charlie or the author. More specifically, a reader who understands the alcoholic's evasions and self-deceptions may discover in Charlie at the end of the story a rather unpleasant and unwarranted tinge of self-pity, perhaps deriving from the fact

that the continuing separation from his daughter

unjust.

that,

he

although he

now accepts much

trying to displace

is still

some

of the responsibility for his past,

of the blame onto other persons or

causes, such as Marion, the general

debauchery of the era recently

ended, or sheer bad luck.

That Fitzgerald continued to equivocate about his alcoholism during the decade of his worst drinking

and the period of

frequent fictional attention to the problem

autobiographical essay, "The Crack-Up." criticized

it

for its excessive candor,

29

is

his

most

demonstrated in his

Although Hemingway

"The Crack-Up" would have

been both more candid and more informative had Fitzgerald been

more probing about

the part alcohol played in his collapse.

essay stands, there

scarcely a hint of this; instead, the work's

is

memorable passages

are

its

analytical

coholism. In

fact,

detachment rather than from the agonies of

al-

Fitzgerald explicitly rejects alcoholism as an expla-

nation of his crack-up

"not tasted so

most

humorous conceits ("and which seem to spring from an

rueful or

cracked like an old plate," p. 72),

Olympian

As the

much

on the grounds

that

when

as a glass of beer for six

it

occurred he had

months"

(p. 71).

A peri-

odic alcoholic or binge drinker like Fitzgerald can go without a drink for

much

give the

longer than six months. Independent accounts, however,

lie to

Fitzgerald's claim to have

been without beer

for six

months; during the period of his crack-up, his consumption of beer

no Equivocal Spirits

was so gargantuan (estimated by a friend thirty-seven bottles in one day) that it led tion in bit of

have reached a high of

to

directly to his hospitaliza-

September 193 5. 30 Even more unsettling (because

perverse snobbery)

it

smacks a

Fitzgerald's implicit rejection of the pos-

is

sibility of

alcoholism because

count for

his difficulties

too simple a

it is

and symptoms. He

phenomenon

to ac-

own

contrasts his

case

with that of William Seabrook, whose "unsympathetic book" about his

own

alcoholism has a "movie ending"

(p. 71).

31

Some students

of

alcoholism might suspect that Fitzgerald would not have read this

book had he not been much more disturbed by the

possibility of his

alcoholism than he admits in "The Crack-Up." With progress in the

understanding of alcoholism has come the view of illness

—

and

physical, mental,

might have seemed

this tripartite effect,

concept

spiritual (AA, p. 219). This

sufficiently

in describing his crack-up,

as a threefold

it

complex even

he also appears

to Fitzgerald; indeed,

to suggest

something

even though he rejects alcoholism as

its

like

source.

Compounding an irony lost on him, Fitzgerald notices in his crackup another major symptom of alcoholism the unmanageability of his life, by which many members of Alcoholics Anonymous mean particularly the unmanageability of emotional life when he observes that "in a single morning I would go through the emotions

—

—

Even

ascribable to Wellington at Waterloo" (p. 71).

not had a drink for six months, an

on

a "dry drunk,"

an emotional bender

holics are susceptible its

and which

if

which even sober

to

closely resembles a "wet"

lack of emotional control (12

had

Fitzgerald

AA member might say that he was

&

12, pp.

alco-

drunk

in

92-93). Furthermore,

in referring to his loss of a capacity for loving or liking people,

Fitzgerald unwittingly reveals a leading manifestation

emptiness

—

discussed

of alcoholism as a spiritual illness.

its

symptoms

semblance

to

with Diver as

Dick Diver, whose alcoholism

much as with

Crack-Up" shows face

failure,

and accept

wrongness of

As he develops the

and

isolation

to Sebastian

portrait of a de-

"The Crack-Up," Fitzgerald assumes a striking

from symptoms, a personal

—

have previously

Chapter 2 with reference

in

Flyte of Brideshead Revisited.) vitalized self in

(I

Fitzgerald, there

failure to

that this

make

his alcoholism,

Fitzgerald's

is

at least admitted.

"The

aesthetic or structural but a

Fitzgerald's apparent inability to

one should not be surprised

remedy.

re-

But

a dissociation of cause

clear connections. Because

was not an

stemming from

is

He

will,

he

at the

says, continue to

be a

Ill

The Winding Road

to Pat

Hobby

writer but "cease any attempts to be a person" (p. 82). Indeed, the total it

unworkability of any such solution might seem ludicrous, were

not for one's awareness of the anguish of alcoholic confusion and

self-deception that probably underlay

The excellence

of

some

of Fitzgerald's stories about alcoholism in

the 1930s suggests that he to

it.

must have had periods when he was able

be honest and therefore shrewdly perceptive about his own. But as

"The Crack-Up" tinued to write

more

indicates, Fitzgerald also clung to the denial

typical of the alcoholic,

weak

and

(that

may

help to explain

why he

evasive

and dishonest)

stories

this

is,

con-

about

alcoholics.

Perhaps the poor quality of "Her Last Case" 32 has nothing to do with Fitzgerald's denial and everything to do with boiler, written in haste for

its

being a pot-

money. Whatever the reasons, Fitzgerald

way

contrives every imaginable

down, or turn aside

to soften, tone

from his ostensible central subject, the drinking problem of Ben Dragonet. Far more than in "An Alcoholic Case" or "A

adopting the viewpoint of a

seem

alcoholic

woman and

New

Leaf,"

tracing her reactions to the

Other de-

to thwart serious attention to alcoholism.

velopments also remove Dragonet and the reader from his drinking problem. Dragonet's ancient and honorable Virginia lineage

is

em-

phasized, the implication apparently being that such a gentleman

could not possibly be a drunken stumblebum. Dragonet obviously holds this belief about himself; and since the local doctor and (very

soon

after

her arrival at Dragonet's house) the nurse share

sibility that

dismissed.

he might be practicing alcoholic self-deception

A realistic

sort evidently

ealogy, the Baltimore doctor

gards

him

liquor

who

is

the pos-

quickly

unimpressed by Dragonet's gen-

dispatches Bette to Dragonet re-

as alcoholic, instructing the nurse to taper off her patient's

he

if

it,

is

drinking and to substitute paraldehyde. (This used to

be thought a good means of weaning an alcoholic.) There

son to suppose that Bette

is

is

no

rea-

prepared to heed these directions, for she

begins falling in love with Dragonet almost on sight and just as hastily

concludes, with a consummately unprofessional indifference to

any consideration of evidence, that such a nobly romantic figure as Dragonet "was not drunk.

drunk" reader

He was

not the kind

who would

ever be

(p. 578). Unfortunately for the credibility of the story, the

is

meant

to accept this conclusion.

unlikely twists of plot

The

rest of the story, full of

and appearances of other

characters, deserves

112

Equivocal Spirits

to

be dismissed as quickly as Fitzgerald dismisses Dragonets drink-

ing.

His

last

(and virtually only) attempt to account for

whom

the appearance of Dragonets wife, "devil"

his

comes with

it

housekeeper terms a

and "vampire" and whose previous appearance, she

says,

launched Dragonet on a six-month drinking bout (pp. 584-85). Because the wife bears some resemblance to Zelda, one can speculate that the housekeeper's

comments

Zelda for his drinking.

If so,

blame of

reflect Fitzgerald's covert

then the housekeeper's rationalization of

her master's drinking becomes not just absurd but reprehensible. In

any event, the nurse's decision

to stay

on and act as a mother to Drago-

nets daughter may well reflect Fitzgerald's

Although "Crazy Sunday," 33 Fitzgerald's celebrated stories,

it is

own desire to be mothered.

"Babylon Revisited,"

like

one of

is

his least satisfactory in

its

dling of drinking. Kenneth Eble summarizes the reality out of

Hollywood

the story grew. In

as a writer for

tended a party given by Irving Thalberg and ing to a "fellow writer

.

.

.

MGM,

which

Fitzgerald at-

Norma Shearer. Accord-

who accompanied him

to the party,

Montgomery, and

insisted on The song embarrassed everyone,

Fitzgerald got drunk, insulted Robert

singing a banal song about a dog.

han-

though Norma Shearer sent Fitzgerald a telegram the next* day:

'i

THOUGHT YOU WERE ONE OF THE MOST AGREEABLE PERSONS at our tea,' which Fitzgerald used almost word for word in the story.

At the end of the week he was fired" (pp. 44-45). Fitzgerald's must have been a blow; and if he had been able to be hon-

dismissal est,

the drunkenness that evidently caused

more

painful, for

it

would have provided

it

would have been even

virtually irrefutable evi-

dence of his alcoholism. 34 But Fitzgerald was unable Practically the only actuality that

is

changed almost beyond recognition (for all Fitzgerald

— above

One can

all,

that he

had not made a drunken

all

reality to soften or

fool of himself.

escape otherwise unbearable

was only exercising artistic

license.

But

them and some palpable weaknesses and improbabilities, the denial and self-deception that evidently prompted them in-

these changes soften or evade the realities behind

result, besides, in

alcoholic

famous writer

question this hypothesis, of course, and argue that in

altering real events Fitzgerald

when

pity for a

drunk. But Fitzgerald believed what he wanted to

So his story revises pain.

Miss Shearer's telegram, which

knew) was prompted by

who had become a believe

is

to face this.

not omitted from the story or

stead suggest thralldom to an underlying guilt.

113

The Winding Road

From

Eble's

summary

Hobby

of the story, one might suppose that the

party and the drunk scene were at

not quite

to Pat

its

center. These,

pages of the eighteen. This brevity

five

one means of softening painful

reality,

but

it is

however, take up

may itself have been

certainly not the only

means. Fitzgerald passes so lightly over the drunkenness of his central character,

fail

to notice

regard

the

is

him

as a

(p.

236) to

two

cocktails; although

enough

to cause

reflects the

drunk

morning

in the narration of the party

to Joel: as

Stella, Miles's wife.

know how much Joel

to

scarcely sure that he gets

rummy, only once

word "drunk" attached

drunkenly"

is

Although Joel

it.

Caiman, the movie director and host, may

after the party that Miles

now

one

Joel Coles, that

and may almost

he

he bows "rather

leaves,

Furthermore,

if

one wants

has had to drink, Fitzgerald mentions only

more may be vaguely hinted

drunkenness.

On

35

at, this is

balance, the evidence

hardly fails to

He seems to be in complete possesinstance, when he senses that the little

demonstrate Joel's drunkenness. sion of his faculties, for

monologue he performs is

for the entertainment of the

Caimans' guests

being greeted coolly; a drunk would have been largely oblivious to

its

reception.

More than "drunkenness" or any

hibitionism" (pp. 234, 236) havior; he uses

it

the prominent explanation of Joel's be-

is

himself in writing a note of apology to Miles, divert-

ing attention from the probable cause to

though Eble

is

it,

symptom. So even

itself in

the story

because of the actual incidents be-

way

the extremely strange

manifests

its

correct in stating that "Crazy Sunday" "betrays" the

"guilt" (p. 45) that Fitzgerald felt

hind

variant thereof, "ex-

is

in

which

even more

this guilty

significant.

conscience

It

takes the

form, mainly, of Fitzgerald's effort to muffle or erase any evidence that

might account

It is

deny

it

as

if

the guilt of his

own

were so overpowering

gates, Fitzgerald fects,

for his guilt.

was driven

alcoholism and his anxiousness to

that,

using Coles and a story as surro-

to extenuate or

deny

of Coles's de-

all

whether or not they have any connection with his drinking.

Without some such hypothesis gross weaknesses in the story

—

it

seems impossible

to

account for

flaws that Fitzgerald as a craftsman

could surely have seen and corrected, had he been free of extreme

and anxiety. The almost spotless purity with which Coles

guilt

emerge from the story

is

a

measure of the depth of

is

supposed

to

Fitzgerald's guilt

over his disastrous drunkenness at Thalberg's party and the power of

114

Equivocal Spirits

expunge all traces of seem the product not of

monologue

his desire to

that guilt. Coles's

made

intoxication or even of "exhibi-

to

tionism," but of an innocent desire to shine

was

his only

parlor trick,

it

had amused

please Stella Walker" (p. 234).

and

is

to give pleasure: "It

several parties

The Caiman guests

and

might

it

are chilly toward

the monologue, but a couple of extenuating circumstances are offered:

performance follows that of a professional radio entertainer,

Coles's

and now the guests

are eager to leave. In case these reasons

fail

to

convince, Fitzgerald adds a third, transforming Coles into a kind of heroic underdog

whose monologue has

stirred "the resentment of the

community toward

professional toward the amateur, of the

the

stranger" (pp. 235-36). Fitzgerald also discredits the loud "Boos" of

one of the Caiman guests friend

Nat Keogh

him

tells

at

Grauman's

later, is a

performance. This boor, Coles's

"ham" who deserved

(p.

237). Again,

gent need to purify Coles in every

must be

it

way

at the

Thalberg party are

to the

stressed that the ur-

possible cannot be located in

the story. Fitzgerald's deep but unadmitted

drunkenness

the kick in

by a Joe Squires "while he was bowing

"his tail" administered

crowd"

at Coles's

its

shame and

most

guilt

about his

likely source.

Indirectly or directly, these extenuations also constitute Fitzgerald's

He

attempt to cope with the most glaring weaknesses of the story.

by anti-Semitism, a substitution

replaces drunkenness

dently as close as he could enness. Because

many

come

that

was

to depicting the horror of his

evi-

drunk-

readers will trace not even a subliminal con-

nection between Coles's apparent anti-Semitism and his or Fitzgerald's

drunkenness, they will probably be

Fitzgerald uses anti-Semitism in the loss to

know why he

or nullify

it.

Coles's

first

understand

at a loss to

place,

and

at

then goes to such tortuous lengths to minimize

monologue seems

distinctly anti-Semitic;

volves ridiculing the vulgarity of a Jewish movie producer Silverstein, right

why

even more of a

down

to

mimicry of his accent

Because a number of the Caimans' guests, selves, are Jewish, Fitzgerald

never shows

if

it

in-

named

("sex appil," p. 235).

not the Caimans them-

how

this

monologue can

be reconciled with Coles's "happy and friendly" feelings "toward

all

the people" at the party only a few minutes before his monologue.

And because his drinking, which might account for an irrational mood shift, is minimized almost to invisibility, the reader is left with no motive difficulties

for Coles's tasteless performance.

resulting

from

Nor

are these the worst

Fitzgerald's substitution of ridicule of

115

The Winding Road Jews

drunkenness.

for

guests, the

invites

and

not for themselves, then certainly for their

story.

Not so

in

"Crazy Sunday"

that she sends Joel a

it

him

later

Hobby

Caimans could only have disliked

any credible with

If

to Pat

performance in

Coles's

—

Stella is so delighted

complimentary telegram the next day,

to a party at her sister's the following

weekend

(p.

237),

almost becomes his lover; Miles Caiman, even though sus-

pecting a romantic interest between Joel and his wife, befriends and confides in him. Instead of being punished for his monologue, then,

Coles

rewarded beyond one's wildest imagining. In

is

this respect the

more profoundly "crazy" than Fitzgerald may have susindeed, it makes no sense unless we read it as a kind of total pected; wish fulfillment, the forgiveness extended by the Caimans to Joel being Fitzgerald's fantasy of the forgiveness that he was unable to give himself for the drunkenness that he was unable to face, either in story

is

reality or in the story.

"Crazy Sunday" seems to be Fitzgerald's most desperate and satisfying attempt to distance himself

from his alcoholic

least

reality.

The

Pat Hobby Stories, though regarded by their author as hack work, are

an example of more

achieved distancing or sublimation.

artfully

Coming at the end of his writing career, these stories about a Hollywood has-been and movie writer who now cadges film-studio piecework to survive have special interest as a sort of last testament about Fitzgerald's drinking.

We know

But what sort of testament?

from Arnold Gingrich, the original publisher of these

stories in Esquire, that Fitzgerald

"much

of

what he

36 But ated" them.

felt

thought of them as comedy and that

about Hollywood and about himself perme-

we should

distinguish Fitzgerald's

from the heroic comedy of the Consul in Under the life-giving

Hobby

is

comic drunkenness of Jim Dixon

a descendant of a broad

comedy both

the Volcano

and from

in Amis's Lucky Jim.

comic type known as the alazon,

perhaps more directly from one of several subtypes such as the miles gloriosus (braggart warrior).

37

wages a continual warfare

to survive in the hostile

Although not

Hollywood; one of his chief weapons

is

boasting

to

suspend

environment of

— sometimes

sometimes audacious, always so persistent that

movie bigshots who employ Hobby

it

doomed

Hobby seems

a sort of

brother, James, or a variation

clever,

may induce

the

their disbelief in his

slender talents. Because Fitzgerald (like Eugene O'Neill) Irish- American,

Hobby

literally a soldier,

comic inversion of

on the proverbial

was an O'Neill's

yet actual

116

Equivocal Spirits

who used

bachelor uncle

charming wastrel who is

be found in "any large

to

Irish family."

devoted "to liquor and women, although the liquor

important to him." 38 Whether treated with tragic

gloom, or

levity,

A

by his wits and "can never hold a job," he

lives

such characters also tend

mental innocence; in Hobby

it is

is

satiric

and

more

exasperation,

to share a funda-

a raffish appeal that

notice despite his obvious material failure

usually

some women

that briefly softens the

some flinty movie executives. Though he may possess sevHobby remains almost a caricature; in one story a charac-

hearts of

eral facets,

"Mike"

ter refers to Pat as

(p. 33),

suggesting his likeness to one of

the two stock figures in the old Pat-and-Mike vaudeville sketches.

The typing

Hobby

one way Fitzgerald keeps Hobby within comic bounds.

some

in

respects closely related to Fitzgerald, particu-

he half-reveals and half-conceals Fitzgerald's attitudes toward

larly as

his

is

is

own

Through the Hobby

drinking.

been seeking

relief

may have

stories Fitzgerald

from his discomfort with Hollywood. Because his

drinking was no less a problem then than at other times, these stories

became

a

means

of dealing with this problem; because Fitzgerald

continued to deny

in the stories

it,

he reduced

transformation of his drinking problem

it

to

comedy. Such a

may have had

a special

psychological urgency for Fitzgerald, for his recent binge at the Dart-

mouth Winter

Carnival, at

which he was supposed

to

be working on

a film (p. xxii), surely posed a strong threat to continued denial.

Though Hobby

treated mostly with

is

contempt by the magnates frequently have

felt

he was

for

whom

treated),

an amused or affectionate

he works

he shows a

(as Fitzgerald

must

Falstaffian resilience

and, for every humiliation suffered, scores a compensatory victory of

Hobby's drinking, though clearly a habit and potentially a

survival.

source of trouble,

is

another circumstance over which he repeatedly

triumphs by holding

it

in check. His overindulgence

briefly or obliquely in three stories as to

one he from

given a sobriety

is

jail.

drinking

More

is

is

handled so

be scarcely noticeable; in

apparently passes, and

is

released

characteristic of Fitzgerald's treatment of

Hobby's

test,

a reference to "a soft purr of whiskey

gesting that liquor to Pat pint of gin he carries

is,

is

just a mellow,

on

his breath," sug-

tame pussycat. 39 The

together with the

women

half-

he ogles or the

racehorses he bets on, rather like one of the formulaic epithets in

Homer

—

Achilles of the swift knees:

Hobby

of the half-pint bottle.

It

117

The Winding Road is

on

a stage property that he pulls

to Pat

to revive flagging spirits or for

Hobby may

assistance through crises.

Hobby

therefore represent a highly

desirable fantasy for Fitzgerald, the fantasy of the

scorned yet nevertheless canny survivor controlled

The

way

final tale of the series, "Pat

parallel to

own

to.

Hobby's College Days," contains a

Hobby

dirty work.

or Fitzgerald)

is

to to

Although the story

is

bottles

hopelessly improbable at

makes exwhich it might

the level of realism, as a glimpse of Fitzgerald's psyche cellent sense,

supposed

and dump stand-in were too ashamed to do

empty whiskey

large collection of his

them, as though the writer or his his

drinks mostly in the

liked

an actual incident recorded by Sheilah Graham, 40 even

the detail that a secretary (not

remove a

who

would have

that Fitzgerald

bumbling and

having the stark vividness of a dream

—

it

man

well have been. Hobby's bookie suggests that he approach a

named Doolan,

the athletic superintendent of the University of the

Western Coast,

to get

idea

an idea

which he might then

movie about the

for a

sell to

university,

an

who

a producer. Pat meets Doolan,

arranges almost instantaneously for Pat to present an idea for a movie to a faculty committee.

As he waits

drinks a "long, gagging draught" If

the idea of a college

to enter the

(p.

movie and

Pat's

Dartmouth assignment and

gerald's

committee room, Pat

154) from his ever- ready bottle. anxiety about

it

suggest Fitz-

his fear of failure,

41

the next

scene suggests a

much more powerful

his inebriation.

(The guilt probably had a more immediate source

feeling: Fitzgerald's guilt

about

than the debacle at Dartmouth: according to Sheilah Graham, Fitzgerald wrote "Pat Hobby's College Days" "during a drinking period."

42 )

Right in the middle of

his secretary

cover"

is

(p. 157).

Pat's

presentation to the committee,

ushered into the room with "a big clinking pillow

Unable

to

dump

his

whiskey

countably returned them to him here less

we

she has unacthat

is,

had been unable

to purge.

It is

as

if

the

Dartmouth

disas-

or perhaps even the whole of Fitzgerald's drinking career, had

suddenly caught up with him, with the incriminating evidence ally

un-

recognize that the bottles symbolize the alcoholic guilt that

Fitzgerald ter,

bottles,

— unaccountably,

dumped

at his feet.

The

holic reality, however, finally

guilt

and remorse of

do not

shatter the carefully established

and maintained comic pattern of Hobby's stead, the last story simply leaves

liter-

Fitzgerald's alco-

life

in the other stories. In-

an impression of irreconcilable

in-

118

Equivocal Spirits congruity with the rest of the portrait of Hobby, the Night,

much as,

in Tender

Is

Diver's alcoholism seemed more a puzzling appendage than

a basic part of him. It is

somehow

appropriate to close this chapter with the phan-

tasmal clanking of Hobby's bottles.

From

— or

Fitzgerald's?

is it

early in his career to

its

end, Fitzgerald never neglected

the subject of drinking for long; indeed, he

haunted by drinking, he incisively as

it.

Especially

was able anyone

in

when

— empty whiskey

was understandably

able to look honestly at his

own

to write of the price paid for alcoholism as

our

literature.

characteristic periods of denial, times

Even

in his apparently

when he tended

more

to soften or

work almost always seems at least unwittingly honest. Some of the evasions and equivocations seem implausible, but they testify to the sorrows and pains of alcoholism perhaps better than Fitzgerald could have known. romanticize drinking in his fiction, his

i E

Y

I N

John Berryman and Drinking From Jest to Sober Earnest

n the course of reviewing two biographies of Tennessee Williams,

Gore Vidal reserves

most trenchant manner

his

for a

digression, a satiric portrait of that fashionable stereotype, the poete

maudit:

High school valetudinarian. Columbia. The master's degree, written with heart's blood (on

awakening Precocious

Rimbaud

in

translation).

— and

prescient

— meteoric

success of

"On

Looking Into Delmore Schwartz's Medicine Cabinet" Schooner, 1961). lost; Pulitzer

The drinking. The

children.

The

pills.

First

(Prairie

Pulitzer

regained. Seminal meeting with Roethke at the

What

University of Iowa in an all-night diner.

Oh, they were

titans then.

But

conversation!

— born with one skin

nerves; jangled sensibility. Lithium's failure tunity.

The

Bread Loaf; and the stormy marriage to Linda.

at

is

too few. All

Lethe's oppor-

Genius-magma too radioactive for leaden human brain Oh! mounting horror as, one by one, the finest minds

to hold.

of a generation snuff themselves out in ovens, plastic bags, the

odd

river.

Death and then

Cautionary Tale.

— triumphant

transfiguration as

A

1

Although doubtless a mosaic drawing from more than one writer, the sketch at several points seems indebted to the

life

and career of John

Berryman: his graduation from Columbia, his closeness

to

Delmore

Schwartz, his Pulitzer prize, his marked tendency to lament the passing of the "finest minds" of his poetic generation (he entire

sequence of Dream Songs, his best-known work,

rate Schwartz), his

to

commemo-

committing suicide by jumping from a bridge

onto a bank of the Mississippi River torious drinking.

composed an

— and, of

course, Berryman's no-

120

Equivocal Spirits

Vidal's scorn for

power

an outworn fashion, a stereotype that has

shock or

either to

to inspire

impatience with the poete maudit. Pearl Bell rett's

The Truants for rejecting

doom

the

lost its

may indicate a growing commends William Bar-

sympathy,

and

this cliche

for refusing to attribute

of such poets as Plath, Schwartz, or Berryman to '"those

abstract specters, Society or Poetry."'

2

But

it

may be premature

to

suppose that the concept of the poete maudit has been entirely discredited; in other recent criticism

appears to be alive and well. In

it

virtually the only previous attempt to explore the relationship be-

tween Berryman's alcoholism and his poetry,

Hyde

instances the

and

life

fate of

Hyde

example, Lewis

Hart Crane as helpfully parallel to

Berryman's. After remarking that Crane's father ness,

for

owned

a

says that Crane spent "one horrible hot

Washington, D.C., "trying to

sell

in

the family sweets," concluding

Crane was this thing that kills Out of context, this passage might be thought to suggest that someone had slipped poison into the batch of candy that Crane sampled as he made his sweaty rounds. But in fairness to Hyde's argument, though with dubious benefit to his logic, one must restore therefrom that

was

candy busi-

summer"

"all that

offered to

poets."

the passage to

context and see that he

its

candy

poet's selling

power" so dominant

is

after

much

bigger game: a

only one result of the "mechanical

is

in

Hyde

not an exaggeration,"

& monetary

our century as to be "lethal to poetry"; declares, to hold that

"it is

such "forces

di-

own life energies and contributed to his alco3 death." One trouble with this line of thought is that

vided [Crane] from his

holism and his

there are exceptions tive

—

a Wallace Stevens living to a ripe

old age in the insurance business.

other way:

if

a mechanical or

And

sities

like

(although

its

life

teaching in univer-

professors might plead that their years

of effort with recalcitrant and

uncomprehending students

drove them to drink). In any event,

be varying an old

critics

fallacy well described

by

R. S.

amid which they

its

fated victim, with alcoholism as a

Behind and nurturing

this fallacy is

to

Crane, that of seeing 'age'

or

.

.

.

the

flourished." Instead of

Hyde would see means to this end. 4

being the fated spokesman of his culture,

literally

such as Hyde seem only

authors or their views as merely products of "their social or cultural 'conditions'

should

lethal influence

Berryman, spent most of his

some veteran

in an-

fails

monetary society causes alcoholism,

the poet with the best chance of escaping

be one who,

and produc-

Hyde's logic

the poet as

an inadequate attention

to the

121

John Berryman and Drinking work. Although Hyde announces elaborate plans to

writer's actual

examine Berryman's Dream Songs as the locus of a "war between alcohol and Berryman's creative powers"

poems

are not nearly

sound enough)

numerous or

to carry out

(p. 9), his

detailed

analyses of individual

enough

though Hyde's idea of a "war" within Berryman point, the

metaphor

(nor, to

be frank,

such an ambitious plan. Moreover,

largely ignores

useful

is

up

al-

to a

both the variety of Berryman's

responses to alcohol and the complex tensions stemming from these.

Perhaps a more useful metaphor than Hyde's

Berryman was almost constantly

that is

at

is

James

play. For Dickey

Dickey's,

this quality

contemptible; indeed, he expresses a sweeping and harsh contempt

for

Berryman

time."

5

as a "timid

little

academic

who

stays

drunk

all

the

But the notion of Berryman's playing, for Dickey a self-

posturing, yields two other, more revealing them conveys the duplicity or self-deception of the poet as alcoholic, finding ways to disguise his problem from himself. There are poems in which Berryman is almost certainly engaged in

conscious,

senses.

such

artificial

One

of

play, a characteristic that resembles a recurring feature in the

work of Fitzgerald, although the resemblance is limited because Berryman ultimately passed beyond self-deception. In another sense, Berryman played with his attitudes toward drinking by provisionally testing their validity or aptness for him. This sense would indicate a 6 deliberate struggle to overcome conflict or perplexity and would thus belie Hyde's opinion that Berryman was largely ignorant of the struggle,

an unwitting victim of his

own

alcoholism. Even in a single

poem, Berryman could be both honest and evasive about ing,

his drink-

both blind and perceptive.

For these reasons, Hyde's metaphor of a war within Berryman finally

the

inadequate, as

is

his conclusion that the

Dream Songs ended. On

war was

is

"lost" before

the contrary, a major phase of this

war

continued in the three

subsequent volumes — Love & Fame (1970),

Delusions, Etc. (1972),

and Henry's Fate

posthumous work

&

Other Poems (1977), the

by John Haffenden from over a thousand unpublished Berryman poems, many of them written after

last a

the

Dream

Songs.

collected

Hyde devotes

just

one paragraph

to these later

poems. Because Berryman's poetic output may have increased the

Dream Songs and

only a battle, rather than the entire war that the later

after

certainly did not diminish, the Songs represent

poems introduce some

—

when we find new ways of seeing

especially

distinctly

122

Equivocal Spirits

alcohol.

If

Berryman

war with

finally lost a

alcohol,

it

was

much

a

more problematic and absorbing struggle than Hyde indicates, a struggle whose complexity can only be appreciated inductively, by sacrificing the grand scope of metaphor to a sustained, detailed look

poems

at the

themselves.

Although a character named Henry appears

we should

Songs,

in

many

of the

Dream

not be misled by Berryman's declaration, in the

note prefacing the volume, that Henry

"not the poet, not me." 7 To

is

human

be sure, no character can ever satisfactorily represent a in all his living wholeness;

but

if

Henry embodies only

being

certain pieces

or aspects of Berryman, these will bring us close to Berryman's actual reactions to his drinking.

8

Berryman's

poems

are, indeed,

better vehicle for understanding his alcoholism than

Recovery. This

may seem

his

is

arguably a

one novel,

a strange assertion, for Recovery addresses

Berryman's alcoholism with an irreproachable honesty, in a more ex-

and sustained way than the poems do; and Alan Severance,

plicit

M.D., the hero of the novel, certainly bears as close a relationship to

Berryman

as does the

Henry of

the

Dream

Berryman's drinking and his reactions to

Songs. But as a history of

Recovery has the serious

it,

limitation, in spite of flashbacks, of covering

an extremely short pe-

whereas his poems are the minutely detailed, sometimes almost

riod,

diaristic

record of years of his

concerns

itself

life.

And whereas

the novel necessarily

with plot, characterization, and setting, Berryman's

verse admirably displays "the freedom of the poet" (to use the

title

of

his collected essays) to bare his soul.

Eileen Simpson, Berryman's

first

wife, believes that his alcoholic

drinking began at the time of his adulterous affair with "Lise" at Princeton in 1947. 9 Berryman wrote 115 sonnets about this

them

establish a connection

sex that persisted until late in his

drinking for the liberation ties,

it

it

life.

/

it

enabled, and the sensual excite-

Blonde, barefoot, beautiful,

/ flat

to Bach." But, particularly as the affair

shield in

go

Berryman from

Sober to bed, a proper

him from

citizen."

"tilting a frozen

on the bare

which manifests

to dine with" Lise, 10

floor rivetted

wore on, alcohol could not

a strong sense of guilt,

Sonnet 93 as a desire "Sometime /

of

Evidently Berryman valued

added. Sonnet 37 ends with a picture of Lise

Daiquiri

some

provided from mundane responsibili-

the "audacities" (Sonnet 33)

ment

affair;

between heavy drinking and adultery or

Such

reflections

associating drink with sex in the

Dream

itself

"sometime

to

do not prevent

Songs. Several of

123

John Berryman and Drinking however, complicate a relationship that seems quite simple in

these,

Number 350,

the sonnets.

like

many

Dream Songs

of the later

written

while Berryman was in Dublin, jokes rather grimly about various

ways vice,

end

to

his adulteries, including cutting off his telephone ser-

hastening his

Death,

/

no

and "stroke

senility,

four,

put him on the wagon,

drinks: that ought to cure him."

11

Although the next

Song, 351, concludes with a kind of broadly comic gesture

where, everywhere

a girl

/

taking her clothes off"

is

—

the

— "Some-

body of the

song complicates without abandoning the dark jocularity of 350 by adding notes of pity and self-disgust as well as by hinting

at the

death

of lust:

Animal Henry

sat reading the

Times Literary Supplement

with a large Jameson

& a worse hangover.

Who will

lover

his

demon

today become, he queried.

On for

By ing

is

whom, my

far the

danced about

fours he

all

most

love, too

his cage,

much was

poor Henry

never enough.

poem having to do with sex and drinkmixed tone perhaps reflects Berrymaris

interesting

Dream Song 311.

inner confusion about

Its

how

to regard his drinking:

Hunger was constitutional with him, women, cigarettes, liquor, need need need until he went to pieces. The pieces sat up & wrote. They did not heed their

piecedom but kept very quietly on

among

the chaos.

The tone here seems an incongruous combination of unsentimental, almost surreal pathos on one hand and boastfulness on the other, as

though Berryman were saying: Look what

mented

state. If

it

Berryman's attitude toward his appetites mine. Although Berryman

hunger

for liquor

mitting the

1

can do, even in

my

frag-

can be differentiated from tone, the substance of

is

may be

equally difficult to deter-

rationalizing

"constitutional," he

power or depth of

is

may

his craving.

when he says

that his

instead be honestly ad-

On

the whole, however,

boastfulness seems to predominate: Berryman's appetites reflect a zest for

life

so strong that

it

keeps him going even in his piecedom

124

Equivocal Spirits

and may

recall

whom

Johnson, of

abstemious, [he] ing."

12

such

Walt Whitman or Samuel

literary giants as

Boswell wrote that "though he could be rigidly

was not

a temperate

man

either in eating or drink-

This hint of heroism seems to be reinforced by the restoration

of Berryman's wholeness as sexual

Henry

is

magnetism

in the final stanza:

preparing to welcome a former mistress

who he

thought

was three thousand miles away, a pleasure no ordinary man would likely experience. The poem, then, despite a briefly unsettling look at the results of Berryman's appetites, finally denies that these pose a

problem; the imminent arrival of his onetime lover not only ing, but also enables

Henry (and

is flatter-

the reader) to transcend his frag-

mentation. This impression of Henry's wholeness would have been less

secure had Berryman not omitted from the

on which

based: his ex-lover

it is

came

poem

for a drink,

the actuality

accompanied by

her husband. 13

These few poems contain the elements of most of Berryman's tudes toward his drinking or his ways of dealing with Songs:

escape,

that

it is

in the

atti-

Dream

or denial, often using the technique of

evasion,

jocularity or facetiousness; but also honesty, in the later

it

which tends

to increase

poems. These elements mingle in such a variety of ways

difficult to trace a line of

development

in Berryman's views of

drinking.

Of a Berryman John Haffenden

poems

"He joked with his misery." 14 In reality, as elsewhere indicates and as a number of Berryman's

writes:

Haffenden's article later

hospitalized for alcoholism in the spring of 1970,

reveal,

he was doing a great deal more than

this

about

which by 1970 had reached an acute Dream Songs show, joking in one form or

the misery of his alcoholism, stage. But, as

some

early

another was one of Berryman's most characteristic reactions to his alcoholism. Often

it is

a defense mechanism, a

or denying a problem. related.

reason

The is

Dream Songs

54, 57,

finds the poet in a hospital.

first

means of minimizing and 76 seem interAlthough no explicit

given for his being there, alcoholism

is

at least a strong

possibility:

I

have been operating from nothing,

like a

dog

more

slowly, losing altitude.

after its tail 15

a

125

John Berryman and Drinking This cogently expresses the emptiness, the exhaustion of inner resources often experienced by alcoholics at a

Song 57, then, may be seen

as developing

crisis in their illness.

an attitude in response

the condition of the poet: "something can (has) briety

but very

/

sobriety;

little."

mode

its

The

for so-

attitude implies lack of acceptance of

clumsy epigram, as

that of a witty, artfully

is

been said

to

though the issue of drinking versus sobriety mattered only as a source of bon mots. Although this song says nothing further about drinking, the subject has a

though

more

few Dream Songs with a

explain that?

o'

your

bafflin

Sober as

man

can

—

ures in a

number

of

me

Humor,

76.

to

his

to

rela-

lately.

explain that,

odd sobriety. no girls, no

Henry and

dialect of

I

Mr

Mr

Bones,

telephones,

get,

what could happen bad

The black

Song

an unwillingness

begins:

title),

Nothin very bad happen to

How you terms

is

The poem, "Henry's Confession" (one of the

accept sobriety. tively

central place in

of a different type, is again present, as

Bones?

unnamed

Dream Songs and

interlocutor,

who

fig-

addresses his friend as Mr.

Bones, renders these lines humorous, perhaps suggesting that sobriety

is

so intrinsically dull that

it

needs the comic

blackface vaudeville routine. But in these lines

poem only

there is

is

also

and

liveliness of a

in the rest of the

an argument seriously undermining sobriety. Not

sobriety unnatural ("bafflin odd") for Henry,

"handkerchief sandwich," as Henry puts

it.

If

it

is

sad

"nothin very bad hap-

pen" in sobriety, neither does anything exciting.

It is

in fact a

mon

reaction of the newly sober alcoholic to find

life

dull.

But the prospects of sobriety for Henry are

much worse

temporary sadness or boredom:

"If life

is

—

rather

com-

flat

and than

a handkerchief sandwich,"

he says, he will "join" his father, a suicide. References to the suicide of Berryman's father

form one of the major motifs of the Dream Songs;

without doubting the impact of this disaster on Berryman or the genuineness of his grieving for

Dream Song

76,

it

it,

one might

still

conjecture that, in

constituted a rationalization for his drinking. In

the last stanza the interlocutor tries to cheer

and dance; but because Henry's sobriety leads to thoughts of suicide,

it

scarcely

is

Henry with

a

little

song

so sad and insipid that

seems a tenable condition.

it

126

Equivocal Spirits

In a

number

of other songs Berryman's treatment of drinking

is

also primarily facetious:

Why drink so, two days running? two months, O seasons, years, two I

Man, This

is

been

I

decades running?

question on the

cuff:

[Song 96]

thirsty.

good example of what Lewis Hyde means by "the booze rest of the poem makes clear that the poet

a

Even though the

talking." is

my

answer (smiles)

in a hospital, the breezy slang of his

answer

to the questions sug-

gests his defiance, his denial of the seriousness of

opening

Song 225 use

lines of

& booze, madness & booze.

Whichll can

What Most of the

any problem. The

humor, converting a po-

question into an absurd logical conundrum:

tentially serious

Madness

a reductive

tell

who preceded whose?

chicken walked out on what egg? rest of this

man; but somehow,

"Up

a different angle:

poem

is

at the end,

who

Scotland!

ducing, which returns." Even

unusually obscure, even for Berry-

he manages

if

to return to alcohol

only drunky sexy Burns

Berryman did not

/

from pro-

really believe the

Burns myth implied by his two adjectives, the affirmation of the importance of drink for a major poet provides brief justification for his

own

drinking.

The look to

at

final

16

example of Berryman's use of comedy

an alcoholic problem

warrant quoting in

Song 232, which

to avoid a serious

is

complex enough

full:

They work not well on

He wolfed

is

all

but they did for him.

friend breakfast, bolted lunch,

& pigged

dinner. Beastly yet, juices,

meat

at

midnight, juice he swigged,

avocado lemon'd, artichoke hearts,

anything inner, except the sauce. Stand Henry off the sauce.

He

scrub himself, have nine

waiting

upon

more matchless

the Lord.

Pascal drop in, they placing cagey bets,

cigarettes,

127

John Berryman and Drinking it's

midnight! Being ample in their skins

they hang around bored.

Negroes, ignite! you have nothing to use but your brains,

which

let

—What was — One

bust out.

that again,

Mr

Bones?

De body have abuse but

de one,

is

too.

-two, the old thrones

topple,

dead sober. The decanter,

Pascal,

we

free

&

pal!

loose.

opening stanza the poet seems to be following a regimen de-

In the

signed to supplant his craving for alcohol but plainly

is

not enjoying

The sudden appearance of Pascal, his wager, hour for death and for terminating a Faustian conmidnight, the and tract, complicates the poem. But something is strange; instead of the it

("pigged," "beastly").

anticipated tension at the expiration of the contract, there

boredom

of sobriety. Stanza three explodes with a

to liberation in the

Communist

is

the

parody of the

call

Manifesto. Applied to the present

means that even though "de body have abuse" from alcohol, it is still number one, and its demands for free action should be met. The Faustian bargain may have been that the poet give up the "sauce," Pascal's wager that God would help him do it. But a revolusituation,

it

tion then occurs

—

"the old thrones

/

topple,

dead sober"

—

suggest-

ing that traditional powers or restraints die or can be vanquished because they are sober. diately

summons

wager and join free

poet, released from his contract,

a "decanter, pal!"

And

Pascal

is

it is

unfair to claim that in this

simply rationalizing his drinking problem;

coholic's strikingly honest

a remarkably unified

alcohol.

it

hardly represents Berryman's

is

it

whom

"we

poem Berrymay be an al-

admission that the god he truly worships

is

It

imme-

invited to forget his

in allegiance to the true god, alcohol, in

& loose." Perhaps

man was

The

final

and challenging poem, but

word on or

attitude

toward

drinking.

Even though he uses humor as a defense mechanism, a means of minimizing or denying a problem, Berryman also uses for a

wryly honest comment on his drinking.

Books drugs razor whisky

Henry

lies

shirts

ready for his Eastern tour,

swollen ankles, one hand,

it

occasionally

128

Equivocal Spirits

air reservations, friends at the

a winter

mind

end of the

hurts,

resigned: literature

must spread, you understand.

.

.

.

[Song 169]

The incongruity of the items in the first line prepares us for the perception of a more important incongruity. Even if we feel some admiration for the pluck of this poet, who is setting out on a tour despite his battered condition,

can a

our primary question

man dependent on

(stanza 2) perhaps because of a

of literature? question.

sad sights.

O

empty

Fill 'er

The coarse

drunken

Berryman of course

Dream Song 250

A

is

likely to be:

What

drugs and whiskey, one arm in a sling fall,

contribute to the spread

facilitates

our discovery of

this

begins:

crumpled, empty cigarette pack.

bottle.

Hey: an empty

girl.

up, pal.

levity of the third line

exposes the equally coarse outlook

of the addicted person: in his craving, both

men and women

(the

connection between alcohol and sex briefly reappears) seem only physical receptacles waiting to be

filled.

With and without humor, an awareness of unpleasant truths about is one of Berryman's most prominent characteristics in the Dream Songs. Although it is sometimes alloyed or compromised by other views in the same poem, its recurrence invalidates Hyde's view of Berryman as a helpless, unwitting victim of his alcoholism. Song 182, for example, describes Henry's habit of staying late at parties, "a bitter-ender." "Somebody called his wild wit" at such his drinking

gatherings "riverine," an adjective perhaps implying an omnivorous,

Whitmanesque

appetite for

life.

But "bitter-ender"

is

Henry's (or

Berryman's) self-appraisal, not an external judgment; being thus

more reliable, it neutralizes the possible compliment of "riverine." Song 210 is full of images of emptiness, cold, and (most of all) flight. The poet's doctors send him to Atlantic City in the winter; while there he has "one drink" in a huge bar with one other man "a football field

away," but in the

last three lines

succession home, abroad,

"&

of the

with some knowledge both of Alcoholics man's drinking, the

poem he

travels in

quick

then slunk back to his north." Read

poem becomes

Anonymous and

distinctly

of Berry-

more ominous.

In the

context of the bleak imagery, the poet could scarcely have been so

129

John Berryman and Drinking completely self-deceived as to think that his experiment with what

AA

calls "controlled"

restless,

drinking could be successfully maintained. His

almost frantic movement

fers to as the

is

a

good example of what

doomed attempt

"geographical cure," an alcoholic's

stop drinking by changing location. Because his

him

doctors sent diately

to Atlantic City "for privacy"

by Berrymans account of his one drink

bar, the claim

seems meant

to

AA

odd claim is

re-

to

that his

followed imme-

in the nearly deserted

be seen through: the doctors have

probably sought to remove him from the environment supposedly responsible for his excessive drinking. Song 210 strange: the poet

to

make some attempt

about his reason for going

his reader there,

seems

and

poet

is

in fact altogether

and

to Atlantic City, his success

his solution of his problem; at the

combination of inauspicious imagery and a trates this rather flimsy guise

is

to deceive himself

same

little

time, however, a

analysis easily pene-

and bares more probable

truths.

The

deceived yet, below the surface, not deceived.

Even a

single line about drinking can afford glimpses

sometimes

more revealing than extended treatments. In Song 211 (which, unlike some adjacent Dream Songs, seems unconnected with 210), the poet reports that he is drinking ouzo, a Greek liqueur: "Ouzo was peaceful in the fearful nights." We know from other poems and from Haffenden's biography that Berryman suffered greatly from insomnia, which may be all that he means here by "fearful nights." But if we ask what caused the insomnia, we should know that, according to AA, fear is the alcoholic's

most fundamental emotional problem, often

wielding dreadful power as a pervasive "sense of impending calamity"

without identifiable or definable source. Moreover,

suggests, as does the line holic's

way

only

to

E.

from Song 211, that drinking

curb these

fears

M. Jellinek is

the alco-

and achieve peace, even though,

as the line does not suggest, drinking to a great extent causes them.

17

Dream Songs, many written while Berryman Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966-67, show that his honesty about his drinking continued and perhaps increased. There are exceptions, one of them occurring in Song 323, an extended comparison of Henry and Winston Churchill in which Berryman In general, the later

was

in Ireland

on

a

notes that "they both drank, heavily." To the poet's advantage, this blurs a real

drinking.

& gin &

18

and important

In

difference

between heavy and alcoholic

Song 256, however, Henry, "possessed of many

whiskey," manages to achieve only

five

pills /

minutes of "tran-

130

Equivocal Spirits

quiility."

the

AA

Neither Berryman nor his reader needs to be familiar with

idea of serenity to realize that there

is

something wrong with

such an ephemeral peace and the means of reaching

it

&

(12

12,

pp. 63, 107-8). Song 275, apparently written shortly before Berryman's departure for Ireland, looks forward to it and its "cold fogs" as a

kind of geographical cure; the

rest of the

poem

foreboding and

is

make one wonder whether Berryman himself believed in this cure. The central incident recounted is the poet's throwing two chairs to the floor while teaching. It is clear even to him that honest enough to

his justification of this action as tionalization; the real reason

more whiskey

please.

"good"

for the students

is

his tense nerves, begging for

is

a ra-

"A

little

A little more whiskey please." This repetition,

/

suggesting the strength of the craving and the probability that only a great deal of

whiskey

will suffice, also suggests

but the honesty of his

Berryman (by now

poem

how unlikely it is

Berryman may want

a change of location will help.

to believe

it

that will,

undercuts him. Similarly, in Song 292,

in Ireland) tends to recoil

from an uncompromis-

ing look at his alcoholic condition, though this time the tendency early rather than late in the

poem, and

its

form

on pub and pub-erty) rather than imagined

is

humor

flight.

(a

is

punning

Again, however,

honesty leaves the stronger impression:

Henry,

who was

smiled,

and the smile was worse than the

always a crash programme, rictus of the victim,

"Another drop" said Mick.

Berryman, Mick, and the reader are well aware that "another drop" ironic understatement.

More than one

of Berryman's Irish

poems

young man

of hope

trenchantly notes the differences between the

and

life

who

visited there at

this difference.

pun on

is little

when he was young,

once" and naturally soon bottled spirits, he

is

who

has

doubt about the chief cause of

Song 300 redeploys the

"spirits":

full

twenty-one and the "wreck"

returned (Song 283), and there

is

difference

by

a partly implicit

the poet recovered

after arriving in Ireland;

them

"at

now, drinking

slower to recover from the unsettling

effects of

arrival.

The

last three

Dream Songs

to

be considered display such painful

honesty that they seem to portend some major changes in Berryman's

131

John Berryman and Drinking drinking or his attitudes toward

poetry following the sane

/

it

— changes amply

all

life; it

trace of

illustrated in the

Song 365, Henry "woke

Songs. In

& screamed for stronger drinks.

has lost for

Dream

Open

half-

the main!" This image

an appealingly gargantuan or Whitmanesque zest

conveys raw, naked need. Song 310 concludes:

own

vomit,

disappointing people, letting everyone

down

He was

all regret,

swallowing his

in the forests of the soul.

Because drinking

nowhere mentioned

is

possible reason for the self-disgust gift

He could

receded.

vomit

may be

in the

poem and

given in the opening

is

because a line,

"His

no more," the image of swallowing

write

only an unusually vivid metaphor for this disgust. But

the overpowering regret or remorse, another leading characteristic of alcoholics,

coupled with the

drunks are more

fact that

likely

than

other people to have the experience of swallowing or choking on their

own vomit, may suggest

that

Berrymans alcoholism, rather than

a writer's block, lies at the root of the to present a

poet almost

about to

bottom:

hit

With

fried

at the

poem. 19 Dream Song 356 seems

end of

his tether or, in

excitement he looked across at

wondering

if

he could bear

it

AA

parlance,

life

more,

wondering, in the

deep

middle of a short war with his wife,

in the

middle, in short, of a war,

he couldn't say whether

to sing

further or seal his lonely

throat, give himself up.

Tomorrow is his birthday, makes you think. The London TLS art mounting so much of him he could scream. There was a time he marched from dream to dream but he seems to be out of ink,

he seems to be out of everything again save whiskey

& cigarettes, both bad for him.

He clapped both hands

to

both ears

and resigned from the ranks of giving men

.

132

Equivocal Spirits

In a minute

now

wake, distinct

he'll

I'm not, he cried, what

The

contrast between this

the earlier

poem

I

& grim.

appears.

poem and Song 169

is

worth observing. In

the incongruous spectacle of the poet setting out to

spread literary light with drugs, drink, "swollen ankles," and one

arm

source of amusement. But in Song 356 the discrepancy between appearance and reality conveyed most explicitly by the final line, between the flattering attention of the TLS in a sling

and the

is

at least partly a

poet's abject

dependence on "whiskey

&

cigarettes," is a

source of something close to despair: "he could scream." As he says,

he seems to be out of all resources and desires except his addictions. Before turning to Berryman's later poems, sible

that

we must

consider a pos-

connection between drinking, suffering, and poetic inspiration

some commentators claim

to see in Berryman's life

and work.

William Hey en, basing his opinion on personal acquaintance and an interview, says, "I suspect that

Berryman ...

suffering led to the greatest poetry." Haffenden

making such

a connection: "Until April 1970,

hol for the blood of his

life,

its

.

that intense

tentative about

Berryman took

alco-

the force behind his poetic powers." Be-

cause The Maze, by Eileen Simpson,

simply equate

felt .. is less

a novel,

is

one should not

leading male character, the hard-drinking poet

Benjamin Bold, with Berryman; nevertheless, a remark about Bold

by

his wife illuminates the connection

"Benjamin courts, even collaborates with ited tolerance for happiness.

wasn't paying a high afraid that his talent

sober

I

Time

I

and

that they

Story:

"The

moves

21

this

may

if

he

connection

felt

he

may

exist

fear a loss of inspiration

fear a writer has

all

about being

going to lose the

of that sensitivity, that dark

For any alcoholic, the adoption of sobriety

all

art:

has a very lim-

he would get panicky,

to lose that stuff. I'm

nightmares and those dreams and tude.'"

He

an interview with Jill Robinson, author of

'My God I'm going

is,

for his gift

might dry up." 20 That

for other drinking writers

and Bed

disaster.

sometimes think that

enough price

in sobriety are asserted in

Perdido

I

between suffering and

atti-

is fearful: it re-

his old props, requiring a radical alteration of thinking

and

outlook. But because of the connection between drinking, suffering,

and

inspiration, for

difficult.

an alcoholic

Berryman wrote

his

artist this

change may be doubly

major poem, the Dream Songs, during

the period of his worst alcoholic drinking,

and

this

same period saw

133

John Berryman and Drinking the arrival of his fame as a poet. Because fame

and

and because less

fear, certainly

importance,

alcohol from his

Berryman,

to

including fear of poetic failure, was of no

must have occurred

it

life

among

his status

contemporary poets had an extraordinary importance

him

to

that the removal of

might cause a disastrous drying up of the source

of his distinctive inspiration.

Despite the plausibility of this connection, very

work

substantiates or illustrates

In

little

Dream Song

in Berryman's

157, one of the

on Delmore Schwartz, Berryman writes

several elegies first-rate

it.

soul" will

make

"sacrifices" for

that "every

fame and glory, an idea that

poem does may be one of

he could certainly have applied to himself as well; but the not suggest that drinking, or the suffering these sacrifices.

Song 250 seems

it

to posit a

can cause,

connection between alco-

hol and "the valid

& a mad; yeah, mad, and so

the connection

is

so tenuous and brief that the example

value. Recovery

seems

clear connection

to

self.

He saw

was

it is

duty

22

Were

it

definitely

is

of

little

inspiration: "Sever-

and on

for

namely, to sacrifice him-

Maybe they were

—

if

had

there

not for the fiction that Severance

"poems" could well have been substituted

is

a

for "products."

But

worth noting that Severance, undergoing therapy

for

his alcoholism,

now

doubts the existence of any connection between

his alcoholic suffering or sacrifice in

it.

and

really thought, off

to drink,

the products as worth

been any connexion." doctor,

his

suffering,

He had

ance was a conscientious man. it

the valid, man." But

be the only place where Berryman makes a

between drink,

twenty years, that

/

and

its

"products."

Song 356 goes beyond doubt: "whiskey

&

And Berryman

cigarettes,"

he

inti-

mates, instead of furnishing inspiration, are the powers that have totally

to

desolated him, depriving

him

of his ability to write ("he seems

be out of ink") and to march "from dream to dream." For whatever reasons or from whatever

after the

Dream Songs show

working

to effect

it.

that

fears, a

number

Berryman was ready

This does not

mean

for

of

poems

change and

that his struggle with alco-

holism, his confusions and evasions, had ended. Because his progress fitful, some of the same attitudes and elements observed in the Dream Songs reappear. Much more important, however, we shall also observe that the struggle largely shifts to a different plane, which can best be called the spiritual. Between the Dream Songs and the writing of many of the later poems, Berryman underwent what AA, by which he was strongly influenced, 23 would call a spiritual experience. This

was

134

Equivocal Spirits

experience did not permanently dispel Berryman's say that

it

which

is

to

did not wholly or permanently change him. But from

it,

fears,

from Alcoholics Anonymous, and from his struggles

Berryman seems quite suddenly

to

have derived a

for sobriety

new style and

guage that have both disconcerted and disappointed some

lan-

critics.

24

Berryman himself was well aware of his new style; he called it "trans25 At its most distinctive, it can seem almost prosaic in its parent." directness

and

its

emotional nakedness;

Berryman's Dream Song style with

its

sharply different from

it is

slang, syntactical inversions,

black dialect, and other forms of linguistic play. Although not the later

poems are devoid

tion that Berryman's style

of these characteristics, there

is little

all

of

ques-

changed greatly and that profound inner

causes lay behind the change. Because the dates of composition or first

publication of Berryman's later

poems

are

sometimes unknown,

they will generally be considered in the order in which they appear

volumes of verse (1970, 1972, 1977), a pro-

in Berryman's three last

cedure that will reveal no steady progress from active alcoholism to sobriety but rather a warfare in

which

victories could

be precarious

and ambiguous. For tracing

poems

development, one of Berryman's most important

this

"Of Suicide." 26 Freed of the persona of Henry and

is

coutrements,

it is

written in Berryman's

new

almost as desperate as a trapped animal, avoid a

final

options.

I

style. It

still

depicts a poet

reckoning with his alcoholism but clearly running out of

quote here

Reflexions

all

but the third and sixth stanzas of this seven-

on

suicide,

drink too much.

& on my father, possess me.

My wife

She won't "nurse" me. She

threatens separation. feels

"inadequate."

We don't mix together. It's

an hour

later in the East.

up Mother in Washington, D.C. But could she help me?

I

ac-

looking for ways to

stanza poem:

I

its

could

And

call

all this

postal adulation

& reproach?

1 still plan to go to Mexico this summer. The Olmec images! Chichen Itza! D. H. Lawrence has a wild dream of it.

135

John Berryman and Drinking

Malcolm Lowry's book when

my precept I

this afternoon.

seems

to

came out

taught to

I

may teach the Third Gospel haven't made up my mind.

don't entirely resign.

It

it

at Princeton.

I

I

me sometimes

that others have easier jobs

& do them worse. Rembrandt was Terrors

sober. There

we

Sober.

differ.

came on him. To us too they come.

Of suicide

I

continually think.

Apparently he

didn't.

teach Luke.

I'll

Suicide, especially his father's but also his

own,

major preoccupations; nowhere

poetry

linked

more

else in the

is

one of Berryman's is

the thought of

affirmation in Berryman's decision to go on, to "teach Luke," this certainly threatened

the

poem

most

disclose a

by the

next-to-last line.

number

most harmful

The middle

There

is

and therefore

al-

his con-

a distinct note of self-pity,

one of

vices of the alcoholic, in Berryman's complaint that

"others have easier jobs

/

&

do them worse"; such

a feeling, of

course, can readily supply the alcoholic with an excuse to get

(AA, pp. 61-62). Even is

is

sections of

of major unresolved problems that

certainly abetted Berryman's drinking

tinual thoughts of suicide.

the

it

directly to his drinking. If the final line affords a frail

more

definitively

drunk

symptomatic of alcoholism

Berryman's expectation, though currently frustrated, that his wife

perform the service that eral nursing, as

also

AA

calls "enabling":

— sympathy

—

that helps

after the

it.

F.

him

why

the alcoholic cannot

to continue his alcoholic drinking

Scott Fitzgerald found several

more or

less

it

lit-

can

for his hangovers, acceptance, call-

ing an employer with an excuse for

confronting

might consist of

Berryman suggests without elaboration, but

be any function

work

it

and

women to

fill

come

to

to avoid this role

permanent hospitalization of Zelda and the

onset of his worst alcoholism in the 1930s. Because Berryman's wife refuses this part, the poet then considers telephoning his mother. Al-

though he refrains from his

mind,

still

this appalling transference of

dependence, 27

seeking ways to evade his alcoholic problem, leaps to

the prospect of a geographical cure, a vacation in Mexico. But the

reference to

Malcolm Lowry's Under

the Volcano,

which memorializes

Lowry's colossal Mexican drunkenness, exposes the

futility

of this

136

Equivocal Spirits

cure. So, although Berryman's struggles to evade his alcoholism are

not encouraging, there that

he

is

is

hope

in the sense

conveyed by the poem

ways of dodging

close to exhausting

his problem.

That Berryman's movement toward sobriety was a curve of ups

and downs can be seen by juxtaposing two poems from 1970. "Death Ballad," written either during or shortly after Berryman's hospitaliza-

tion for alcoholism in the spring of

July 1970,

28

is

1970 and

first

published on 22

about two people in the psychiatric ward, Tyson and

Jo. Its last stanza expresses affectionate

concern that amounts almost

to a prayer:

take up, outside your blocked selves, that

is

some small

thing

moving

& wants to keep on moving & needs therefore, Tyson, Jo, your loving. By evincing

Tyson and Jo in writing the poem, Berryman was also and perhaps even consciously escaping "the bondage of self,"

his care for

an important stage

Nevertheless,

again in the

in the recovery

Berryman relapsed of 1970.

fall

"He

from alcoholism (AA,

into drinking

p. 63).

and was hospitalized

Resigns," though written not long after

"Death Ballad," manifests such great remorse and despondency that

was

the resumption of drinking

utterly predictable:

Age, and the deaths, and the ghosts.

Her having gone away in spirit

from me. Hosts

of regrets

& find me empty.

come

I

don't feel this will change.

I

don't

want any thing

or person, familiar or strange. I

don't think

I

will sing

any more just now; or ever. to sit

I

must

start

with a blind brow

above an empty

The

"resigns" of the

Berryman wishes

heart.

title is

to resign

29

ambiguous;

from

living.

it

But

could simply if it

may

mean

that

also indicate a

137

John Berryman and Drinking

and the emptiness of the poem could sugBerryman's readiness to try sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous

form of acceptance, gest

again, because

this

AA stresses

the importance of an admission of power-

lessness over alcohol and a surrender to the help of a higher power in

achieving sobriety.

30

Assuming that the next three poems of Delusions (excluding only Homo") stand in the order in which they were written, they illustrate a fascinating development from "He Resigns." "No" (p. 41)

"Ecce

reveals a

common

his alcoholism,

he

obstinacy of the alcoholic: although he

may admit

not necessarily willing to take action against

is

it.

"She says: Seek help!" almost certainly refers to Berryman's wife; and the help she

means

almost as certainly

is

with a program of therapy. But a series of images of revulsion flats,

the greasy clasp

clients"

— vehemently

mand and

—

AA

or at least a hospital

of the remainder of the

"putrid olives,

/

is

stench of the Jersey

signifying Berryman's rejection of his wife's de-

without alcohol.

life

his preference "for

out," such as the

some

soft

If

"hemlock" of Socrates. By

warning against seeking an

p. 58). In his first adjective

"easier, softer

he must

this

way"

AA

time in his to

know

AA members,

by

ing that, in spite of AA's rejection of ease, death better than sobriety. "Mutinous," the

is

of

to sobriety (AA,

Berryman may not only be echoing

phrase, one of the most often cited

act,

& solid & sudden

drinking career Berryman was familiar enough with its

poem

crones in black doorways afford their violent

his disgust for a

Berryman indicates

way

/

much

that

but also imply-

both easier and

opening word of the next poem,

"The Form" (pp. 42-43), aptly describes Berryman's frame of mind in "No." Naturally enough for an alcoholic, this leads to a bender ("through sixteen panicked nights

/

a trail of tilted bottles"), thoughts

and feelings of divine rejection The poem is probably based on the actual drunk that hospitalized Berryman in the fall of 1970. Surprisingly, however, the poem ends on a note of nascent surrender to God, "My light terrible body unlocked, I leaned upon You," which is reiterated and strengthened in "A Prayer After All" (pp. 45-46), a

of suicide (the purchase of a gun),

("He has spewed

poem

me

out").

31

written shortly after his hospitalization: Father, Father, I

Do you It

I

am

overwhelmed.

cannot speak tonight. receive

seems

it

me

must be

back into Your sight? so.

.

.

.

138

Equivocal Spirits

The experience described in the rest of the poem was apparently as sudden and powerful as the spiritual experience of Bill Wilson, cofounder of AA. 32 This surrender did not

most

AA

in

realistically

mark

end of Berryman's

the

repeatedly need to submit their wills to God.

up

ing the difficulty of giving

the now.

Berryman

Where

ticed,

Henrys

in

Fate, fac-

22

for years, for years, for years" (p. 45).

/

necessary for staying sober it

Berryman's

this

of drinking "established

life

Living in the present, a day at a time this is

As

also faces a related difficulty: that of living "in

must be

I

the

Nor was

poem

only problem with sobriety. In an untitled

years ago,"

difficulties.

acknowledge, alcoholics are refractory and

—

— or even

is

a minute at a time,

one of AA's key

ideas;

if

if

prac-

prevents the corrosive discouragement and return to drink-

ing that could well follow from the formidable difficulty of having

poem shows

to stay sober forever. Unfortunately, Berryman's

rather than mastering that concept, he

is

dismayed by the prospect of

on end. "The Alcoholic

sobriety for years

that,

in the

3rd

Week

of the 3rd

Treatment," though on the surface more hopeful of sobriety, slightly tainted in tone

by what seems a

the simplicity of staying sober, for quired: "You just never drink again rest of the

poem

is

serious,

it is

sarcastic

overemphasis on

which only one procedure all

each

damned

unlikely that

is

is re-

day." Since the

Berryman

is

suddenly

turning playful here; he seems genuinely resentful of the necessity of

maintaining sobriety a day at a time (Henrys Fate, p. 86). Ultimately, however, Berryman's

foundly

"A Prayer

spiritual.

problem with sobriety was pro-

for the Self,"

Berryman may be suggested by

its

dresses to the Lord" to have

individual

its

whose importance

title,

concludes: "Lift

sober toward truth a scared self-estimate." 33 This or exhortation to the self as cinctness,

action he

it

shows

must

that

take,

nificant because

it

it is

to

being the only one of "Eleven Ad-

is

a prayer for the

much

as

For

self.

all its

Berryman was acutely aware of the

though with God's help.

It is

up

/

a prayer

suc-

spiritual

also extremely sig-

specifies the four elements involved in this action:

sobriety, truth or a quest for

it,

fear,

and

inventory," as the important Step 4 of

a self-evaluation or "moral

AA

terms

34 it.

For Berryman,

these elements were not of equal strength; consequently, although the action cult for

He

seems

him

that

relatively

simple and straightforward,

he never

really

certainly tried. "4th

accomplished

Weekend"

is

it

was so

diffi-

it.

about his attempt to take

139

John Berryman and Drinking Step 4;

if

like

he would have made a major approach

successful,

truth about himself

Alan Severance

and the reasons

pages of Recovery,

in the early

is

somewhat too

busy with his fellow patients. Although these outreach

him

mirable in themselves, one suspects

of using

"a wilderness," the roads

end of the poem,

ward my own still

in his

through

hope

it

them

when he

self from the pain of looking inward, for

efforts are ad-

to divert

a

him-

does, he discovers

washed out by

"torrents." At the

that writing four letters

may lead "tomay suspect

awful center" (Henry's Fate, p. 88), one

more delusion or

evasion; Step 4

is

not epistolary.

By "Dry Eleven Months," written on 16 December 1971,

month

to the

But the poet,

for his drinking.

than

less

before Berryman's death, he has evidently taken Step 4: "I've

tried my self, found guilty on each charge / my self diseased." To any AA member, however, it would be significant that Berryman speaks is unhappy and The ending of the preceding poem in Henry's

of himself as "dry" rather than "sober." His sobriety therefore precarious. Fate,

"Group,"

Each long-dry throat still, still

& passion runs

with horror

immortal alcohols, suggests that he

more

and

his fellow patients, despite the horror of their

have a perpetual, unquenchable craving for

illness,

significant, as

though he has made

Berryman notes sacrifices

rated the principles of

AA

and

in his

in

What comes

"Dry Eleven Months,"

he has not achieved one of the

life,

"I

am

not without a

there's left Fear."

end of the poem, revealing the object of Berryman's

When

his heart stops,

p. 92).

Although the

one's will

and

its

life

he

says, "I'm afraid of

poem nowhere

hardly refer to anyone

else.

you" (Henry's

mentions God, 3, the

this

fear.

Fate,

could

decision to turn

over to the care of God, precedes Step 4 as a condi-

effectiveness, the reason clear:

render himself to a power he feared. fear;

else

Because AA's Step

contented sobriety becomes

quer

al-

has gone wrong? The probable answer to this question

at the

tion for

Even

source.

to the best of his ability incorpo-

major results that the whole program promises:

companion:

its

obviously this cannot

the source of fear. 35

why

this step

has not brought a

Berryman could scarcely

AA promises

work when

sur-

that faith will con-

the object of faith

is

also

140

Equivocal Spirits

"Dry Eleven Months"

not completely

is

May

odds with Berryman's

at

other poetry concerning God. In "The Facts

& Issues," written on 20

1971, Berrymans friend and fellow poet William Meredith no-

tices the

queer hysteria

at the

end, "the baffling spectacle of a

fending off torrents of a grace that has become unbearable." baffling

we

if

detect fear of

other lines. Considering an I

can't say

myself, I

know

I

I

just beneath the surface of

Berryman

afterlife,

writes:

have hopes in that department

that Presence says I

am

I

and

mild,

it's

it's

mild,

wouldn't care

go nearer.

Although Berryman stridently proclaims his happiness

"what

I

am," as explained elsewhere in the poem,

collection of "pathetic to forgive these,

less

some

lack ambition just just there,

but being what to dare

God

man

It is

& disgusting vices."

Berryman seems

of his hasty concession of

its

If

the

This account of Berryman's fear

is

in the present,

a "filthy fact," a

Redeemer

less sure of the

mildness.

is

is

willing

"Presence" in spite

36

admittedly something of an

oversimplification of his emotional state during his final months. His fear or

(more accurately)

were so long

fears

lasting

and pervasive,

such a prevalent motif of his poetry, 37 that in the end they cannot be completely accounted

for.

But

it

does suggest

why AA

did not fully

work for Berryman and why his sobriety was such an uphill struggle. The recognition of the nature of this struggle and of the profundity of Berryman's fears 38 can help one see more clearly the injustice of James Dickey's contempt for Berryman as a "timid little academic who stays drunk all the time." Given Berryman's conception of God, to work for sobriety at all required even more courage than it usually takes for other alcoholics.

If

the feared rejection of the "Presence"

projection of Berryman's self-loathing, the valor of his struggle is

is

a

no

less real.

The

man

next-to-last

poem

of Henry's Fate, written

only two days before his suicide,

reason.

It

is

and dated by Berry-

inevitably of interest for that

contemplates suicide, including the means Berryman actu-

ally chose,

and again expresses

kind (what might happen

if

fear,

though of a much

his suicide attempt should

less

fail)

cosmic

than that

expressed in "Dry Eleven Months." Although anyone claiming

full

understanding of the reasons for a man's suicide would only be ex-

-141

John Berryman and Drinking

own

posing his

insufferable presumption, the last

ume, "Phase Four," throws more

poem

on the despair

light

of the vol-

that

may have

poem. If "King David which Berryman would perhaps most

led to that act than does the penultimate

Dances" like to ity as

poem

the late

is

for

be remembered, the triumphal assertion of his indomitabil-

a poet against

overwhelming odds, 39 "Phase Four"

that discloses the plight of the suffering alcoholic

is

the

poem

with the greatest

poignance.

will

I

begin by mentioning the word

"Surrender"

—

is

& final phase.

the thing, well,

Heaven. "Acceptance"

in if

4th

that's the

The word. What

must be known

the phase before;

is

after finite struggle, infinite aid,

come there, friend, remember backward me lost in defiance, as I remember those admitting & complying. ever you

We

cannot

tell

the truth,

O am

That truth comes hard.

I

my Weapon

One:

and

half the

war

The

rest is for the blessed.

I

not in us.

it's

fighting

know 1 cannot

to say

is lost, that's

it,

win,

won.

The rest is bells at sundown off across a dozen lawns, 40 a lake, two stands of laurel, where they come out of phase three mild toward the sacristy.

Much

of the

poem

is

based on the idea that there are four stages by

which the alcoholic achieves overcoming

it.

is

to a higher

power

for help in

We have already noticed Berryman's difficulty with the

stage of surrender. difficulty. In

sobriety: awareness of his problem, ad-

and surrender

mission, acceptance,

Here he

reiterates

heaven surrender may be

merely verbal;

all

we can do

is

and further illuminates

really achieved,

mouth

"the word."

the phase before surrender, can be achieved struggle, infinite aid,"

it

will not

be

in the opposite state, "defiance."

is

it

If

acceptance,

by some

"after finite

won by Berryman, who

There

this

but on earth

is

"lost"

even perhaps a touch of

— 142

Equivocal Spirits

scorn for "those admitting

&

complying"

—

for those, that

who

is,

only go through the motions of true acceptance, evidently incapable of the moral rigor or energy required for a searching inquiry into the

meaning of these four stages. If they were capable, they might have to confront the shock with which the third stanza opens: "We cannot the truth,

tell

now

not in us.

it's

/

That truth comes hard." Berryman

rejecting as impossible that

approach

tance he acknowledged in "A Prayer for the Self." ing, this line

of AA,

and

come he

is

two

a half constitute a total rejection of the foundation

which maintains both

his alcoholism

and

Although

it.

resisting this

lines are so

cantly reduced.

is

whose imporFar more disturb-

to truth

that

in the

we cannot know

obscure that the shock of

"The

the truth about

how

same stanza Berryman goes on

hard truth that

— — rest"

mainder of the poem

know

that a person can

he can then know, through AA,

to say that

the truth,

beginning

its

to over-

not

is

its last

signifi-

the vision of paradisal peace in the re-

"is for

whose number cannot come "mild to-

the blessed,"

include Berryman. Their condition requires that they

ward the

sacristy,"

whereas Berryman has already established his

defiance.

Reading notes,

death.

this

poem, one can hardly be surprised

Berryman returned 41

briefly to drinking

In view of his despair, the

drinking until the very

moment

unbearably bleak: the "truth"

is

wonder is

not accessible,

Haffenden

not long before his

he did not continue

that

of his suicide.

that, as

The poem is almost and there is no com-

pensation for that cruel discovery, at least not for Berryman, in another

state.

The despair becomes

still

more ominous

one accepts

if

the importance of Kathe Davis's perception about Berryman: difficult to lief

that

he could find the truth and that

it

despite the accumulating evidence of his

kept him going." 42

If

admiration from a

man

would make him

own

life

— was

"Phase Four" marks the end of this

brings the end of his motive or will to

impasse, a

"It's

avoid the impression that Berryman's often desperate be-

man whose

live.

.

.

belief,

free .

what it

also

Yet one cannot withhold

honesty and courage led him to

this

perhaps resembling Marlowe's Dr. Faustus as Robert

Ornstein understands him: refusing to exchange defiance for compliance or submission in order to propitiate a

God who,

had already fattened on too many pious souls and who in the final analysis,

aroused too

much

fear to

for Faustus,

for

Berryman,

command

trust or

143

John Berryman and Drinking love.

43

To be sure, a number of Berryman's

"A Prayer After achieve,

however

Four," however, subject.

All"

later

and "Eleven Addresses

tentatively, a faith in a

may

poems,

in particular

to the Lord,"

appear to

benevolent deity. "Phase

represent his most fundamental beliefs on this

EIGHT Gordon and Comedy

Jim, Jake, and Alcohol

Ihe

chapters

up

to this point

have dealt mostly with alcohol as a major problem of a character or charac-

central ters

and with works

in

which

problem receives extended

that

treat-

ment. Although a deft short-story writer like John Cheever can indi-

few pages, the writer

cate the horrors of alcoholism in a it

as a

complex problem requiring thorough exploration

likely to

put

there are

many

a

it

who

regards

will

be most

near or at the center of a lengthy work. writers (and

many

people) for

problem but a pleasure, conducive

these writers tend to give

it

constitutes a problem. This

less is

to

whom

comedy

scene or an incident in a book, drinking

is

course,

drinking

is

not

rather than tragedy;

prominence than those not to say

Of

that,

for

whom

when reduced

it

to a

rendered inconsequential.

This chapter will examine three comic novels where the main characters are definitely not alcoholic or

drunk scene difference.

(or, in

one

case,

problem drinkers but where a

two such scenes) makes an important

Each scene contributes

to preserving or reinforcing the

comic quality of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and George Orwell's Keep

Two

one involves comic

vitality,

the other, a link between alco-

hol and satiric comedy. As Leopold Damrosch, recent essay, the Gaelic life'

Thing and of

connections between alcohol and comedy are worth noting at

this point;

of

Jake's

the Aspidistra Flying.

—

the

Jr.,

has observed in a

meaning of "usquebae" (whiskey)

same substance

is

'"water

that revives Finnegan's corpse in the bal-

Damrosch adds, "Burns, with his comic vision, suggests that man is more human, not less, when liberated by drink." Perceiving this connection depends on also grasping the implied contrast between the life- threatening character of tragedy and comedy as a life-giving or life-renewing force. Robert M. Polhemus, in observations somewhat more elaborate than Damrosch's, posits a lad 'Finnegan's Wake"'; and,

1

—

145

Jim, Jake, and

when wine was

prehistoric time

Gordon

substituted for blood in tribal cere-

monies, for reasons probably related to the symbolic substitution of

wine

blood in the eucharist: wine

for Christ's

bration of

life,

in a

is

used in a

festive cele-

"comic mass" that affirms the celebrant's oneness

with his fellows, at

least

temporarily ending his separateness and

T

must die." 2 At the level of ordinary experience, Don Marquis's comic character the Old Soak muting

seems

his "nagging

to

confirm

knowledge

that

this theory:

And by the time you drink the down deep inside of you there is

third one,

a

warm

somewhere away up and

spot wakes

kind of smiles.

And that is your soul has waked up. And you sort of wish you hadn't been so mean with your wife when you left home, and you look around and see a friend and have one with him and your soul says to you away down deep inside of you for all you know about them old Bible stories they may be true after all and maybe there is a God and kind of feel 3 glad there may be one. From is

the context of these reflections

it is

obvious that the Old Soak

using them to rationalize his excessive drinking. But his vulgarity

only shows

how commonplace,

even

are the beliefs about

trite,

drinking couched in more formal language by Polhemus. Certainly such ideas help to account for Jake's

drunk

to escape

awareness of incipient impotence and the drunks of Jim and Gordon to

overcome

feelings of loneliness, humiliation, or acute uneasiness

in their society.

But in his emphasis on drinking as a kind of commu-

nion, a quest for

human

solidarity,

may

carried to excess, drunkenness rebellious attack far

on

to join.

motive for drinking and

that "a

change in

mood

is

Freud

its

is

it

see that,

when

is

rejecting or

is

at least

important for understanding

relation to satiric

the

achieves for mankind," because

fails to

instead be an act of aggression, a

a society that the drinker

from sure he wants

this

Polhemus

comedy. He

most precious thing

asserts

that alcohol

"reduces the inhibiting forces

.

.

.

and makes accessible once again sources of pleasure which were under the weight of suppression." Although it should be added that in this passage

Freud had

mood" by alcohol, also have

it

in

mind

the inducement of "a cheerful

seems quite legitimate

acknowledged alcohol

to

to assist in

suppose that he would another sort of release

146

Equivocal Spirits

from inhibition, that which would tious jokes."

gressiveness or criticism

who

what he

facilitate

"tenden-

calls

These are "especially favoured" as expressions of "ag.

.

.

against persons in exalted positions

claim to exercise authority. The joke then represents a rebellion

against that authority, a liberation from

words, the lowering of inhibitions by alcohol in aggression as in

warm is

may just

feelings of oneness with

idea of the tendentious joke, the effects of alcohol,

pressure."

its

when joined with

4

In other

as well result

mankind. Freud's

comments about drunken sheds some light on Amis's Jake his

particularly useful in explaining the

behavior of Amis's Jim Dixon.

also

It

Richardson and Orwell's Gordon Comstock, although Jake, older than the other two, perhaps finds less need for alcohol as a means of assertion or expression. Other connections

between alcohol and

ous aspects of comedy can best be established as

we analyze

vari-

individ-

ual novels.

Lucky Jim

A

edy but a complex synthesis of types.

is

not one type of com-

phrase that Frank Lentric-

chia has recently used to characterize the goal of the criticism of Ken-

neth Burke also admirably summarizes Jim Dixon's major goal: "the full realization

of freedom in the stream of actual historical

life."

5

The

phrase suggests that Dixon will not, while pursuing his aim, retreat to the "green

and

world" of comedy described by Northrop Frye. Dixon

his beloved, Christine Callaghan, are

much

too occupied with

struggling against an oppressive society to find leisure for any idyllic interlude. For the

observer and

most part Amis

critic

is

a realistic rather than a romantic

of society; in presenting the intricacies of his

Amis writes, among other things, a twencomedy of manners. 6 If Lucky Jim traces the patof comedy that Frye defines as "the movement from isolation to

characters' machinations

tieth-century satiric tern

integration in the

with, followed

community," 7

by a repudiation

it

of,

is

only after a protracted battle

a false society, represented chiefly

by Margaret Peel and the Welches. Dixon and Christine do not come terms with the community they

to it

altogether for a

tine's

to see

new and

start with; instead,

better society

they abandon

under the aegis of Chris-

uncle, Julius Gore-Urquhart. Nevertheless, Frye's ideas help us

what

a classic, almost archetypal

comedy Lucky Jim

is

in

some

ways, pitting Jim's youth (Spring) against the older, blocking character

(Winter) of Professor Welch,

who

doubles as the

rigid,

mechani-

147

Gordon

Jim, Jake, and

cal character identified

some

Indeed,

his automobile.

ing character.

most

of the

Welch, an ill-made 9

by Bergson as the chief object of

hilarious passages in Lucky Jim occur

human machine, mismanages

Also older than Dixon, Margaret

Her behavior

is

toils

a second block-

114, 163).

most valuable possessions

Jim's

dom, honesty wittingly

—

are threatened

would

force

petitive behavior."

10

on him

—

Although Jim

Welch

history department that

still

effects (pp.

78,

authenticity, spontaneity, free-

by these their

calculating.

quite late in the novel,

till

an actress planning her

like

is

when

mechanical and predictable; her neu-

Dixon, though caught in her observes that she

8

another machine, is

dependency on men makes her manipulative and

rotic

laughter.

characters,

own a

is

chairs

who

un-

at least

"mechanical forms of

member

and

is

re-

of the university

thus supposedly a col-

when Welch deigns to notice him at all it is usually in order to employ him as academic factotum. Jim's dismissive contempt for all academic pursuits (including his own specialty, medieval history) league,

as a giant swindle

might be regarded as a sign of Amis's

tualism, but this reading essary. Jim's

he

feels,

is

probably erroneous and certainly unnec-

honesty reacts in proportion to the strength of the threat

and because the novel

affords

no evidence

representative of academic leadership, called life of the

fraud?

anti-intellec-

mind

how

that

Welch

is

un-

could Jim see the so-

in a collegiate setting as anything other than a

11

Jim's environment, in

would deny him

any event, seems so

indifferent to

him

that

it

be the subtle

his very identity. This at least could

names given him: "Faulkner," more than once, by Welch; "Dickinson" by Welch's son Bertrand; "Jackson" by the college porter; "Dickerson" and "Dickenson" by Caton, a journal editor whose fraudulence neatly complements Welch's; and a formal "James" by Margaret, who thereby doubtless hopes to hold him at a convenient but easily manipulable distance. These misnomers are a small but real addition to the exasperation that Dixon already suggestion of the several false

feels at start,

him

being regarded, especially by the Welches, as a provincial up-

a social

"Jim";

misnaming

and

cultural inferior. But Christine

and Gore-Urquhart

gets his

also suggests that Dixon's

find his real identity

and

name

soon begins

right the

first

to call

time.

most profound struggle

The is

to

individuality.

The odds against Dixon's success seem heavy

at first.

Although he

148

Equivocal Spirits

has a few friends and

allies,

they are not, until the appearance of the

much authority or influence. named Atkinson "for his air of

enigmatic Gore-Urquhart, people with greatly admires a fellow lodger

Jim

detesting everything

become

staled

.

.

.

and of not meaning

by custom"

(p. 36),

to let this detestation

but Atkinson

figure to serve as a real mentor. At

is

too peripheral a

one point a vision of Welch

"canted over in his chair like a broken robot"(p. 80) furnishes a sinister

glimpse of what Dixon could become unless he

himself from

Welch and

by the appearance,

cult

his society. This task

made

whom

almost immediately in love and

title

and

its

diffi-

girl,

Christine,

Dixon

falls

he must wrest from Bertrand

To triumph over these forces Jim needs, by his the

frees

more

still

most of the novel. 12

in a contest that takes

great deal of luck.

somehow

early in the novel, of another blocking char-

Welch's son Bertrand, with whose

acter,

is

And he

receives

it

— hence

own

admission, a

the appropriateness of

epigraph, the "old song"

Oh, lucky Jim,

How

1

envy him.

Oh, lucky Jim,

How

I

envy him.

Since his satiric scorn for the society that surrounds increasingly open, he

is

extraordinarily lucky to avoid the fate that,

sometimes

according to Robert C.

Elliott,

historic satirist: that of

becoming

society's desire for revenge.

luck; his meeting

him becomes

13

befell the primitive or pre-

a scapegoat, of falling victim to his

There are more obvious instances of his

and eventual winning of Christine require

large in-

crements of luck as well as Jim's persistence and a mutual attraction.

As

a

man

realistically

and often

resentfully

aware of his social

class,

Jim recognizes on first meeting Christine that "women like this were never on view except as the property of men like Bertrand" (p. 41).

Without the blunt questioning of Carol Goldsmith, a friendly quaintance, as to what he intends to do about Christine

Dixon would never have made

away from Bertrand Later,

at

his decisive

a dance and back

move to the

(p.

ac-

127),

of taking Christine

Welches

in a taxi.

Margaret suddenly and surprisingly overcomes her neurosis

long enough to encourage Dixon to pursue Christine (pp. 190-91);

but because he does not yet

feel

worthy of her and has developed

something of a counterdependency on Margaret, Dixon also needs

— 149

Gordon

Jim, Jake, and

the further, almost providentially lucky assistance of Catchpole, Mar-

supposed former

garet's

lover,

contrivances free him. Finally,

whose disclosures about her neurotic Dixon needs the luck of Welch's latematch

ness in delivering Christine to a train station to

by bus. Though by then

lateness in arriving there

his

own

his

union with

Christine seems assured, he nevertheless has the uneasy feeling that it

may

hinge on his meeting her at the station.

Indispensable as luck

own

of his

to his success,

is

must be abetted by some

it

strengths, particularly his cleverness, his spontaneity

and

freedom, and his willingness to act decisively at crucial moments. In

combination with honesty, his cleverness toration

recalls the true wit of Res-

comedy, hating and mocking sham or affectation

in others

the affectation of being an artist (Bertrand) or being knowledgeable

about the

arts (Welch). In willingness to act, Dixon's foil is Beesley,

his friend

and fellow

ing to

toiler in the

academic vineyard, alone

dance and quietly getting drunk

college

any sexual

fulfill

at the

Dixon, though luckier

desires. In contrast,

demands

than Beesley, comes to see that his good fortune port of courageous faith and tant

on

form of mental

his luck.

What

stingily held past.

on

action. "For

luck had

to until the

was time

It

commitment

to stop

In the early chapters

with resolute courage.

once in his

come

his

way

is

that

life

is

to say,

the sup-

an impor-

Dixon resolved initial

gain was safely

(p. 140).

Jim seems a long way from being able

He

to bet

in the past he'd distrusted,

chance of losing his

doing that"

despises people like

feelings hidden; the only outlet for his

power

—

at the

bar instead of attempt-

fantasized violence expressed

to act

Welch but keeps

anger

at

these

being in Welch's

by private mimicry, which

some of the most brilThe mimicry venting anger becomes such

crops out with great frequency and constitutes liant

comedy

in the book.

a settled habit of expression that,

Dixon can

Christine, tions; like

at first find

when he

begins to

no appropriate

fall

he can only think of conveying them in a manner very

one he might choose

wanted

implode

to

Initially

mimicry.

Dixon does not dare

He

is

moment

inhibited by

emo-

much

of disgust with Welch:

his features, to crush air

necessity" of holding a job (p. 28).

in a

with

in love

"face" for his

from his mouth"

"He

(p. 74).

to act out his fantasies or practice his

what he conceives of as the "economic to work under Welch

and thus continuing

His behavior toward Margaret

considerations: pity for her recent

is

governed by more complex

and (he mistakenly supposes)

150

Equivocal Spirits

genuine attempt

at suicide; guilt at

having been a possible cause of it;

common

decency; and a conventionally male sen-

timent that he should help a

woman in distress, a sentiment that Mar-

friendship for her;

own

garet exploits to her

advantage. Most of all, Dixon

full

is

trapped

by conventional standards and desires, general but powerful: the desucceed at what he has undertaken and not to make a fool of

sire to

check his more authentic and au-

himself. All these considerations

tonomous

freedom and spontaneity. They are a special

desires for

threat to his honesty,

which

is

compromised so long

as

it

leads only

the furtive half-life of secret mimicry.

Caught

in the vise of

powerful opposing forces of approximately

equal strength, Dixon needs, in addition to luck and his native wit,

another

This

aid.

is

drink.

It,

too,

is

fortuitous: the

pub where Dixon

goes to escape from his pugnacious dislike of Bertrand and the insufferable cultural spuriousness of Welch's party stays

hour

than he expected; he

later

planned excess. The drunk

is

is

just

open

half

an

therefore able to drink to an un-

what he needs

in order to

do

vio-

lence to the proprieties that shackle him. To revive his vitality, he

needs to become a child again, one of the benefits Freud ascribes to 14

means returning to a kind of which Dixon sings loudly, expresses lust for Margaret, bellows with rage at a locked bathroom in Welch's house, clumps noisily down Welch's stairs, guzzles the the influence of alcohol.

In part this

primitive, preverbal level of behavior, at

better part of a bottle of Welch's liquor, lets his chin

and under

Welch's tablecloth

it

slop "refreshingly

his shirt collar" (p. 61),

— and

then, retiring to

down

wipes his mouth on

bed with

his cigarettes,

burns an astonishing array of patterns in the bedding, rug, and table of Welch's guestroom.

man whose

It is

quite a series of accomplishments for a

defiance had previously been cautiously controlled.

Dixon had once wondered how Welch would

react

if

he should "yaw

drunkenly ... in Welch's presence screeching obscenities, punching out the windowpanes, fouling the periodicals" actually perpetrated similar outrages,

down from happened of the

the fantasy, they have an

in Welch's

bedroom, he likens himself

they are

to a

own

he has

somewhat toned

over, to the havoc

"broken spider crab

tarry shingle of the

recall a similarly vivid

Prufrock regrets his

if

Now

added recklessness from having

home. As Dixon wakes, hung

spewed up ... on the image may

and

(p. 65).

morning"

metaphor by which

(p. 64).

Eliot's J.

.

.

.

The

Alfred

tameness and cowardice, wishing he had

151

Jim, Jake, and

been "a pair of ragged claws seas."

15

Scuttling across the floors of silent

bedroom indicates on Welch's good side or

damage done

to the

Dixon's

drunk marks the beginning of an

there

no turning back. horrified, Dixon

Though

that

reaches

For sheer richness of

new

is

hardly free of proprieties,

active rebellion

from which

has a countervailing reac-

at this point

is

intensely

and

comic observation and

heights of exuberance and exhilaration.

perhaps no passage in modern

hilarity,

litera-

drunk and hangover.

ture can equal Amis's description of Dixon's

Here

is

feels at

own

relentlessly witty, Dixon's faculty of wit, his

now

he

of his

While the whole novel

tion of even greater power.

invention,

his debauch,

not turn into a Prufrock. Though the horror he

his desire to stay

is

moment by

Dixon, though immobilized for the

will at least

the

/

Gordon

the opening paragraph about the hangover,

minus the

previ-

ously quoted part about the crab:

Dixon was

alive again.

Consciousness was upon him before

he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection.

He

wicked

lay sprawled, too

harm, but not as having done

it

much

move.

to

.

.

.

The

light did

as looking at things did; he resolved,

move

once, never to

his eyeballs again.

A

thudding in his head made the scene before him beat pulse. His

mouth had been used

ture of the night, too, he'd

and then

as

as a latrine

its

a cross-country run

up by

He

While the sources of exhilaration

may be

secret police.

this verbal

felt

dusty like a

by some small

mausoleum. During the

somehow been on

expertly beaten

him

bad.

crea-

night,

and then been [p.

64]

power may remain uncertain, the Dixon has disrupted the previous true self, desiring to be defiant and

that of victory;

standoff between the force of his

free, and that of his conforming self, anxious to please those with power over him. The drunk permanently tips the balance toward freedom. Dixon has committed the comic equivalent of the action of

the Blakean hero

who

"stamps the stony law

to dust."

Dixon's release of his captive self through the

him

directly

and almost

as a

reward

—

it

just as

drunk seems

to lead

to Christine Callaghan, the other

character most like Dixon in spontaneity

has her conventional side

16

— her "dignant"

and naturalness. She, too, Dixon calls

self (p. 202), as

Dixon does; each expresses love by helping

to free the

152

Equivocal Spirits

other from the restraints generated by this self and to develop a truer,

more authentic

Christine

self.

room having

in the breakfast

is

moments

hearty meal (even in

a

of unhappiness, comic characters,

being natural, seldom forget that they have bodies as well as souls)

when Dixon comes downstairs badly hung

how

suggestions about

She makes useful

over.

damage

to conceal his

bedroom and

to the

even goes upstairs to aid him with these measures, thus

Even though

their relationship. risible

and the

ridiculous,

significant that they

of drinking. At the

have a

their laughter, a shared sense of the

main source of

the

is

common

their love

to her

Christine,

now

Just as his

had

life,

confident of their love,

insisted

on

is

about

and thinks

is

also

to

that

be con-

he might

joy, love, union, fertil-

ready to join the drink-

ing with Jim, whereas earlier, doubtful of the tionship, she

it is

253). Here, in an archetypal way,

(p.

drinking clearly represents and celebrates ity;

bond,

their

toward the natural use

attitude

end of the novel, as

summated, Dixon proposes a drink "begin with an octuple whisky"

initiating

outcome of

their rela-

tea (p. 156).

drunk almost immediately brings him

to Christine, so

it

more sharply separates him from the Welches. Welch is, if not abstinent, abstemious and niggardly; when Dixon arrived at his house the evening before the party, Welch served him "the smallest drink he'd ever been seriously offered" (p. 61). Though Welch keeps his

—

scarcely for personal enjoyment.

liquor cabinet well stocked,

it is

simply the thing to do,

being

like

Bertrand should ever get drunk barely functions even

when

grate into primal chaos.

wisdom

As

is

sober,

man who

such a person hide: his

is

doesn't drink.

It is

That either Welch or his son

inconceivable.

As

Welch would,

for Bertrand,

of the belief attributed to

not trust a

arty.

if

a

that

drunk, disinte-

he perfectly

Humphrey

machine

illustrates the

Bogart that one should

The implication

is,

of course, that

afraid to reveal himself. Bertrand does have plenty to

incompetence as a painter,

while conducting an

affair

his duplicity with Christine

with Carol Goldsmith, and, most of all, his

willingness to manipulate anyone in order to gain his end of living in

wealth and ease. Though these and other unpleasant sides of his personality

emerge

in spite of himself, to lower his inhibitions

pose them by getting drunk

is

more

and

ex-

of a risk than the opportunistic

Bertrand cares to take.

Lucky

as

Dixon

is

in

many ways, he

is

luckiest of all in the appear-

ance of the wealthy Julius Gore-Urquhart, Christine's uncle and

153

Gordon

Jim, Jake, and

and employer when he beats out Bertrand

Dixon's benefactor

When

position of Gore-Urquhart's private secretary.

meets him, at the college dance, kindred souls to

whom

it is

cigarettes

clear that they are

for the

Dixon

first

emancipated

and drink matter: Dixon expresses

delight that Gore-Urquhart has circumvented college drinking rules

and obtained pints rather than duces

half-pints (later in the

dance he

intro-

gin).

Gore-Urquhart's role in the novel only becomes important at the time of Dixon's second drunk. This second drunk differs from, and

even more crucial than, the

first,

for

Dixon,

after

is

experiencing suc-

Welches and Margaret, is now slipThe occasion for his second drunk is his inability to face or to avoid the shame of acting as Welch's puppet in delivering the "Merrie England" lecture; at the same time, he feels himself losing Christine and regressing to Margaret. Three sherries at the party before the leccess in his struggle against the

ping.

ture,

preceded by a "half-dozen measures of

217), are insufficient to

(p.

fenses of the sort regression, a

Bill

buck Dixon up. To perpetrate more ofhis first drunk would be another

committed during

mere

repetition of the rebellion already launched. This

time he needs to achieve an end that he himself

During the party before the but searchingly, as

tersely

worthy of the

Atkinson's whisky"

he

role

is

if

lecture,

is

not aware

of.

Gore-Urquhart queries Dixon

Dixon

trying to determine whether

about to assume. Although Lucky Jim

is

re-

sembles an updated Restoration comedy of manners, Gore-Urquhart's

becomes

self-appointed role has an almost archetypal dimension; he the "benevolent grandfather, so to speak, set

up by

the blocking

humor" 17

who

—Welch

Dixon's natural development by forcing

him

to deliver the Merrie

gland speech. But this view of Gore-Urquhart Just before the lecture,

wanted the

to lie

down and

washroom and

from his its,"

the

terseness

gives

when

tilts

is

not quite complete.

Dixon's "spirits were so low that he

Dixon

spirits:

namely, a couple of

stiff

224-25). With the punning on

perceptibly toward the cosmic.

and plain speaking keep him

tically

The

belts

"spir-

Though

his

from becoming portentous,

one can nevertheless discern in Gore-Urquhart the outlines of a itual father as

En-

pant like a dog," Gore-Urquhart appears in

flask of scotch (pp.

comedy

overrules the action

in his attempt to thwart

he grips Dixon's arm in the washroom and

spir-

says, cryp-

but not impenetrably, "No need to worry; to hell with

all this."

in its way, as deeply comforting as the

"And all

first

part of this

is,

154

Equivocal Spirits

be well and

shall

/

All

manner

Four Quartets; the second part hints to

Gidding" section of

Eliot's

Dixon

way out

that there

Much

is

a

of thing shall be well" in the "Little

of the futility of repetitive rebellion.

heartened by his "spirits" and encouraged during the

by the "loud

ture he delivers

Urquhart, Dixon proceeds

skirling laughter" (p. 230) of Gore-

finally to

come

into his

own identity by parodying mannerisms, which he now does publicly for

work

way

his

lec-

to his

own. He must

first

Welch's voice and the

time; his

first

months of private rehearsal pay off. And, because practice has brought his talent for mimicry of all sorts to a pitch of perfection, it is fitting that

Dixon should slough

tering about "Merrie

off the

the lecture, the counter-persona in charge of a

self,

and

his

briefly adopting, as

all

pacifist,

is

arty nat-

to the

crowd excerpts from a

Jewish, literate communist"

(p.

230).

moving toward a wholeness of not only mimicry but drunkenness. In this, the

these roles

means

its

he continues

and sardonic tone of a "nazi trooper

book-burning reading out

pamphlet written by a In enacting

Welchian persona and

England" by

Dixon

climactic scene of the novel,

is

Amis chooses

to afford us

some

serious

fun by playing on the old definition of enthusiasm or insanity as possession or intoxication

by God. With the

spirits

and

mad

vided by Gore-Urquhart, Dixon delivers a

inebriation pro-

but inspired bur-

lesque version of his lecture, throwing off the spirit of his false father,

Welch, in the process finding both a bride and his true ther,

and

at last

becoming

spiritual fa-

himself.

Jake Richardson of Jake's Thing

might be regarded as a Jim Dixon about

to turn sixty.

Lacking a

Gore-Urquhart, he has remained a university teacher. 18 Although he specializes in early Mediterranean history

and

is at least

minimally

conscientious about the performance of his duties as an Oxford don,

comes as a surprise that he has published four books, for he really seems no more devoted to scholarship or research than was Dixon, at it

one point thinking of a pending project with a kind of weary cynicism:

"He must

get that bit of nonsense about Syracuse off the

ground again before too long." 19 Jake seems demic career

for

want of better

to

have chosen an aca-

alternatives.

There are some noteworthy differences between Lucky Jim and Jake's Thing. Especially in tone, the later

novel

has suffered some loss of innocence, and the

more astringent. Jake lines between wit and

is

155

Jim, Jake, and

Gordon

and thus between the characters belonging

folly,

in

one or another of

these camps, are not quite so sharply drawn. To be sure, Jake, like

Jim,

recognizably the honnete

is

homme and shrewd

observer of the

and the bogus, which are here of more nearly epidemic proportions. In their marked resemblance to Professor Welch and pretentious

Margaret Peel, the Mabbotts suggest the immortality of certain species of absurdity: Geoffrey

frowns "as some aspect of

his attention" (p. 279); Alcestis, like Margaret in her

manner and

series of roles, favors the gruff

that Jake hilariously

ring types are

mimics

some new

came

to

voice of a retired colonel

sotto voce (p. 18).

ones, the

reality

performance of a

Added

to these recur-

most important being Ed,

a

group

therapy leader, and his colleague, Dr. Rosenberg. But the character

who makes Jake's

more ambiguous novel than Lucky Jim is Though not completely blind to the weaknesses Ed and Rosenberg, she is far more willing than Jake to see the Thing a

Jake's wife, Brenda.

of

benefits of their therapy,

and

early in the novel she

becomes furious

with Jake for his scorn of the Mabbotts, even though, as Jake notes to himself, this sentiment

must have been wholly

invisible

harmless to them. In Brenda's fondness for the Mabbotts, as

if

Christine in Lucky Jim had suddenly

and thus

it is

rather

begun demanding of Dixon

more sympathetic treatment of Professor Welch. Brenda's partial defrom Jake and his values, a defection that increases in the course of the novel, is the most important sign that he is more nearly isolated than Dixon. The younger man has two firm friends in Atkinson and Beesley, a friendly acquaintance in Carol Goldsmith, a woman friend (though a manipulator) in Margaret, a friend and a

fection

bride-to-be in Christine, merically, the balance

and

a powerful ally in Gore-Urquhart; nu-

between Dixon's friends and

his

enemies seems

about equal. In contrast, apart from Brenda with her wavering loyalty,

a risky relationship with a

Kelly,

and

much younger deranged woman,

a former lover, Eve Greenstreet,

whom Jake

fends, he has only the friendship of his fellow

wood,

whom

he evidently does not see

Though he

quickly of-

don Damon Lance-

often.

Jim whose

comfortable materially, Jake

is

a lucky

luck seems to have run low. Counting heads

is

the least important

is

measure of Jake's

would be more

isolation;

accurate.

indeed, a stronger word, alienation,

Not

just his incipient

sexual fashions and postures of his world leave

women who

impotence but the

him

in dismay: the

pass him on the street wear clothes that look like "cur-

156

Equivocal Spirits

bedspreads, blankets, tablecloths, loose covers off armchairs

tains,

and

on the

sofas" (p. 51);

train to

Oxford he sees a couple locked "in

on vacancy, mouths and jaws slack

a loose half-embrace, eyes bent

Under

a degree that suggested heavy sedation" (p. 99).

buy

berg's instructions to is

put

off

(pp.

is

and

55-56). He

much

magazine and stimulate himself, Jake

a sex

by the picture of an otherwise pretty

President Carter's

pudendum

a

What

with a smile like

without

bothers Jake more than these incongruities

the pseudo-scientific jargon

To improve

girl

"like the inside of a giraffe's ear"

carries out Rosenberg's instructions, but

enthusiasm.

and mechanical qualities of the therapy.

their sex relations,

sate focusing sessions";

to

Dr. Rosen-

he and his wife hold "non-genital sen-

augmenting these

sociality" (p. 143), Rosenberg's

term

"interpersonal recreative

is

for the Richardsons'

going out

together. Jake's alienation

from sex

from a whole society sexual

bus

life.

that,

Nothing seems

is

only a microcosm of his alienation

he senses,

make

was once

As

a holistic, natural act but

ened by a mechanical approach analyzing so Jake in his travels through

abandoned

of machinery stretch of

out of joint as his

sense.

a

confirmed

Jake seems always to encounter variations on the same

rider,

scene. Just as sex

detritus,

much

as

is

to connect, to

London

its

is

and

a

in sight

rather smaller

among the strange apparatuses

playground

for

young Martians;

forward bomb-site of World

War

II;

rust-stains

which Jake had never seen anybody

milieu

it is

at

work"

bus

his

probability,

Irish

is

insias (p. 47); a

at a "Kevin's

scaffold-

(p. 35). In this

Kebab"; Dr. Rosenberg, against

and has the even

woman

doctor

who

less

probable

first

name

of

Rowena

In the matter of names, as in the city scenes, nothing sense. Jake

once had a dream

not "find his boots, equipment,

parade ground"

where the

rifle

name

all

of Pro-

administers mechanical tests of

reactions to sexual stimuli bears the exotic

a world

from

not surprising that names are zanily anomalous. Jake dis-

embarks from

to the

straight-

nearer the centre, the stone face

was spattered with

ing on

make

in

a house that

had stayed half-demolished since about 1970 overlooked a of a university building

its

tableaux: "large pieces

and piles of bricks stood unattended on a

mud; no one was

threat-

sees not an organic city but

in senseless patterns

what might have been

now

separate components,

in

Trefusis.

seems

to

fit

or

which, in the army, he could

or cap and didn't

know

the

way

(p. 131). This symbolizes his disorientation in

familiar

markers have somehow disappeared.

157

Jim, Jake, and

Of

modern

the sources of

all

public and

private,

amounting

that disturbs Jake the most.

tion to sexual stimuli

therapy

is

Gordon

chaos,

The chapter

on public display

symptomatic of

appear to have no private

this confusion.

life;

the confusion between

it is

to a virtual annihilation of the private,

in

which he puts

in the

The

name

his reac-

of supposed

therapists themselves

they proceed from the assumption that

a private self should be fully willing to tion of a similar confusion of public

go public. Another manifesta-

and

private

is

the women's

dem-

onstration for admission to Jake's college, invading the privacy of sex

by subordinating

it

to public, political ends.

As he approaches

the

one day, Jake sees the demonstrators and hears several of

college

their chants,

among them "Wanker Richardson!"; though Lance wood term as meaning someone who holds a sinecure or

later defines the

coasts

on

bator."

his reputation (p. 123),

it is

also British slang for "mastur-

When Jake tries to enter the gate,

the

women simulate

passion; "kisses descended, breasts were rubbed against

crotch was grabbed at"

shared experiences a

weapon, just

as,

The most

private

is

his

and intimate of

thus degraded in a public spectacle and used as

Jake soon discovers, a plastic phallus

him and "wanker" one of

is

(p. 104).

cries of

him and

is

mailed to

scrawled in the margin of the library copy of

his articles (p. 134).

more troubled by this confusion because, in an oldknows and almost always respects the difference between the public and the private. Indeed, except when he thinks that the harm a person does outweighs the harm done to him by an attack, Jake keeps his ridicule private; his only public attack is on Ed Jake

is all

the

fashioned way, he

and Rosenberg. Although he discovers himself is

in a qualified

manner. Jake

insists

to

be a misogynist,

on preserving the

it

distinction

between private scorn and public decency and consideration, as

in-

stanced by his treatment of his student, Miss Calvert (pp. 113-14). In contrast, Rosenberg

is

oblivious to the inappropriateness of dis-

cussing private matters in a public place because he

any difference between public and

nounces

to

oblivious to

crowded pub he an-

Jake the sex photo revealed by the stimulation session to

have been Jake's favorite people,

private. In a

is

comes across

(p. 96).

Thus

Jake, scornful of a variety of

as a kinder person than Rosenberg,

void of any capacity for contempt, public or private.

If

who seems Rosenberg

were aware of this discrepancy between Jake's public and private

self,

he would probably accuse him of repression. But, as Freud once ob-

—158 Equivocal Spirits

served, civilization

is little

cano of savage emotions.

20

more than the fragile surface over a volRosenberg would replace the facade main-

tained by Jake's civilized kindness or decency with public exposure of

all

emotions, with results that would parallel the disordered

London

wilderness of the

A

much

of

cityscape.

incident occurring quite early in the novel summarizes

little

what Jake stands

for

and

also opposes.

A madwoman,

after

recapitulating her problems audibly, asks the other bus riders, "Don't

anybody think

who the

I've

replies: "Yes,

"little,

I

been given a raw deal?" Jake do"

(p. 72).

nameless, unremembered, acts

by Wordsworth

is

Of kindness" mentioned

/

an assertion of the private

connection with another private

time, the act

is

self

making a public

self in the face of

ence; the other riders pretend that the

same

the only passenger

in Tintern Abbey. Furthermore, as the adjectives in-

dicate, Jake's act

the

is

His words are an example of one of

madwoman

public indiffer-

does not

At

exist.

an assertion of the personal against the

in-

creasing mechanization of Jake's society, as manifested especially by his sex therapy. Finally, Jake his society,

tion, kindness,

woman

may sense

that

he

is

so out of step with

with the powerful forces opposed to spontaneity, connec-

and the private

than to other

self,

members

that

he

is

more akin

to the

of this society. Like her, he

is

madbeing

"given a raw deal." In any event, his brief encounter with her anticipates a stronger

and deeper

tive

madwoman who

and

his wife enter.

is

interest in Kelly, a younger,

participating in the

more

attrac-

group therapy that Jake

The major developments of this interest are preceded by an important event, Jake's drunk, which in fact alters their character and directly or indirectly exerts an influence on most of the other developments in Jake's life. Initially, Jake's drunk may appear comparable to Dixon's first drunk in Lucky Jim. Just as Dixon's may seem a healthy rebellion against playing the dutiful academic, so Jake's may seem a gloriously vigorous assertion of human desire against the whole mass of forces that have alienated

and

isolated him. Jake's use of

drunken-

ness as an essential aid to fornication with a former lover, Eve Greenstreet,

can be viewed as a salutary attempt to reestablish his potency,

just as

Dixon uses

his

drunk

to

empower him

in a larger sense

activate his struggle against the constraints of his society.

and

to

Com-

parison of the two drunk scenes appears to be validated by the hilarious descriptions of both hangovers, as

if

the exuberance signaled

159

Gordon

Jim, Jake, and

some

beneficial psychological release.

The passage from Jakes Thing

surely equals the corresponding passage in Lucky Jim: "the

bottom

become strewn with little irregular patches of hot semi-adhesive sand. More than this, his recent struggles to breathe regularly had fucked up some neural mechanism or other so that he now seemed to be breathing by conscious control alone." When Jake hears a voice from another room announce "Tea," he sheet [of the bed] had

struggles

"up

having to take his time about

to a sitting position,

it

because of the way his head rolled about like a small baby's unless he concentrated hard." Entering the bathroom, he sees his face in the

mirror looking "as

had been seethed

if it

in a salt solution for a time

and then given a brisk buffing with sandpaper" (pp. 198-99). These similarities between the drunk scenes are misleading. Jake's

drunk

is

not a celebration of

life

or even a healthy assertion of his

potency. For one thing, drunkenness it

to his friend

Lancewood

behavior with Eve,

who

Dixon,

is

unnatural to Jake; as he puts

in a lengthy attempt to

understand his

absolutely hate being drunk" (p. 222). Unlike

"I

regards his drunk and

its

consequences with mounting

his with increasing aversion, reaching the

amusement, Jake regards

conclusion that his conduct with Eve must reveal that he really hates

women and

that

he

is

though Lancewood demurs from the his

rooms before he can reply

first

192) (p.

—

a

pabulum" or

judgment

conclusion and Jake leaves

to the second, his

the surface his awareness that he takes as "sexual

227-28). Al-

a "male chauvinist pig" (pp.

no

drunk has forced

interest in

"creatures to go to

women

bed with"

130,

(pp.

Eve seconds

after his treatment of her,

that,

to

except

200). Moreover, Jake's sleeping with Eve constitutes a betrayal of

two of his most cherished standards. As adultery, tion of the private relationship

use of a

woman

for his pleasure

a mechanization of sex as

a

hundred

Rosenberg

(p.

women

43)

—

viola-

it is

as

much

any of the therapeutic gimmickry and

the part of Restoration libertine

told

wanton

without regard for hers,

gon employed by Rosenberg. In

more than

it is

between Eve and her husband; as the

is

thetical to the associations

short, Jake's

—

jar-

drunken enactment of

a part he has enacted sober with

over two decades, he has previously

the very opposite of comic

and

is

between procreation and comedy

anti-

that

Cornford and other writers have noted. Yet Jake's intoxication

and subsequent copulation with Eve could

be characterized as a significant comic reenactment of the fortunate

160

Equivocal Spirits

fall,

major changes in him.

for they effect several

he

Ironically, after

demonstrates his potency with Eve, such performance no longer matters to him; his recognition that

women and

its

reassertion lay in hatred of

male chauvinism liberates him from caring about

freedom symbolized by his destruction of the (p.

228). In a curious

vino Veritas; his

way

this discovery

drunk brings the

plastic

it,

a

male organ

confirms the old adage

in

revelation of an extremely unpleas-

ant side of his true

self.

This discovery, in turn, helps to

growth of a better

self,

particularly in Jake's relationship with Kelly.

Even before he

able to articulate his disturbing discovery to

is

Lancewood, Jake's behavior toward her seems sult of his to

the

facilitate

drunken experience. Before

to

be changing as a

re-

he could scarcely be said

that,

have had a relationship with her: he has met and observed her at a

therapy workshop, been appalled by her maniacal

fit,

but also

felt

the stirrings of a nascent sexual interest in her. After Kelly pays a surprise visit to their

him permission fling

home, Brenda, detecting her

to reciprocate

(p. 188).

it

interest in Jake, gives

Then occurs

the

with Eve, followed the next day by another surprise

Kelly, this

drunken from

visit

time to his rooms at Oxford, with the quickly stated inten-

tion of having sex with him.

He

thus has an easy opportunity to re-

peat his conquest of Eve, and his decision enables the reader to de-

termine whether he fully deserves the accusation of male chauvinism that

he hurls

at himself in the

next chapter.

Learning and recoiling from his drunken irresponsibility toward Eve, he responsibly refuses to take advantage of the psychotic younger

woman. As becomes attempt,

it is

clear later in the novel, at the time of her suicide

not Jake but Ed and Rosenberg

who

have been

Kelly's

brutally indifferent exploiters, practicing a kind of psychological rape

by

their ignorance of her

problems and

likewise ignorant of any cure, Jake

how

comes

to treat

them. Though

closer to understanding, to

establishing a connection with her (as he has with the earlier

woman) than do Ed madness near

allied

or Rosenberg. Perhaps

and

it is

mad-

by virtue of his wit

his sotto voce verbal lunacies; perhaps

to

it is

who works hard at maintaining one who can really apprehend its

because, as the only one in the novel a civilized sanity,

he

is

the only

opposite. But the major difference between

him and

the therapists,

the major sign of his ability to change as a result of his

perience and the disproof of his chauvinism,

about

Kelly.

As he walks back

to his

is

that

drunken

he begins

Oxford rooms

ex-

to care

after the visit

161

Jim, Jake, and

Gordon

from Kelly and his session with Lancewood, he

on

reflects

his feel-

"He didn't think he felt any affection for her ... his main feeling her was pity. She certainly aroused his interest, genuine interest

ings:

for

opposed

as

to the testosterone-fed substitute that

sometime dealings with Eve"

The

thing

last

Amis wants

a sentimental hero.

(p.

is

him

into

to simplify Jake or turn

During the scene with Kelly

may

ber of practical considerations

his

228).

do

to

had graced

in his

rooms, a num-

restrain him, including continu-

ing fears of impotence, fear of sexual involvement with a psychotic

nymphomaniac, the lingering likely, his

sudden and honest self-critic:

in Kelly as a

he

As

a wit, Jake

not even sure whether his

is

phenomenon

he just does not want

realization that

sex any longer "with anybody" (p. 219).

shrewdest

hangover, and, most

effects of his

or as a person

(p.

is

new

228). But as

his

own

interest

is

Lancewood

points out (though in a different context), Jake tends to be too hard

on himself that

(p.

227).

The undeniable

he "shrank" from

and

station

sees to

it

Kelly's

sign of his caring

humanity

is

having to walk to the Oxford railroad

that she gets a taxi (p. 220).

Following out the chain of events and the changes in Jake that originate in his debauch, at Kelly's urging he attends

therapeutic

room

at

workshop but

fails to

heed her appeal

an out-of-town to

come

to her

an appointed time of night. Jake does not possess perfect

foresight: she attempts suicide.

But his reaction demonstrates his

sense of responsibility, an old-fashioned conscience, and the attempt

him throughout the novel. Surmounting isolation and alienation, he makes something really work by loosing a devastating talent for satire on Ed and Rosenberg. In so doing, Jake effects the exposure of Ed that Kelly had

prompts him

to

combat several of the

forces oppressing

only been able to fantasize about. Moreover, in Ed's proposal to cover

up

the suicide attempt, Jake finds the superbly appropriate occasion

to

address the disjunction between private and public: his private

passion for honesty and responsibility finds in a satiric attack

on Ed and Rosenberg.

tency or the ability to lust after a

its

proper public vehicle

Qualities far superior to po-

woman

have thus been restored to

—

or, rather, given him for the first time. As the novel moves toward a conclusion after

Jake

satire,

sixty. ity

Jake seems resigned

Remaining are

of vision; they

his friend

seem

to

its

climactic scene of

to accepting the limits of a

Lancewood,

his honesty,

man

turning

and

his clar-

be enough. Jake quite easily accepts his

162

Equivocal Spirits

sudden announcement

wife's

that she

perhaps he recognizes the justice in affection have largely failed.

The

leaving

is

this, for his

last

him

for Geoffrey;

attempts to

show her

chapter of the novel effaces any

residual melancholy from this separation. Jake

is

visiting Dr.

Curnow,

same one who referred him to Rosenberg in Chapter 1, thereby setting in motion the whole train of events. Only instead of potency, the

now is "excessive shitting" (p. 283), perhaps indicative of his final attitude toward the world. And Jake is content to leave it at that. When Curnow informs him of a simple new cure for impo-

Jake's complaint

tence, Jake declines faults of

to

women. As

it,

after reflecting in misogynist fashion

in the story of

Though

the novel.

it

is

the

sex.

however, his

least until the closing chapters of Jake's Thing,

drunken fornication

all

Sophocles at eighty, he seems glad

be delivered from the tyranny of At

on

probably the key scene of the second half of

may seem

strictly a negative act,

it

provides Jake

with his major motivation for change and, ultimately, with a major motivation for effectively counteracting those aspects of that have

most oppressed him. From

his

drunk he

modern

life

learns the worst

about his deep-seated attitudes toward women; reacting against these,

he redeems himself by learning

more than

to care for Kelly as

her in levelling against

Ed and Rosenberg

the attack that she could

only contemplate, he achieves a wholeness of

membra

own

something

a potential object of lust. Acting as a kind of surrogate for

of

modern

self.

If

the disjecta

society refuse to unite, he can at least

connections and find his

own

make

his

function, venting private convic-

tions through the impassioned public voice of the satirist.

George Orwell's Keep

some

the Aspidistra

Most of the difficulties Gordon Comstock. Definitely comic in its outcome, Aspidistra is nevertheless a comedy of an exceedingly strange kind, one in which the hero is (or seems) both old and young, both winter and spring, both the blocking character, the aged humorist or impostor, and the youth who overthrows this character.

Flying

is,

in

respects, a perplexing novel.

center around the hero,

During the protracted struggle between them, the blocking part of Gordon's character assumes such an extreme Bergsonian rigidity that it is

tempting to dismiss him in exasperation. Yet there

that Orwell

wished also

to

is little

doubt

keep in sight the youthful, more sympa-

163

Jim, Jake, and

who

Gordon,

thetic

calls the

values

—

The

finally learns to

"divine average"

—

Gordon

choose what William McCollom

in Gordon's case, middle-class

reaction of

many

readers to Gordon, however,

even more perplexed than character represents eral intelligentsia.

some

He

this, for

and

likely to

is

of the favorite notions of the

modern

be

will

difficult to

His reversal could scarcely be

to the advertising

agency

— which stands

undergoes

this

accept

this dedi-

abandonment of it by

—

perhaps even to

the

credit.

more complete: Gordon throws down

poem he had been

a sewer a long

lib-

has devoted himself to poetry and rejected the

cation seems admirable, Gordon's complete

end of the novel

be

the blocking side of Gordon's

world of money and commercial success. To the extent that

"P. P."

life

rather than the exceptionality of his blocking views. 21

writing for two years, returning

copy

to write

for a

new campaign

for "Pedic Perspiration."

metamorphosis somewhat

time with a hopefulness born of his

new

22

reluctantly,

(or

involving

To be sure, Gordon but

at the

newly admitted)

same

faith in

work and family. Because Gordon has inveighed most passionately and persistently against money, his changed attitude toward it is likely to be the most unsettling to some readers: "He had blasphemed against money, rebelled against money, tried to live like an anchorite outside the money- world; and it had brought him not only misery, but also a frightful emptiness, an the middle-class values of

inescapable sense of

futility.

not righteous over much;

To abjure money

why

to abjure

is

life.

Be

shouldst thou die before thy time?"

237).

(p.

The problem

for the reader

may lie not so much

changes singly as in countenancing their It is

rather as

and become a

if

Moliere's Alceste

courtier.

A

reader

totality

in accepting these

and

had surrendered

who

their extremity.

his

misanthropy

has shared the passionate dis-

Make may even

gust of such a denunciation as Gordon's "to settle down, to

Good, feel

to sell

your soul for a

villa

and an

aspidistra!" (p. 48)

betrayed by Gordon's willing embrace of exactly these goals, the

aspidistra of the novel's

title

being the major recurring symbol of

middle-class standards and a chief object of Gordon's antipathy.

The

novel brings so complete a revolution that even at the end an astonished reader

may

somewhat behind Gordon. Because the susmoney-code seems to isoOrwell's belated attempt to explain him as an

lag

tained intensity of Gordon's rejection of the late

him from

society,

164

Equivocal Spirits

Everyman

figure

— "Everyone

everyone sooner or

rebels against the

surrenders"

later

238)

(p.

money-code, and

— may be

the cause of

another serious strain on the reader's credence.

The

reader's difficulties

nagging

if fitful,

may come

primarily from an awareness,

Gordons who never quite Gordon whose rebellion against society, times, may endow him with almost heroic

that there are really two

coalesce: the individualized

however exasperating

at

determination; and the other Gordon, overlapping but is

the vehicle in a didactic novel of ideas.

who

is

uality,

distinct,

who

By marrying Rosemary,

already pregnant by him, he gives the final turn to his individ-

merging

with middle-class society in a recognizably comic

it

affirmation of renewal

was, the

last

however, he

and

He

fertility.

is

not, as he

had thought he

of the dying family of Comstocks. At the

may

same time, comic fig-

retain the lineaments of another sort of

ure, the Bergsonian; beliefs to another:

he may swing too

from a

rigidly

fanatical opposition

from one (which

specifically thinks of as "religion") to the "filthy

faith

at

or set of

one point he

money- world," he

new religion, a belief in the middle-class decencies that somehow redeem or transmute this money world (pp. 194, 239). swings to a

Rosemary, an instrument essential to Gordon's changes,

more

didactically conceived than

he

is.

is

even

Though endowed with

a

good deal of personal charm and touching in her loyalty to her beloved, even magnanimously transcending her middle-class respectability

on the occasion when she sleeps with Gordon

way she knows has

fallen),

to

lift

Rosemary

him from is

(it is

the profound apathy into

the only

which he

perhaps, in her extraordinary strength and

good sense, too much the

foil for

Gordon and too close

to the

Woman

23 envisioned by George Meredith as the fountain of comedy. She

better Celimene, accepting

Gordon and

is

a

winning him

to her

some problems

of the

finally

values by her love, rather than spurning him. If

the foregoing

comments

novel, even they probably

accurately reflect

fail

reader's likely reactions to

to

do

justice to the complexity of the

Gordon. Orwell evidently wished

to

present Gordon's criticisms of society as generally valid; although re-

placed or superseded by the more

making

don

vital

concerns of procreation and

a living, the criticisms are not cancelled out.

errs is not in having strong principles

24

Where Gor-

but in the stubborn

transigence of trying to live wholly by them.

in-

Had Gordon been

a

poet of genius, Orwell might have represented as justified his rejec-

165

Jim, Jake, and

Gordon

tion of society for the sake of dedication to his art.

don has no such talent, this

is

moot

a

point. Certainly Orwell has

limited patience with the kind of failed artist or

don

is

ure and

who

who,

rapidly becoming, the kind futility,

bohemian

fail-

Even the reader

power

implicit belief in the redemptive

and who sympathizes with

that Gor-

in a rage because of his

projects his self-hatred onto society.

Gordons

shares

But because Gor-

of art

his invectives against the corrupting

power of money will find many disturbing details in the first two chapters, and beyond. Emphasized from the outset are the frailty of Gordon's appearance and his "moth-eaten" look, suggesting infertility or impotence. Likewise, the qualities most emphasized in the bookstore

where Gordon works are dryness, desiccation, the deadness of all the wares he is supposed to sell; even the novels of the

nearly

lending library, which at least circulate, image death in their appear-

ance of immurement, of "bricks laid upright"

such imagery the

is

meaning of the characterization of Gordon

the "last

The

(p. 4).

effect of

strongly reinforced by Chapter 3, an elaboration

member

of the

Comstock

on

in the first chapter as

family" (p. 3).

Of the twelve

chil-

dren of his paternal grandfather, only one, Gordon's father, married

and produced children; and neither Gordon nor seems

Although Orwell mentions Rosemary and a

likely to marry.

friend of Gordon's

his sister, Julia,

named

Ravelston early in Aspidistra, the novel

is

remarkable for the belatedness of meaningful dialogue involving the central character; apart

and Gordon's man,

to

from superficial chat with bookshop patrons

rejection of

an invitation from a fellow boarder, Flax-

accompany him

to a

pub, Gordon has no

real

compan-

ionship until his conversation with Ravelston in Chapter 5

which point the novel

is

nearly one- third over. Lack of

sponsible for this delay; elston or

Gordon

is

Rosemary without money

ashamed

to

money

— by is re-

appear before Rav-

in his pocket, a scarce possession

because of his meager wages. Likewise, lack of money, with the

powerful sense of helpless rage and weakness sible for his

flying over

it

generates,

is

respon-

most viciously hate- filled fantasy of "enemy aeroplanes

London; the deep threatening

shattering thunder of the

bombs. ...

It

hum

was

a

of the propellers, the

sound which,

at that

moment, he ardently desired to hear" (pp. 16-17, 21). Not only does this seem prophetic of World War II; it also seems to lay bare the psychological roots of

war

in the despair turned to destructive

rage of millions of hopeless persons such as Gordon. This glimpse of

166— Equivocal Spirits

apocalypse, however, does not

fit

the novel as a whole. Unlike the

rage and desperation of the victims of the Great Depression, Gordon's

emotions are avoidable because his poverty as his opposition to

money

is

ceptible to such fantasies as a relief

And, given tred,

is

As long

self-induced.

based on obsessive principle, he

from the

is

sus-

of his hatred.

futility

his apparent inability to mitigate the fierceness of his ha-

he seems trapped in an impasse.

As early as Chapter 2, drinking comes to seem a possible solvent, a means of escape. As the novel progresses, alcohol has two kinds of effects on Gordon. One is mild and incontrovertibly desirable; it touches on but remains distinct from a second, more violent series of changes that at

first

appear negative but ultimately come to seem good.

Flaxman's drinking at a

pub

called the Crichton

Arms becomes

for

Gordon a symbol of warmth, gregariousness, fellowship, innocent fun and laughter— the sort of life that at times he yearns for intensely.

On a

night of solitary, nearly penniless wandering, he passes

women, "red-armed," standing with mugs of beer outside a pub (p. 73); these women may anticipate the woman with "brawny forearms" hanging out clothes in 1984, a moving symbol of

three

door red

working-class sturdiness and ruddy health. 25 During an

initially

day together in the country, Gordon and Rosemary notice

idyllic

those aspects of nature that

comedy:

"All

we may

associate with the fecundity of

round them the beech-trees soared, curiously

phallic";

they pass a field in which "innumerable rabbits were browsing" (pp.

126-27). Although the restaurant where they stop

for

lunch

is

overpriced, a bottle of wine

like a

warms

"dreary aquarium" and

its

and

does so, the sun, reemerging, seems to act as

relaxes them; as

its ally

mary

it

food

is

and encourages Gordons

in a field

intentions of having sex with Rose-

on the way back

to the train.

What

thwarts

him

is

Rosemary's reluctance and, perhaps even more, his consciousness

more than he could afford. In fact, in a conflict between obvious symbols of fertility and impotence, "the warmth of the wine, and the hateful feeling of having only eightpence left, that the lunch cost

warred together in

his

body"

(p.

138). Gordon's failure to bring a

contraceptive causes Rosemary's reluctance. Because he also fears the trap of a subsequent forced marriage almost as

money, believing

that marriage

ing for wages, the wine

is

would

much

as the trap of

necessarily chain

him

to slav-

clearly not powerful enough to dissolve

Gordon's fears and constraining

rigidities.

167

Jim, Jake, and

Gordon

As explored thus far, drinking in Aspidistra seems a symbol of an unambiguously beneficent vitality. But Gordon's saturnalian drunk is quite different and,

though fifty

dollars

at first appears,

it

much

darker in

from an American magazine that has accepted one of his

poems, there are some foreshadowings of it. Gordon tends ate drinking

Flaxman,

and women, not always innocently:

who

lives in

for

to associ-

example,

when

Gordon's boarding house because he has been

ejected

by

knows

that part of the reason

bum

Al-

its effects.

immediately triggered by his celebrating the arrival of

it is

Arms, Gordon

his wife for adultery, goes to the Crichton is

obscene jokes and pinch the

to tell

of the barmaid, a "blonde cutie" (p. 74). This vision of the pub,

entices Gordon to enter, has been preceded by the redarmed women outside another pub and, a page before that, by his fleeting encounter with a prostitute. The three distinct scenes seem

which almost

related in Gordon's

mind.

Flaxman's behavior in the Crichton

Gordon's on his drunk. The

fifty

leave,

Gordon on the

is

on

insists

treating Ravelston

drunk, and as the imagery of the

street

mary's dress

him

innocent compared to

and

dinner at an expensive restaurant. Even before they

to

indicates, the night

right

is

from the American magazine

dollars

having gone to his head, Gordon

Rosemary

Arms

(p.

becomes

rest of the

he "thrust his hand

.

.

.

dragged by Gordon

pub

to a

that

still

lust,

into the front of" Rose-

167); naturally enough, her response

for the rest of the night. Ravelston,

chapter

drunken

his descent into hell. In

is

to desert

protective of his friend,

seems more

is

like a place of the

damned than the warm, cheerful Crichton Arms. The whores who next accost Gordon and take him to their apartment are certainly no figures

from the green world of comedy. As the evening and the

chapter end,

Gordon

the wine flowing

draining a bottle of chianti, overwhelmed by

is

down

his throat

next day, vilely hung over,

Gordon

and

into his nose (p. 177).

The

finds himself in jail for having hit

a policeman.

Bailed out

by Ravelston, Gordon manifests the

first

of several

changes resulting from his drunk by feeling mostly apathy and bored indifference to his situation.

cause of his drunk, he

is

Although dismissed from

not in

much hurry

his old job be-

to find a

new

former aversion to accepting charity from Ravelston, with lives temporarily,

has greatly abated.

his old one, yet worse:

He

one; his

whom

he

finds a position similar to

he manages a lending library consisting only

168

Equivocal Spirits

of the trashiest books, his wages are even lower than formerly,

and

both the library and his room are in a more squalid quarter of London. But he thinks he has

fulfilled the

only desire that

still

matters to

him, that of sinking into a netherworld "where decency no longer

where failure and success have no meaning" (p. 203). Gordon properly feels his drunken night to be of such importance that it "marked a period in his life" (p. 203). The trouble is that he does not look deeply enough into what kind of period. Quite early in the novel Gordon thinks of his aged Uncle Walter as being typical of those family members who never made a "stab at life": at most, Gordon imagines, his uncle may have had "a few furtive frolics" as a young man, "a few whiskies in dull bars ... a little whoring on the mattered.

.

.

.

.

Q. T."

(p. 58).

furtive; as

Gordon's drunk, however,

drunks go,

the robust Flaxman,

it is

recklessly flamboyant, not

is

probably more

some experiences of to bail Gordon

like

at familiar

if

Getting drunk as he does, then,

tion of vitality against the dying

consequence seems

.

who, accompanying Ravels ton

out of prison, glances about him as (p. 182).

.

to

is

surroundings

Gordon's boldest asser-

Comstocks, even though

its

be a lassitude and a poverty worse than

first

theirs.

His resistance to change, moreover, had been so intransigent that he

needed the extremity of his drunk ther changes

become

to blast

him

loose. This done, fur-

possible.

Probably the most important of these changes

end of Gor-

the

is

don's pretensions to innocence. In his drunkenness he virtually at-

tempts to ravish Rosemary, but that he achieves his

own

deflowering

probably explains the listlessness into which he plunges after his drunk.

He knows

himself to be a

result of the reckless

much a prey to

man who

needs a religion, but, as a

spending on his drunk, he

the temptations of money

and

realizes that

he

is

as

to vulgar display as the

worst devotee of the money-god could possibly be. 26 Gordon's behavior

with the whores, moreover, resembles the adulteries for which

Flaxman's wife breaks "cut-glass whisky decanters"

head and turns him out of the house: both reality

aloof,

(p.

signify a

from which Gordon has previously managed

maintaining a

sion of innocence

104) over his

world of guilty to

hold himself

Now, thanks to his drunk, his illuand when he recovers from the le-

fragile purity.

is

shattered,

thargy into which the shock of his experience has temporarily

thrown him,

his transition to a

new view

of

money and

his accep-

169

Jim, Jake,

tance of a decency that

is

and Gordon

compromised by

reality,

rather than un-

tenably pure, will be easier.

As

in Jake's Thing, then, the

ing is ultimately a fortunate

assistance

is

drunk scene of Keep

fall.

the Aspidistra Fly-

To complete Gordon's changes, other

even more important, in particular the devotion and the

pregnancy of Rosemary. 27 But although Gordons drunk appears lead his

away from the green world of comedy, the actions

it

entails

to

and

subsequent realizations enable him to break the grip of the dying

Comstocks and, even more important, to abandon the sterile purity of his obsessive war against money, freeing him to enter the world of renewal,

fertility,

and ordinary, practicable decency.

Epilogue

n concluding want

tant extent, the attitudes

book

I

attempt a broad spec-

— so

that

can probably never be

it

broad,

is this:

in

fact,

To an impor-

toward or treatments of drinking studied in

are manifestations of literary

these attitudes or treatments

may

book,

ulation

demonstrated or refuted. The speculation

fully

this

to

this

show

modernism;

signs of change or evolution, they

indicate significant changes in

modernism.

tentative a hypothesis with uneasiness, fully

defining anything as complex as

to the extent that

1

advance even so

aware of the

difficulty of

modernism and having already

re-

garded with skepticism the adequacy of one historical phenomenon (Prohibition,

its

aftermath,

stemmed from them) ceding chapters.

and the

attitudes

toward drinking that

for explaining the views discussed in the pre-

even possible that reactions to Prohibition were

It is

one source of American

literary

modernism. Nevertheless, though

without attempting anything so grandiose as a ernism, istics

let

of

reality

1

me explain my hypothesis.

If

full

account of mod-

two of the leading character-

modernism are a radical dissatisfaction with commonplace and a consequent attempt to undermine conventional reality fundamen-

by

greatly altering traditional states of consciousness, the

tal

challenges to and ruptures of these states offered by heavy drink-

ing

may seem

desirable from a modernist viewpoint. Moreover,

if

one sees the roots of modernism in the Romantic movement, one

may

trace

back

to

it

tent with traditional

not only the beginnings of the modernist discon-

modes

of consciousness but also the beginnings

of a radical experimentation with this consciousness through the use

—

opium experimentation undertaken by more than one Romantic writer and discussed by M. H. Abrams and Alethea Hay2 ter. One could argue that, just as early modernism is marked by a

of drugs

the

willingness to alter consciousness or perception

so late

The

modernism

is

marked by

by the use of opium,

a similar willingness to use alcohol.

particular experience of the individual writers or

sessed in

works

as-

my book may seem too varied to be part of the broad devel-

—

171

—

Epilogue

opment outlined above. tion

an important sense, of course,

In

work and

the literary

valid:

is

this objec-

the view of drinking that

expresses are uniquely valuable in themselves, not as part of cultural

movement. Yet

can be instructive

it

ineffable differences, these

it

some

to see that, for all their

works may be part of the

larger

whole

modernism and may even reveal something important about The whole modernist ethic and aesthetic, including the desirability of a constant search for ways of altering or destroying traditional modes of perception, may be under increasingly severe critical examination. Certainly the works considered called

ultimate fortunes.

its

here are for the most part highly cautious, to say the

least,

about em-

bracing alcoholism or heavy drinking as a desirable solvent of com-

monplace

making score.

it

means

reality or a

new. Under

(to

adapt Ezra Pound's phrase) of

the Volcano, for

example,

is

ambivalent on this

Although the Consul's alcoholic hallucinations represent a

stunning addition to the modernist imagination,

this

achievement

is

darkened by our awareness of the extreme price paid by the Consul (and, implicitly,

the

by Lowry), so

whether any work of

tion

artist.

When

F.

work

end the reader may ques-

worth the

the illness of alcoholism

or honesty of the

with

that in the

art is

of a major writer, as

it

seems

the integrity to

have done

Scott Fitzgerald, the question about the price exacted

holism becomes decide that in of society

is

still

some

worth

more

by

alco-

disturbing. Although Cheever appears to

instances an alcoholic defiance or transcendence this price,

and although Waugh

gests that the price of Sebastian's alcoholism

means

destruction of

sacrificial

may weaken

to his salvation,

ravages of the disease;

even these writers

and of the

is

fully

definitely sug-

small because

it is

a

expose the destructive

large cast of alcoholic characters in

The Iceman Cometh, Larry alone sanely rejects drunkenness and, in so doing, escapes the insidious, dehumanizing comfort of alcoholic

pipe dreams.

John Berryman's poetic accomplishment might be a test case of whether alcoholism will seem worth the price to future writers and readers. As strong and almost obsessive as his concern for fame was, Berryman's death ern poets to be

is

too recent for his permanent rank

clear.

But there can be

little

forged a distinctive poetic style, and there his its

is

doubt that Berryman

just as

little

heavy drinking contributed to the development of

jazzy, jagged rhythms,

its

incoherences,

its

among moddoubt that

this style

—

to

uninhibited (though of

172

Equivocal Spirits

course calculated) use of colloquialisms and slang. Nor can there be

much doubt much of the

Berrymans alcoholism was an important source

that

times raucous defiance, or for a

more pervasive

quality that

not

is

Donald Newlove has claimed) but a strong current of

self-pity (as

grieving, a haunting consciousness of loss

Berrymans

for

emotional ambience of the Dream Songs: for the some-

father, a suicide,

sometimes centering on

but more fundamentally

emanating from Berryman himself, a grieving

if

unwittingly

for the talents

he has

squandered by his alcoholism. In his

poems

far largely

ward

after the

Dream

Songs,

neglected by the critics

— we

toward a penitential

contrition,

however find a

— numerous, but so

marked tendency

to-

spirit quite similar to that of a

seventeenth-century poet like George Herbert. Both Berrymaris poetic

form, which

is

Berrymans deep remorse too soon to

It is

mood become

extremely simple, and his

modernism, and the major impetus

thetical to

anti-

to repentance is

for his alcoholism.

know whether Berryman

signifies

any kind of

turning point in modernist attitudes toward the uses of alcohol.

Two

more nearly contemporary than Berryman, James Dickey and Raymond Carver, resemble Berryman in their willingness to show alcohol as a means to freedom from dull conventionality or the enwriters

slavement of the quotidian; however, neither writer evinces the kind of romantic enchantment with drinking that Fitzgerald once did in

The Great Gatsby, or the blindness to Fitzgerald

its

deleterious effects that both

and Berryman often maintained. Dickey remarks

journals that he of drinking"

3

—

is

"sick of the petty wildness

in his

and the phony ecstasy

remark particularly worth noting from a drinking

a

writer, suggesting that

has advanced so

awareness of the

liabilities

far that a restoration of the

of heavy drinking

bibulous glamor of

then a chief modmeans of deconstructing conventional ways of seeing, and thus perhaps a major support of modernism itself, is no longer usable. Oddly enough, to see more clearly what may be happening to attitudes toward alcohol, we would do well to look at the contrasting

Gatsbys parties

is

no longer

possible.

If this is so,

ernist

attitudes

toward drinking of the eighteenth-century writers James

Boswell and Samuel Johnson. that

I

hope

attitudes

on

will

become

this subject

clear

Somewhat and

arbitrarily,

defensible, let

but for reasons

me

call Boswell's

"modern" and Johnson's "postmodern"

—

that

— — 173

Epilogue

is

to say, Johnson's are a possible indication of

evolving toward, or back

what our

attitudes are

to.

Boswell displays an ambivalence toward drinking that seems char-

modern writers such On one hand there is the public

acteristic of

as Dickey, Cheever,

and Berryman.

Boswell, most evident in his Life of

Johnson: despite occasional worries

and

about his

fears

own

drinking,

Boswell here generally upholds moderate drinking as a means to truth (in vino Veritas), a release from oppressive cares, a source of vivacity

and high

spirits.

4

In such passages he bears

blance to the Dickey of "Bums,

some resem-

On Waking," the Berryman of Dream

Song 232, and the Amis who provided Jim Dixon with alcohol to throw off the shackles of self and society. If in his support of moderate drinking Boswells public self

might disapprove of the more ex-

treme views of these writers and of a character like Cheever's GeeGee, whose alcoholism

is

some sort of life

spirit,

shares their sentiment that alcohol can be a

But Boswells leaves a

much

own

Boswell nevertheless

vital,

beneficent force.

drinking, most fully displayed in his journals,

Even a glance

different impression.

at the indexes

shows the extent and seriousness of Boswells drinking problem: three

volumes of the published journals

1774-1776, Boswell Auchinleck cated"

1

and

778- 1 782

"ill

references.

in

Boswell:

The Ominous Years

Extremes 1776-1778, and Boswell Laird of

— index

after drinking"

On

—

in

entries

such as "drinks heavily,

intoxi-

under Boswell's name swarm with page

one occasion Boswell narrowly missed enacting the

shameful part of wife-beater; in

fact,

he was deterred only by his ex-

treme intoxication and his resulting inability to direct with accuracy the chairs rally,

and walking

stick with

he condemned himself

which he assaulted

for this behavior:

account of a man!" Less than two years

later

his wife. Natu-

"What

a

monstrous

he experienced a longer

period of despondency from what can only be called a protracted bender.

From

2 June until 24 July 1777 Boswell records being drunk

sixteen times (there are seven days journal); indeed, he

seems

to

when he made no

have got drunk

entries in his

at virtually every

op-

portunity and despite his concern for his wife's consumption, which eventually killed her. 5 Like Dickey in the previously quoted journal entry,

Boswell manifests strong disgust with himself; and, like

Cheever in many of his of the domestic strife

stories,

Boswell in his journal was well aware

and misery caused by

his drinking. Following

174

Equivocal Spirits

Boswell on the subject of drinking from the journals

an enlightening study

is

Life of Johnson to his

in contrasts, rather like reading

Berryman's Dream Songs and then turning to his later poems. The

more inward or

more

private the reflections of the two writers, the

they perceive the

liabilities

of drinking to outweigh any benefits.

Samuel Johnson's attitude toward drinking may be aptly characterized as resulting from his awareness of the disproportion of drawbacks to benefits. Regarding Johnson as "postmodern'.' in any sense

may

at first glance

seem

ludicrous, but

injunction to "clear your mind of cant,"

we remember his famous we may be better able to see if

remarks on and attitudes toward drinking, Johnson prac-

that, in his

tices a

6

form of deconstruction on much of the cant or rationalization

about drinking in his

own age.

This analysis

is

just as powerful

when

applied to the delusions or self-deceptions of a Fitzgerald or a

Berryman

as

it

was against men

like Boswell, or

Joshua Reynolds.

The painter contended on one occasion "that moderate drinking makes people talk better." Johnson replied, "No, Sir; wine gives not light, gay, ideal hilarity;

ment."

When

but tumultuous, noisy, clamorous merri-

Reynolds suggested that the sober Johnson

felt

drinkers, he countered, "Perhaps, contempt." Discoursing

subject

on another occasion, Johnson granted

make

to

"a

man

is,

on

that the ability of

better pleased with himself"

added, however, that "the danger

envy of

was

that while a

this

wine

a real boon; he

man grows

better

may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what has been locked up in frost. ... A man should cultivate his mind so as to have pleased with himself, he

that confidence

and readiness without wine, which wine

Johnson reached these conclusions for

which he

is

largely because of

when he

two

7

qualities

famous, his empiricism and his honesty. Rather than

accept, for example, the stock belief that drinking convivial,

gives."

Johnson

insisted

makes men more

on thinking and observing

did, this, along with

most of the other

for himself;

benefits claimed for

seemed illusory. Among the most painfully influential of observations was Johnson's awareness of how drink changed his

drinking, his

once affectionate wife,

who

today would almost certainly have been

regarded as alcoholic. Increasingly cut

off

from Johnson by her

drunkenness, she for years refused to have sexual relations with

175

Epilogue him. 8 Above

all,

however, Johnson's analysis of drinking derives

its

trenchancy from a rigorously honest self-examination, one that corroborated and strengthened his empirical discovery that most people lose

more than they gain by

drinking. Recognizing the value of being

pleased with oneself, he also recognized that drink involves a price that, ultimately,

Johnson's

many

years of abstinence suggest he

was

unwilling to pay: the price of irrationality, of loss of control, of delusion, of increased melancholy.

vent of Alcoholics to

9

Anonymous

No

important thinker before the ad-

subjected the attractions of drinking

such skeptical and damaging attention as did Johnson.

Although some

artists will

doubtless always wish to experiment

with the heavy use of alcohol or drugs, in tation will increasingly

For one thing, writers

come all

repertoire of experiences sort

my view such

experimen-

be regarded as an exercise in

futility.

Malcolm Lowry and John Berryman have

like

probably demonstrated

to

that drinking can

do

and perceptions;

further attempts of this

would probably only sound

like a

to enlarge the writer's

mediocre imitation, a harsh

phrase that nevertheless accurately characterizes the relationship for

example, Kerouac's Big Sur to Under

the Volcano.

there are signs of an increasing reluctance like Carver, Dickey,

and Berryman

somehow warranted by Berryman attempted etic style freed effort

ended

to

to see a

the resulting

among modern writers martyrdom to alcohol as

work

draw back from

this

of

art.

In his final years

abyss and to find a po-

from the dislocations of alcohol, even though

in suicide

and

of,

For another,

this

in only partial artistic success or change.

Samuel Johnson's deromanticizing of drinking,

his remarkably

honest and shrewd observations that have been generally substantiated by Alcoholics

Anonymous and by modern

science,

may

indicate

the nature of a developing "postmodern" attitude toward alcohol: an attitude skeptical of

its

benefits, cognizant of the high cost of

heavy

or alcoholic drinking, doubtful that any achievements can ever justify

the

payment of such a

price,

and devastatingly inimical

to the

kind of willful blindness or self-deception that some alcoholic writers only a generation or two ago could use to deny their illness and effects.

and

its

Like most major changes, however, this one has been gradual

quiet.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1.

Among

the

many examples

and Kazin, "'Giant

Killer,'"

pp.

of this type of listing are "Booze," pp.

44-50. With

little

dence, one or both of these sources include the following ther heavy or alcoholic drinkers:

F.

25-33,

argument or supporting

modern

evi-

writers as ei-

Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London, Ring Lardner,

Marquand, John O'Hara, Evelyn Waugh, Hart Crane, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Wallace Stevens, Philip Barry, Brendan Behan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Dashiell Hammett, Theodore Roethke, Dylan Thomas, John

P.

Robert Benchley, John Berryman, William Saroyan, Conrad Aiken,

Truman Ca-

James Dickey, Edmund Wilson, Allen

pote,

Norman

Tate,

William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill,

Mailer, Tennessee Williams,

William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck,

2.

Kazin, '"Giant Killer,'" p. 44.

3.

Goodwin, "Alcoholism of

4.

Newlove, Drinking Days,

5. Ibid., p.

6.

9.

Cummings, Thomas

Fitzgerald," pp.

86-90.

p. 125.

146.

Bergreen, James Agee.

7. Jeffs,

8.

E. E.

W. H. Auden, and Malcolm Lowry.

Wolfe,

"Pass

Brendan Behan, pp. 16-18, 93-95, 121, 155, 167. It

On" p.

83.

Newlove, Drinking Days,

125, attributes this claim to Kerouac's biog-

p.

rapher John Clellon Holmes. 10. Roth, '"Milk of

Wonder.'"

11. Lentricchia, Criticism, pp. 12.

123-32.

Lowry, Volcano, pp. xi-xxx.

13. Fuchs, Saul Bellow, pp. 14. Alcoholics

Anonymous

45-48. regards alcoholism as a threefold illness, physical,

mental, and spiritual. See "Pass 15. Dickey, 16. Carver,

It

On," p. 82.

On Waking," pp. 153-55.

"Bums,

"Drinking While Driving," p. 35.

17.

James,

18.

Mann, Doctor

Varieties,

pp.

377-78.

Faustus, p. 242.

19. Kurtz, Not-God, p. 208.

20. See for

45-55; p.

example Gellman, Sober

Alcoholic, p. 121; Sagarin,

Pattison, "Rehabilitation," p. 620;

and Davies,

Odd Man,

372. 21. For a short

list

pp.

"Stabilized Addiction,"

of such figures see Fitzgibbon, Drink, p. 166.

178

Notes to Pages 18-20

CHAPTER comment on

For some

1.

1

these two aspects of Lowry, see Cross, Malcolm

Lowry, pp. ix-x, 11-12, 18-19, 26-27, 53,61, 129n50, 130-31n57; Grace, "Malcolm Lowry," pp. 94-95; Bradbrook, "Intention and Design," p. 153; Markson, Lowry's "Volcano" pp.

3-9

passim; Kilgallin, Lowry, pp. 199-200; Costa,

Malcolm Lowry, pp. 21-44; Dodson, Malcolm Lowry, pp. 28-33; Dorosz,

12-13; Epstein, Private Labyrinth, pp. 47-55; 425-26; and Bareham, "Paradigms of Hell,"

Lowry's Infernal Paradise, pp.

Corrigan, "Malcolm Lowry," pp. pp. 113-27.

Lowry

2.

work

in its

said that "the idea

own

class,

and

cherished in

I

to write at last

my

heart

was

to create a pioneer

an authentic drunkard's story" (from

"Preface to a Novel" in the French translation of Under the Volcano, p. 15).

Of

3.

the handful of essays that deal with or touch meaningfully

on the novel

an alcoholic, Edmonds, "Mescallusions," pp. 277-88, mostly conwith the amount and type of alcohol consumed by the Consul; Ed-

as a study of

cerns

itself

monds, "Under

some

the

Volcano" pp. 95-96, appreciatively notes the vividness of

hallucinations but does not attempt to assess their importance for the

novel as a whole; Brooke-Rose, "Mescalusions," p. 104, says without elaboration that Lowry's mescalusions (by

mend

it;

finally, in

Lowry and

an

which she probably means the Consul's hallucina-

Under

tions) are "the best things" in

the Volcano,

but she finds

the Consul, Hill, "The Alcoholic," pp.

the Volcano as a

little

article that despite its general title is solely

33-48,

is

else to

recom-

concerned with

excellent

on Under

study of the patterns and peculiarities of the alcoholic mind, but

has nothing to say about hallucinations.

Lowry,

4.

that "there

is

Letters,

no

(and Lowry's

sul's

pp.

61-62. Edmonds, "Mescallusions," p. 279, points out between mescal and tequila." Thus the Con-

essential difference

—

see Letters, p. 71) apparent assumption that mescal

liquid equivalent of the hallucinogenic

drug mescalin

is

is

the

erroneous. But the as-

sumption explains why the Consul dreaded the great potency of mescal and why,

and

after

he begins drinking

it,

his hallucinations

seem

to increase in

frequency

intensity.

5.

Lowry,

6.

Day, Malcolm Lowry, p. 350.

7.

Of course

Letters, p. 63.

hallucinations

there

is

nothing accidental about Lowry's particular mingling of

and angelic

voices.

Many have noted

that "spirits"

is

one name

for

alcohol and that drinking, rightly used, leads to enhanced spiritual awareness or bliss.

Abuse of

sometimes

alcohol, however,

Lowry's Infernal Paradise, pp. tors," p.

by polluting

in hallucinatory form, of

479; and the

letter

spirit,

would lead

to awareness,

dark or diabolical powers. See Dorosz,

51-56, 83;

Clinebell, "Philosophical-Religious Fac-

from C. G. Jung

to Bill

Wilson (cofounder of Alco-

Anonymous) printed in Thomsen, Bill W., pp. 362-63. 8. The classic study of drug-induced hallucinations is Kliiver, "Mechanisms of Hallucinations," pp. 175-207. For a longer essay, an extension and elaboration of Kliiver, see Siegel and Jarvik, "Drug-Induced Hallucinations," pp. 81-161. 9. See, e.g., Curran, "Personality Studies," pp. 654-63; Wolff and Curran,

holics

179Notes to Pages

20-24

"Nature of Delirium," pp. 1181-92, 1202-3, 1205, 1215; Davies, Scott, and Malherbe, "Resumed Normal Drinking," pp. 188-91; Davidson, "Syndrome of Hallucinosis," pp. 467, tent,"

471-78; Deiker and Chambers, "Structure and Con-

pp. 1835, 1838; Roheim, "Alcoholic Hallucinations," pp. 450-77, 479;

Mott, Small, and Anderson, "Comparative Study," pp. 596, 598-600; Ditman

and Whittlesey, "Comparison of LSD-25," pp. 54-56; Karlan, "Alcoholism and Hallucinosis," pp. 64-67; Burton-Bradley, "Alcoholic Hallucinosis," p. 10; Rosenberg, "Psychogenesis," pp. 317-20; Richards, "Diplopic and Triplopic," p. 630; Brune and Busch, "Anticonvulsive-Sedative," p. 337; Isbell et al., "Etiolpp. 12, 22-25; May and Ebaugh, "Pathological Intoxication," 214-24; Thomas, "Alcoholism and Mental Disorder," pp. 68-71, 77; Norman, "Alcoholic Hallucinatory States," pp. 565-70; Mitchell, "Alcoholic Insanity," pp. 252, 255-65, 268-69, 271; Schilder, "Psychogenesis of Alcoholism," pp. 280-81, 284; Wortis, "Delirium Tremens," p. 255; Victor and Hope,

ogy of 'Rum

Fits,'"

pp. 205, 211,

"Auditory Hallucinations," p. 659; Wolin, "Hallucinations," pp. 308-11, 31316; Trapp and Lyons, "Dream Studies," pp. 253, 256-62, 264; Gross et al.,

498-500, 508; Bromberg and Schilder, "Castraand Dismembering," pp. 207, 209-23; Brierre de Boismont, Hallucinations, pp. 163-69; and Krafft-Ebing, Text-Book of Insanity, pp. 518, 520-21, 525-26, 528-30, 533-40. "Sleep Disturbances," pp. 493, tion

10.

Dynes, "Survey of Alcoholic Patients," pp. 195, 197. Malcolm Lowry, pp. 234-44, and Lowry's letters to John Daven-

11. See Day,

Juan Fernando Marquez, Conrad Aiken, and James Stern

port,

in

Letters,

pp. 11-15, 29, which probably misdates the letter to Davenport.

Day makes it Lowry collection at

clear that there are other relevant letters, unpublished, in the

the University of British Columbia. into paranoia (and

1937,

when

He

the discovery of an extra

makes

also

perhaps hallucinations)

it

clear that Lowry's descent

may have begun

copy of a magazine on

as early as

October

his coffee table was,

he thought, evidence that thieves had visited his house (Day, p. 229). 12. Lowry, Under the Volcano, p. 342. Most future references to this novel will

appear in parentheses in the

text.

A somewhat similar catalogue

and anticipated hallucinations occurs tagenet,

City

its

"it's all

leaves the hospital

where he

of

remembered

Lunar Caustic.

him

hero, recites to Dr. Claggart the horrors that await

when he

holism:

in Lowry's novella

in

Bill

Plan-

New

York

finds himself because of his alco-

there waiting for me: the ghosts

on the window

snowshoe, the whispering of lost opportunities, and

all

blind, the scarlet

the fury, the anguish, the

remorse, the voices, voices, voices; the doll that turns to Ruth [Plantagenet's wife], the

in

— brimstone — — — non-existent

brownstone

minable helpful but

fronts transformed into judges, the inter-

alas

Malcolm Lowry: Psalms,

p.

conversations."

I

quote from the text

295; the story can also be found in The Paris Re-

view 8 (Winter-Spring 1963): 15-72. In

its

nations, this has a greater similarity to

alcoholic hero

Under

and

the Volcano

its

use of halluci-

than does any of

Lowry's other work. 13.

For other hallucinations of

Hugh

or Yvonne, see pp.

256-58, 279, 324,

333, 335-36. 14.

For a notable exception, see Costa, Malcolm Lowry, pp. 74-80.

—

180

24-34

Notes to Pages

15.

Bowman and Jellinek,

"Alcoholic Mental Disorders," p. 332, observes that

alcoholics are occasionally able to view their hallucinations "with a tinge of

whimsical humor." 16. Kilgallin, Lowry, p. 200, notes that the first line of Yeats s

allusion gives the vision a 17.

can

The pimp seems one of his

to

one

who

letters (Letters, p.

stool all

sits at

bestial floor." This

— himself — whom Lowry de-

be an elaboration of the "stool pigeon"

and invention

reality,

per-

29) recounting his experiences in a Mexi-

learned the true derivation of the

jail: "I

a parody of the final

is

more than comic resonance and depth.

haps a combination of hallucination, scribes in

phrase

"The Magi": "The uncontrollable mystery on the

word

stool pigeon.

day in prison and inveigles

A stool

pigeon

political prisoners into

is

con-

versation, then conveys messages about them. If he's lucky, he gets a bit of bug-

gery thrown in on the side. So simple, but to think that life

without knowing to what heights humanity could

Malcolm Lowry,

18. Day,

19. See also

Don Quixote

might have lived

I

my

rise."

p. 234.

Markson, Lowry's "Volcano" pp. 28, 56-57,

for other evidence of

in Lowry's novel.

20. Cross, Malcolm Lowry, p. 72, supposes that the Consul's sexual inter-

course with Maria

on the

may have

"biographical foundation," basing his supposition

one of Lowry's other autobiographical characters, Sigbjorn

fact that

Wilderness in Dark as

Grave Wherein

the

My

Friend

breakup of his marriage he slept with one prostitute

meaning

to find

in his suffering.

It

would be

Is

Laid, says that after the

after

another in an attempt

however, to discover any

difficult,

coupling with Maria; and one prostitute

not many.

such motive

in the Consul's

Though

of the major characters of Lowry's fiction are doubtless autobio-

all

graphical in lating

many

respects, his letters provide

about what these respects

Freedman

21. See, e.g.,

"Hallucinations," p. 142; p.

more

is

reliable sources for specu-

are.

et al.,

"Imagery," p. 108; Solomon and Mendelson,

and Dement

et al., "Hallucinations

and Dreaming,"

335. 22. For confirmation that the

tions, see Miller,

23. Cross,

Malcolm Lowry,

Malcolm Lowry,

24. Matson,

p.

refers in this

phrase to his hallucina-

p. 26.

p. 79.

"Second Encounter,"

25. Dr. Faustus 5.2.1979.

and God,"

Consul

I

p. 100.

follow the interpretation of Ornstein, "Marlowe

1384.

seems certain "He had peered out at the garden, and it was as though bits of his eyelids had broken off and were flittering and jittering before him, turning into nervous shapes and shadows, jumping to the guilty chattering in his mind, not quite voices yet, but they were coming back, 26. That this

is

a hallucination rather than an imaginative vision

from the passage immediately preceding

it:

they were coming back" (pp. 144-45). 27.

On

the tendency of his characters to be aspects of a single

"human

spirit,"

see Lowry's letter to Cape, Letters, pp. 60, 66. 28.

Lowry himself

refers to a "hint of

redemption"

at the

end

(Letters, p. 85);

181

Notes

to Pages

Cross, Malcolm Lowry, p. 43, locates another

of the novel, in the 29. Parallels

little

recalls a

near the end of the novel is

and

similar hint as early as p.

beggar

when

at least as early as p. 200, took him for the Savior. These multiply

who

the Consul

is

accused of being Jewish and his

given a kind of cloacal crucifixion by being thrown into the barranca.

See Kilgallin, Lowry, p. 186; Markson, Lowry's "Volcano," p. 201, the police's anti-Semitic questioning tions";

140

allegory of the insect escaping from the jaws of a cat.

between the Consul and Christ begin

where the Consul corpse

34-39

and Epstein,

is

"the

first

Private Labyrinth, p. 215,

his physical self-sacrifice

who

thinks that

of the detailed Christ equa-

who

says of the Consul that "in

he becomes the Messiah for one short but eternal

moment."

CHAPTER 2 1.

2.

Waugh, Waugh,

Handful, p. 93. Brideshead, p. 114.

Most future references

to this novel will

appear

in parentheses in the text.

Some maintain

no different Mann, Marty Mann Answers, p. 58, and Bowman, "Treatment of Alcoholism," p. 320. An authoritative and exceptionally 3.

that the traits or personalities of alcoholics are

from those of nonalcoholics: thorough work,

see, e.g.,

Vaillant, Natural History of Alcoholism, esp. pp.

71-79, lends support

to this view. Nevertheless,

many

49-51 and

other studies claim that

produce alcoholism and attempt to identify those The following include one or more of Sebastian's prominent

certain characteristics often characteristics.

qualities in their assessment of the definitive characteristics of the alcoholic:

among

White, "Personality

Alcoholics," p. 1139; Lisansky, "Etiology of Alco-

Bowman and

holism," p. 329;

Jellinek, "Alcohol Addiction," pp.

ality,"

zaro,

pp. 26, 33; Chafetz, Blane, and Hill, Frontiers of Alcoholism, p. 19; Catan-

"The Disease: Alcoholism,"

p.

"Syndrome of Alcohol Addiction," Personality?," p. 101; 12 4. See, e.g.,

P-51. 5. Johnson, 6.

107, 118;

13- 14; Hampton, "Alcoholism and Person-

Strecker, "Chronic Alcoholism," pp.

& 12, pp.

Ray, Drugs, p. 140,

I'll

16; p.

Blum, Alcoholism,

its

tions appears in

87-88; Tiebout,

46, 53; AA, p. 545.

and

Vaillant, Natural History of Alcoholism,

Quit Tomorrow, pp. 2-3.

Johns Hopkins University Hospital formulated

signed to help

p.

541; Zimering and Calhoun, "Alcoholic

patients decide

two

different

thirty- five questions de-

whether they are alcoholic. One of these ques-

forms in

AA

pamphlet

lower companions and an inferior environment

literature:

when

"Do you turn

to

drinking?" (A.A. and the

and "Do you turn to an inferior environment since p. 4). At the end of the list of thirty- five questions, At last ... AA states: "If you have answered Yes to any one, there is a definite warnand ing that you may be an alcoholic. If Yes to any two, the chances are you are

Alcoholic Employee, p. 15)

drinking?" (At

last

.

.

.

AA,

—

to three or

more you Definitely

are an alcoholic" (p. 4).

—

182

39-45

Notes to Pages

12

7.

&

12, p. 48:

"We had made

the invention of alibis [for drinking] a fine

art."

p.

8.

See AA, Ch. 9, "The Family Afterward."

9.

On alcoholic defiance and

335; 12

& 12, pp.

28,

rebellion, see Lisansky, "Etiology of Alcoholism,"

31-32; AA, pp. 265, 524.

10. Recognition that alcoholism is at least in part a spiritual illness

common: p. ix;

Factors," p. 476; 12

The

quite

is

208-9; Stewart, Adventure of Sobriety, Clinebell, "Pastoral Counseling," pp. 197-98, and "Philosophical-Religious see Kurtz, Not-God, pp. 205,

first

& 12, "Foreword" and p. 46; and AA, pp. 64, 219, 457, 473.

two references of this mental

tual than a physical or

source suggest that alcoholism

Waugh would

illness.

biological parents

body of

who

scientific

is

more

a spiri-

probably have agreed.

64-71, marshals and

Natural History of Alcoholism, esp. pp.

11. Vaillant,

evaluates the growing

evidence that children with one or two

are alcoholic have a significantly greater chance of be-

coming alcoholic than other 12.

last

children.

That alcoholism results

in

withdrawal from people or society,

isolation,

and profound loneliness has been frequently observed. See, e.g., Sillman, "Chronic Alcoholism," p. 134; Gerard, "Intoxication and Addiction," p. 691;

Bowman and Jellinek,

"Alcohol Addiction," p. 116; Hampton, "Alcoholism and

Personality," p. 29; U.S.

Department of HEW,

pp. 55, 58; AA, pp. 21,

First Special Report, p. 73;

12

& 12,

109-10, 119, 151, 177, 247, 284, 290, 301, 306,

410-11,455,467, 478. 13. 12&12,pp. 58-59,

79, 113,

119-21, 128-29; AA, "Foreword to Third p. xxv; pp. 14-15, 17, 63, 89,

"The Doctor's Opinion,"

Edition," p. xxi;

152-53,229,296,312,516. 14. The critical consensus seems to be that, under the Flyte influence, Charles at last acquires faith and is converted: see, e.g., Delasanta and D'Avanzo, "Truth and Beauty,"

p. 141,

and Hardy, "Brideshead

Revisited," pp.

logue to the novel, Hooper's remark to Charles service taking place in the chapel at Brideshead (pp.

16-17)

— may appear

to

confirm

— "More

this position.

position see Powell, "Uncritical Perspective," pp. 15. Augustine, Confessions, 1:29. tian is

redeemed

16. In the

Julia, Cordelia,

17.

in

and Bridey are

18.

all in

Bill

Though

it is

line than

mine"

64-65.

Prison, p.

306n26). tells

Charles that

p.

440, aptly observes,

this life as a

"It is as if

Waugh

preparation for the next."

W., p. 363.

19. Pope, "Epistle to

20.

your

Palestine (p. 349).

As Cosman, "Nature and Work," Thomsen,

In the pro-

For a view skeptical of this

Nanny Hawkins

to the novel,

were an anchorite looking upon

in

159-60.

discovers a Catholic

Heath comments that "like Augustine, Sebas-

North Africa" (Picturesque

wartime epilogue

when he

Arbuthnot," p. 331,

much

too complex a

1.

poem

132. to

fit

neatly or completely into the

contemptus mundi tradition, see Eliot, Four Quartets, p. 128: "The whole earth

our hospital." As references

to cold

accumulate

in Brideshead, Sebastian

is

may be

said to be experiencing "frigid purgatorial fires," in Eliot's phrase (p. 128). There is no question that Eliot's influence on Waugh was far reaching and profound. It would be both tenable and enlightening to argue that some of Waugh's early nov-

—

——

183

Notes to Pages

45-48

A Handful of Dust, were his Waste Land and that Brideshead Rewas his Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets. For evidence of this influence and Waugh's admiration for Eliot, see Waugh, Diaries, pp. 242, 666; Sykes, Evelyn Waugh, p. 315; Waugh, Letters, p. 447; Joost, "Handful of Dust," pp. els,

particularly

visited

180-81, 194; and 21. In a

seems

to

especially Crawford, "Evelyn

summary of Brideshead

Waugh," pp. 49-63. Hollywood producers, Waugh

for prospective

imply that Sebastian's alcoholism was a form of grace. See Lane, Evelyn

Waugh, pp. 99 and 168nll, who cites as his source Heath, "Brideshead," pp. 226-27. For other comment on the operations of grace in Brideshead see Doyle,

26-27, and Heath,

Evelyn Waugh, pp. 22. For

Waugh's

Picturesque Prison, pp. 178, 182.

such matters as martyrdom, sainthood, and

interest in

ness, see especially his Helena, Ronald Knox,

ace (p. 14) to the thrive except

by

life

of Knox,

Waugh

suffering." This

and Edmund Campion.

writes, "But genius

sounds much

like the

and

holi-

In the pref-

sanctity

do not

connection Cordelia

wishes to see between Sebastian's alcoholic suffering and his holiness.

"Holy Willie's Prayer," 1:76; and Butler, All Flesh, pp. 228-29. Dyson maintains that Sebastian's fate is characteristic of Waugh's novels in "Evelyn Waugh," pp. 72-79. 25. In World War II, during a long and tedious mission with Tito's forces in Yugoslavia, Waugh and the Earl of Birkenhead endeavored to silence an egomaniacal, frequently intoxicated Churchill by betting him ten pounds each that he could not read the Bible through in two weeks. The effort failed to produce peaceful silence; one of Churchill's favorite comments on his reading was "God, 23. Burns, 24.

isn't

he

God a shit"

is

(Diaries, p. 591).

Waugh is plainly disgusted with Churchill, but

by his rampaging pounds each and omits

just as obviously fascinated

remembers

the bet as

fifty

Birkenhead records the incident in "Fiery

irrepressibility.

Although he

Churchill's four-letter word,

Particles," pp.

161-62,

referring to

Churchill's "appalling garrulity," his "engulfing river of talk" (p. 161). 26.

any

The only other study of Brideshead is Eagleton, Exiles, pp. 60-67.

detail

reasons, the alcoholism tried to indicate,

alcoholic

lie

I

is

that considers Sebastian's alcoholism in

Eagleton's complaint

insufficiently explained or

believe that the major problems in

is that,

accounted

for various

for.

As

I

have

Waugh's treatment of the

elsewhere.

CHAPTER 3 work will appear The play was written in 1939 and first published in 1946. O'Neill's only published short story, "Tomorrow" (1917), anticipates the play in several respects. For details of O'Neill's drinking and the causes of his abstinence, see Boulton, Long Story, pp. 126-38, 144-67; Goodwin, "Alcoholism of O'Neill," pp. 99- 104; and Sheaffer, "Eugene O'Neill," pp. 106- 10. 1.

O'Neill, Iceman Cometh, p. 236. Future references to this

in parentheses in the text.

Sheaffer believes that O'Neill his depiction of

alcohol: see

Hickey

Goodwin,

drew on

his experience as a periodic alcoholic in

(p. 109). Like Hickey, O'Neill avoided mixing

p. 101,

and Gelb,

O'Neill, pp.

375-76, 963.

work and

184

49-51

Notes to Pages

At a few points in the play

2.

may seem

it

them

the birthday celebration, he exhorts

that

Hickey acts

When

to gain sobriety.

pose of helping the others

to

he

drink

first

to defeat his pur-

arrives at Harry's for

78); he himself even

(p.

drinks a toast to Harry (pp. 143-44); late in the play he once again encourages

drinking

(p. 225).

But the

first

two instances are

tactical:

he wishes to retain the

who

has accused Hickey of

sympathies of the men, more specifically of Larry, being afraid to drink, so that he occasion he

is

them

rapidly as he expected

tion sanctions the drinking. his

as

message

may put

his

message across; and on the

last

beginning to be exasperated with the others for not changing as

will

to.

In all three instances Harry's birthday celebra-

When

this

event

is

past,

Hickey persists in believing,

be heeded: having achieved peace by seeing their pipe dreams

such and abandoning them, the

rest will

no longer require the

solace or es-

cape of alcohol.

AA,

3.

p. xxi:

"Each day, somewhere

AA,

4.

"Our

p. 64:

was but

liquor

when one and hope."

in the world, recovery begins

alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength,

symptom. So we had

a

to get

down

to

causes and conditions." 5.

Tiebout, "Act of Surrender," p. 54, seems to state quite exactly the result

that

Hickey claims can stem from the surrender of alcoholic fantasies or "pipe

dreams" as he has surrendered of

which

frees the individual

act of surrender

cepts "will 6.

it."

is

his:

from

compulsion

to drink. In other

an occasion when the individual no longer

To those who practice

comprehend

"an inner peace and serenity, the possession his

the

word

its

principles,

serenity

and

.

.

.

AA extends

will

words, an

fights life

but ac-

the promise that they

know peace" (AA,

pp. 83-84).

is "made a we understood

Step 3 of the twelve steps central to AA's program for sobriety

decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of

God

as

Him." 7.

These principles are commonly referred

pp. 59-60):

1.

to in

AA as

the "twelve steps" (AA,

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as become unmanageable.

2.

could restore us to sanity.

3.

we understood Him, praying only to carry that out. 12.

steps,

we

tried to carry this

ciples in all 8.

our

Johnson,

for

message

spiritual

and the power result of these

to alcoholics,

affairs.

I'll

will for us

awakening as the

knowledge of His

Having had a

Quit Tomorrow, pp. 117-18.

and

to practice these prin-

185

Notes to Pages

9.

AA,

p. 90, explicitly enjoins those

him

themselves or their ideas upon

must be prepared

alcoholic seeking sobriety

way mean

AA

AA

Johnson's

to stop drinking.

idea,

which

or

principles; there

its

book

is

that

since been adopted

is

no evidence

85-86. One

it is

based on first-hand experience with

Late Plays, pp.

The

in

no

his

own

alcoholics;

alcohol treatment program, which has

by a number of hospitals

(p. 6).

much

For

different views of

and

Scheibler,

195-202.

was

severely divided character

reflected his

gration.

I

great value of

many

the inhabitants of Hope's saloon, see Frazer, Love as Death, p. 21,

12.

(AA,

it"

he did.

that

Quit Tomorrow, pp. 2-3, 53,

I'll

1966 he began working out

and

states that the

"go to any length to get

to

imply that they were conscious or that O'Neill knew anything

to

Johnson,

11.

help an alcoholic not to force

pointing out these various parodies and travesties, of course,

p. 58). In

in

who would

he does not wish

Here may be noted another parody of an

10.

about

if

53-57

Sometimes the

acters. See, e.g.,

a recurring feature of O'Neill's

dramas

human wholeness

or inte-

pessimism about the possibility of split is

so great that O'Neill embodies

Days without End,

in

which opposite

played by different actors, John and Loving, implausible end. Similarly, Dion

it

in separate char-

sides of the

same

self are

who resume one identity at the play's

Anthony and

Billy

Brown, of The Great God

Brown, represent opposing halves of an allegorical Everyman. Bogard, Contour

in

Time, p. 304, notices that the male characters of Strange Interlude "are really partial

A character perhaps more like Hickey Emma Crosby of O'Neill's Diff'rent, suffers

aspects of a whole male personality."

than any of those mentioned above,

such an irreconcilable sane, coherent action 13. Freud,

split

between the demands of her

is finally

Ego and

Id,

pp. 78-79. Driver,

"On

and her superego

the Late Plays," pp.

provides a psychological interpretation of Hickey that less elaborated. Driver,

id

that

impossible.

is

similar to

117-18,

mine though

however, views Hickey 's ego as the source of a death

wish. For another discussion of Hickey s divided personality, see Scheibler, Late Plays, p. 164.

14.

As Hickey

his story, Evelyn,

tells

though never appearing

in the play, as-

sumes the importance of a character. Although she lacks roundedness, she more than an abstract, dehumanized superego. Our major disadvantage evaluating her

is

that

Thus she may seem called the "enabler":

impede

we

to

see her only through Hickey s increasingly hostile eyes.

resemble the type of spouse

one who, while seeming

his chances of recovery

forgiveness for his drinking.

becomes progressively

tempting to

in

AA lore

is

by too readily

sometimes

may

in fact

offering excuses, sympathy,

and

of such

enjoy and maintain dominance in the relationship, because an

is

alcoholic is

who

to help the alcoholic,

One supposed though unconscious motive

a spouse

to

is

in

treat

him

less able to discharge his responsibilities

as a fro ward child. Hickey, his

and

mind clouded by

it

the

unreconciled polarities of love and hate, at times approaches this view of Evelyn;

and possibly one may wife

is

trace

something of O'Neill

said to have "confided to a friend that she

and married him because he was drunk

all

in or

had

behind

it,

for his

fallen in love

the time

second

with O'Neill

and needed her help"

186

Notes to Pages

57-61 For studies of

p. 103; Gelb, O'Neill, p. 626).

(Goodwin, "Alcoholism of O'Neill,"

husband but who may actually want him to remain drunk, see Igersheimer, "Group Psychotherapy," p. 83; Macdonald, "Group Psychotherapy," p. 125; and "The Sufferer" and "The Waverer" portraits in Whalen, "Wives of Alcoholics," pp. 634-36, 638-39. (If such

who seems

the spouse

to

wish

women,

flawed spouses are usually said to be even

more

to help her alcoholic

the male spouses of alcoholic

greatly flawed; for they

more

sober wives leave alcoholic husbands. See Sandmaier,

226-27.)

Invisible Alcoholics, pp. 20,

precisely because of Hickey's distortions that his views of Evelyn

It is

marrying Hickey — and he Whatever her motives — she may well have been an unusually sympathetic, for

are suspect.

these

women may be

often leave their wives than

is

silent

about

forbearing, forgiving

wife without any ulterior or sinister motives. At any rate, her virtues are not

automatic or cloyingly easy: on the repeated occasions

home

with love"

him, the truth

wave 16.

is

that

Hope's saloon

in

qvist,

Drama

A

battle in her eyes

(p. 237).

Although Hickey "believes that

15.

when Hickey stumbled

one of his binges, he "could see disgust having a

after

it

made an

his father's 'religious

indelible impression

testifies to this:

it is

performed

bunk' never affected

upon him. His reform

in his father's spirit" (Torn-

of Souls, p. 228).

hard-drinking protagonist in another

late O'Neill play,

Con Melody

of

Touch of the Poet, resembles Hickey in the sharp division between id and super-

ego and in the resolution of

however,

this victory leads

wife, Nora, his

this split

with the victory of the

id.

Unlike Hickey,

not to murder but to a strengthened love for Con's

whose peasant stock represents

the roots to

which Con's

id returns,

superego of gentlemanly pretensions overthrown. Moreover, Con's resolution

of conflict produces not Hickey's hectic burst of activity followed

we

death but a renewed and,

But Con's personality and

its

by the peace of

are to believe, lasting flow of purposeful energy.

change seem

less subtly

and plausibly drawn than

Hickey's. 17.

"the

By

what AA calls AA regards as a chief

his approval of Parritt's death, Larry also breaks out of

bondage of self" (AA,

p. 63), the self-centeredness that

obstacle to recovery from alcoholism. 18. In the illustrative inventory given in

cause of

all

was shot through with"

comment was recorded by

to die

to

pneumonia

in a

and being unable

out in a

letter

he wrote

2:435 -36n7. As the note acknowledges, Johnson's

to

and love toward

either this or that.

It's

O'Neill," p.

Boston hotel"

do

at

so." O'Neill's

to his friend

with Carlotta Monterey, for loyalty

appears to be the

Stockdale, Memoirs (1809), 2:189.

Goodwin, "Alcoholism of

20.

(p. 65), fear

fear.

19. Boswell, Life ofJohnson,

cumbed

AA

other character defects. See also p. 67: "the fabric of our existence

101, remarks that O'Neill "suc-

age sixty- five "after years of wanting

resemblance to Larry

is

Kenneth Macgowan as he was

well brought falling in love

whom he was to divorce Agnes, although still feeling envy those simple souls to whom life is always

her: "I

the this and that

plicated contradictions." This letter

is

.

.

.

that slow-poisons the soul with

quoted

com-

in part in Sheaffer, O'Neill, p. 237.

-187

Notes to Pages

O'Neill's

61-68

is also remarked on by Brustein, "Iceman Cometh" and by Watson, "The Theater," pp. 237-38.

resemblance to Larry

pp. 101-2,

CHAPTER 4 For indications that

1.

this familiarity derives

with Cheever,"

rience, see Hersey, "Talk

p. 31; Santana, "Tripping," p. 61;

from first-hand alcoholic expe-

p. 27; Schickel,

"Cheever Chronicle,"

"Inescapable Conclusions," p. 125; Clemons,

"Cheever's Triumph," p. 62. These sources, however, have been generally super-

seded by Susan Cheever's memoir of her

father,

Home

Before Dark;

on Cheever's

alcoholism, see esp. pp. 161-63, 181-201.

Cheever, Bullet Park, pp. 6, 8. Cheever, Wapshot Scandal, p. 239.

2.

3.

Cheever, "President of Argentine," p. 44; Wapshot Scandal, pp. 83-86. Cheever, Stories, p. 469. Except when otherwise noted, this is the text of

4. 5.

Cheever's short stories used throughout; hereafter, most page references will ap-

pear in parentheses in the

text.

See Rupp, "Upshot of Wapshot," p. 31: "Life, Cheever seems to be saying,

6.

a familial enterprise, a social enterprise." cifically

about The Wapshot Chronicle,

it

Although Rupp makes

this

is

remark spe-

has wider relevance to Cheever's work.

who notes Cheever's belief, as evidenced who separates himself from his family and

See also Morace, "John Cheever," p. 91, in his stories, "that the individual

community must

learn to reintegrate himself in the group." Finally, Waldeland,

John Cheever, pp. 142-43, although terming Cheever a romantic, comments that "one of Cheever's most frequently chosen subjects is family relationships."

For a well-reasoned defense of Cheever's authorial intrusions and manipula-

7.

Molyneux, "Affirming Balance," pp. 35-40. "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," Stories, pp. 260-61, in which Johnny Hake, the son of divorced parents, recalls meeting his father at the Plaza tions, see

8. See, e.g.,

when he was fifteen after not seeing him for ten years; the father, drunk, him to a musical comedy and then offers to arrange to let him "have" any girl in the chorus. In Bullet Park, pp. 27-28, Nailles recalls that, when he brought his college roommate home in his freshman year, his father got drunk, took them to a hotel dining room, made a grab at a waitress, and then conducted the orchestra. Although everyone else seemed much amused, Nailles, "had he possessed a pistol, would have shot his father in the back." Hammer, the other Hotel takes

main character of the novel,

many

is

born out of wedlock and does not see

his father

One Christmas holiday he decides to look him up and locates him in a hotel room "in a poleaxed, drunken sleep, naked" and alone although the "two unmade beds had seen some venereal mileage" (p. 164). He defor

years.

.

.

.

cides not to increase the embarrassment

by waking

his father. In

Scandal, Coverly recalls the time that his father, drunk,

church: "a lot of people had seen him.

What

I

smoked

wanted then was

The Wapshot a cigarette in to

be the son

of Mr. Pluzinski the farmer" (p. 21). Although the relationship in Cheever's

188

Notes to Pages

Falconer

is

68-79

between brothers and Eben may not be drunk on the occasions

re-

and em-

ferred to, nevertheless, like the father of "Reunion," he offends waiters

barrasses his brother, Farragut, the novel's protagonist (pp. 62, 204). Farragut also

who

remembers a scene from his childhood in which he searches for his father, has supposedly gone off to commit suicide. In an interesting variation on

Cheever's pattern of embarrassment, Farragut finds his father on an amusement-

park

roller coaster,

only "pretending to drink from an empty bottle" and to

threaten suicide "from every rise"; like Nailles's father in Bullet Park, he has an

amused and admiring audience (pp. 62-64). See also "The Seaside Houses," discussed below, esp. pp. 487-88. Cheever, Home Before Dark, p. 210, quoting from a letter by her father about his father, shows that Cheever unquestionably drew on his father's drunken escapades for his fiction. But see also pp. 203-4, which indicate that in some ways the father of "Reunion" resembles Cheever's brother, Fred, who also drank too much and deeply embarrassed John.

Although certainly not devoid of

9.

in the Streets,"

is

relatively

fully to appreciate his artistry in first

collection of stories,

skill,

one of Cheever's early

stories, "Peril

crude as a portrayal of a drunk and helps one more "Reunion." "Peril" can be found in Cheever's

Way Some

People, pp.

235-39; none of these

is

in the

later collected Stories.

10.

Cheever,

Home

11. See Blythe 12.

Bunyan,

Before Dark, p. 43.

and Sweet, "Perverted Sacraments,"

Pilgrim's Progress, pp.

p.

394.

213, 218.

13. Ibid., p. 212. 14. Graves's assertion that

Neddy has

evidence in the story but seems not

a drinking

far

problem may lack

from the

Color," p. 4. See also Auser, "Cheever's Myth," pp.

truth. See

sufficient

her "Dominant

18- 19.

For a higher estimate of Neddy, see Moore, "The Hero," pp. 149-50. See also Coale, John Cheever, p. 47, for a conclusion similar to mine about "The 15.

Swimmer": "Suburbia may be limited but outside

its

16. Elliott, 17. See

pale

all

in

its

moral scope and social pretensions,

remains darkness and dissolution."

Power of Satire, pp. 138-39. Decline and Fall, p. 269,

Waugh,

for Paul Pennyfeather's eulogy to

in a bog: "Paul knew that Grimes was not dead. Lord Tangent was dead; Mr. Prendergast was dead; the time would even come for Paul Pennyfeather; but Grimes, Paul at last realized, was of the immortals. He was a life force. Sentenced to death in Flanders, he popped up in

Grimes on hearing of

his

supposed drowning

Wales; drowned in Wales, he emerged in South America; engulfed in the dark rise again somewhere at sometime, shaking musty integuments of the tomb." Philbrick and Fagan are two other characters in Decline and Fall with remarkable powers of survival and recuperation, but they have less constant identities than Grimes or Gee-Gee. 18. In one scene of Bullet Park, Marietta Hammer, who is apparently drunk at

mystery of Egdon Mire, he would

from

his limbs the

the time,

may

bear a distant resemblance to Gee-Gee because of her outspoken-

ness (pp. 53-56). Unlike Gee-Gee, however, none of her interesting potential

developed; she simply seems unreasonably abusive toward her husband. 19. Cheever, "Leaves," pp.

195-96.

is

— 189

Notes to Pages

20. Cheever,

Home

Before Dark, pp.

21. Cheever, Falconer, pp. 51, 7.

79-89

173-78, 206-8.

Other citations appear

in parentheses in the

text.

22. This

man seems

disgust the landlady

who

be a descendant of the Depression era drunks

to

whom

and

she evicts

Rooming House," an uncollected

when

she can afford to in "Brooklyn

story that appears to be Cheever's

The

first in

New Yorker. 23. Johnson, "Moral Structure," p. 26.

CHAPTER 5 6-8.

1.

Bellow, Humboldt's Gift, pp.

2.

Bellow, The Victim, pp. 78, 80. Subsequent references to the novel will ap-

pear in parentheses in the 3.

text.

Snyder, Alcohol and the Jews, p. 160, prints this song in

Yiddish) and suggests that

it is

full (in

English, not

one of the best known of various Jewish

stories,

whose theme is that sobriety is a Jewish virtue and inebriety a 159). The heart of Snyder's study consists of data derived from

songs, or sayings Gentile vice (p.

New

interviews with seventy- three Jews living in

Haven.

When

one interviewee

professed ignorance of this song, a relative exclaimed to him, "Aw,

everybody knows

that!" (p. 160).

Snyder was aware

that,

come on

even as he was con-

ducting his study, traditional reasons for Jewish hostility toward excessive drinking were being eroded. But

it is

worth noting that the date of

his study

to the first publication of Bellow's novel (1947); that Leventhal

Hartford, not far from

Snyder, Leventhal

is

New

Haven; and

that, like

Snyder, Alcohol and the Jews, p. 174.

5.

McSheehy, Skid Row,

p. 37,

has a

comment on

cubicles that confirms Leventhal's reverie. a

comments

(p.

the lighting of flophouse

They have, he

25 watt bulb suspended from chicken wire

also has interesting

in

most of those interviewed by

a Russian or Polish Jew.

4.

lets;

close

is

grew up

is

says,

electrical out-

He

43) on the clerks in hotels for "transients":

they are expected to maintain order, usually live in the hotel, a day seven days a week,

"no

the only source of light."

and are paid $8.00

per hour. (McSheehy gathered his data

to

when

work twelve hours

$12.00 per day or $.67

the

to

$1.00

minimum wage was $1.60 an

hour.) 6. Zettler, 7.

The Bowery,

As Gordon, "'Pushy

anti-self,

p. 146.

Jew,'" p. 132, aptly

sums

it

up, "Allbee

is

Leventhal's

everything that Leventhal most fears he could himself become:

destructive, a failure, a drifter, a drunkard, a

man who has lost his wife,

self-

a lecher,

and a madman."

makes

8.

Baumbach, Landscape

9.

There have been many claims that alcohol enhances

of Nightmare, p. 42,

a similar point. spiritual perception.

For a few discussions, see Clinebell, "Philosophical- Religious Factors," pp. 474-76, 480, and "Pastoral Counseling," pp. 197-98; Kurtz, Not-God, pp. 205, 208; Jellinek, "Symbolism of Drinking," pp.

854-58; MacAndrew and Edgerton,

190

Notes to Pages

89-96

Drunken Comportment, pp. 40, 98; and Stewart, "Meaning of Intoxication," pp. 132-33. remarkably

10. Allbee's thinking here is

mous tom

—

that

like the idea of Alcoholics

Anony-

stop drinking for good, the alcoholic must have reached his bot-

that, to

he must have experienced so

is,

not bear to continue his drinking.

AA

not

It is

much

pain and misery that he can-

likely,

however, that Bellow would

which time

it was still relatively little known; and of course the idea is not original with AA. 11. As Bradbury, "Saul Bellow," p. 82, puts it, Leventhal is "forced to experi-

have derived

ence Allbee's state as Leventhal 12.

is

AA,

from

this idea

if it

were

in 1947, at

his

own."

I

p. 21.

enormous

reject the notion that

For abundant evidence of the typicality of blackouts for the

alcoholic, see the personal stories in this 13. Rats

would, however,

forced into this experience.

and mice literature

are

among

the

volume, pp. 171-561.

most commonly hallucinated animals

on alcoholic delusions. Jackson's

a considerable stir at

its

and devouring

14. See Bahr, Skid

in the

which made

publication only three years before The Victim, has as

the climactic incident of one long section

bat attacking

Lost Weekend,

Row,

a

its

alcoholic hero's hallucination of a

mouse.

p. 64, for

quoted reactions

to the smell of the derelicts

in this library. 15. See Scheer-Schazler, Saul Be/low, p. 21:

more an

when

Leventhal "gets drunk

act of identification [with Allbee] than of helplessness

and

it is

despair."

"had the strange feeling that there was not a single part of him

16. Leventhal

on which the whole world did not press with full weight, on his body, on his soul, pushing upward in his breast and downward in his bowels. ... He put out all

his strength to collect himself, beginning with the

primary certainty that the

world pressed on him and passed through him" (pp. 257-58). Allbee, as already said,

is

Later in the chapter Leventhal takes a bath, after

almost cheerful" 17.

I

have

for Leventhal the chief representative of this oppressive world.

(p.

which "he

felt

freshened and

265).

Although most commentators on The Victim appear skeptical that Leven-

thal experiences significant p. 141, that

Leventhal

is

growth,

"essentially

I

share the view of Clayton, Saul Bellow,

changed" by the end of the novel. Clayton

likewise recognizes the importance of Leventhal's entering Allbee (pp. 160-61). If

he

is

rather sketchy about the particulars of this process

between the two men, Clayton's

and sound

is

in general the

and the resemblances

most comprehensive,

detailed,

analysis of The Victim.

CHAPTER 6 1.

The

alcoholic "is a real Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde": AA,

p. 21;

Graham, Real

"The Drinker," pp. 96- 115. Although Graham Fitzgerald was "completely sober during his last thirteen months"

Fitzgerald, esp.

Ch.

6,

asserts that (p. 11), in

book, College, pp. 152-53, she acknowledges that Frances Kroll, Fitzgerald's loyal and admiring secretary, disputes this belief.

an

earlier

-191 Notes

Graham, Real

2.

96-100

to Pages

Fitzgerald, p. 97; Bruccoli, Epic Grandeur, p. 143, notes that

from the Club occurred

Fitzgerald's suspension

1920 because of

in

his

and

Zelda's behavior during a visit.

Graham, Real

3.

same

stories

Infidel.

Fitzgerald, pp. 98, 105, 109, 114.

For versions of some of the

about Fitzgerald's drinking, see also Graham and Frank, Beloved

For the alcoholic's tendency to seek out low company as his

resses, see also

Susan Cheever's memoir of her

Home

father,

illness

prog-

Before Dark, p. 189,

where she records that during the worst of his alcoholism, in Boston in 1974, John Cheever once lay "down on the grass in the Public Garden to share a bottle of hooch in a paper bag with a bum who suddenly seemed to be a friend." Fitzgerald once told

Tony

Buttitta of his hallucinations, a frequent

the late stages of alcoholism (After the Good, p. 155). p. 5) relates a story kill

from the '20s of how Fitzgerald

occurrence in

Latham (Crazy Sundays,

— drunk,

of course

—

tried to

Zelda and Anita Loos by throwing a candelabrum and other heavy objects at

them

in the dining

doors but was

room

of his Great Neck,

finally restrained

doors and entered.

New York, home. He had

by a butler who broke a

Donaldson's Fool for Love in the chapter entitled

letter of

1930

pane

in

locked the

one of the

A large collection of Fitzgerald's drunken episodes is found in

allowance should perhaps be

long

glass

made

"Demon

Drink." Although

for her exaggeration, Zelda, in

some

an extremely

her hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, presents a

after

blunt and mordant history of Fitzgerald's increasing drunkenness during the 1920s. See Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp. 245-51. 4.

I

many

ignore the

incidentally, as well as

Fitzgerald stories in

such

stories as

which drinking

figures casually or

"The Camel's Back" and "May Day" (both

1920), in which drinking, though given

some prominence, should probably be

seen as having minor interest. In "The Camel's Back," for instance, the drunkenness of Perry Parkhurst

simply the mechanism that moves the story toward

is

extended gag and happy ending; and in "May Day," the drunkenness of "Mr.

and "Mr. Out," though

certainly displaying Fitzgerald's

not intimate familiarity with) intoxicated behavior, as a

is

keen observation of

of less interest in

itself

its

In" (if

than

means of counterpointing and complementing the drunkenness of Gordon Gus Rose, and Carrol Key, all of which is intended to testify not so

Sterrett,

much

to the prevalence of drinking as to the degeneration or

American society 5.

after

World War

decay

at all levels of

I.

See Roulston, "Beautiful and Damned," p. 157.

I

am

not persuaded by the

psychoanalytic argument suggested in Roulston's subtitle. Wasserstrom, "Goad of Guilt," pp.

300-303,

also advances

some psychological explanations

of

Fitzgerald's drinking. 6. Fitzgerald, Beautiful

and Damned,

appear in parentheses in the 7.

man agency

this

novel will

Great Gatsby, p. 43. The same appearance of drink without hu-

on pp. 11 and 40. Roth, "'Milk of Wonder,'" p. 11; Great Gatsby, p. 47. also occurs

10. Fabricant, coli,

Other citations of

Roth, "'Milk of Wonder.'"

8. Ibid., p. 6;

9.

p. 241.

text.

"Medical

Profile," p. 148;

Mizener, Far Side, pp. 195-97; Bruc-

Epic Grandeur, p. 185; Eble, "Touches of Disaster," p. 48. Eble's

comprehen-

192

Notes to Pages 100- 106

indispensable article on the subject of alcoholism in Fitzgerald's short

sive,

stories will hereafter

be cited in parentheses in the

became

Fitzgerald's drinking

text.

These estimates of when

alcoholic are conservative; the frequency of his

drunken escapades before Gatsby would support a strong argument for dating the change about 1920, or even earlier. 1 1. In spite of growing public awareness of the dangers of alcoholism and the

means of overcoming

the usual estimate

it,

achieve permanent sobriety. Because help able

son

and

effective, the alcoholic's "denial

is

is

that only

one alcoholic

nowadays widely known

be

avail-

system" more than any other single rea-

probably responsible for the appallingly poor recovery

is

Mann,

in ten will to

rate.

Mann, Marty

p. 73, regards denial as the "outstanding characteristic of alcoholics": "al-

most without exception alcoholics deny long after

it

their condition

and continue

to

do so

has become apparent to everyone around them."

Graham, Real Fitzgerald, p. 113. Hemingway, Moveable Feast, pp. 152-53; Hemingway's by Mizener, Far Side, pp. 196-97. 12.

13.

14. See Bruccoli, Epic Grandeur, p. 489: "Alcoholic

vignette

is

quoted

cardiomyopathy, or en-

largement of the heart chambers, which occurs in chronic alcoholics,

may

result

in heart failure."

15. Mizener,

Far Side,

See Fitzgerald,

16.

p. 197; Fitzgerald, Notebooks, p. 190.

Letters, pp.

Bruccoli, Epic Grandeur, pp.

230, 306; Fitzgerald, As Ever, pp. 207-10;

306-7;

Fitzgerald, Correspondence, pp.

241-43.

17. Bruccoli, Epic Grandeur, p. 439. 18. Bruccoli, Composition, pp.

4-5, notes

that of the twenty-four reviews of

was

in-

documented." These eight include some of the most thoughtful

re-

the novel he has found, eight complained "that Doctor Diver's collapse sufficiently

viewers of the 1930s: Clifton Fadiman in The Nation,

and D. W. Harding

in Scrutiny.

New

William Troy in The

Yorker,

Troy observes that a reader

is

confused

about the reasons for Diver's disintegration; Harding goes even further and claims that Fitzgerald gives no reason for Diver's crack-up (Bruccoli, pp. 6-7).

Although Bruccoli himself vehemently disagrees with

this

kind of assessment,

perhaps continues to be the leading reaction to Diver. See Fragmented,"

p. 127: "Critics

who examine

the motivation for Dick Diver's collapse

describes his destruction,

it

does not

is

Tender

Is

vague.

Though

it

Ellis, "Fitzgerald's

the Night usually agree that

the novel, they say,

satisfactorily explain the causes for the de-

man

so gifted as he has been made to appear." "One Trip Abroad," pp. 262, 270-71. 20. "Family" was first published, like many of Fitzgerald's stories, in The Saturday Evening Post (4 June 1932; Mizener, Far Side, p. 405); it was collected in terioration of a

19. Fitzgerald,

Taps at Reveille (1935). there

is

no standard

One problem

21. First published in Esquire, 22. Balliett,

"Even His

23. Step 2 of

AA

to believe that a p. 59).

in dealing

with Fitzgerald's stories

is

that

collected edition.

December 1939 (Mizener, Far

Side, p. 407).

Feet," p. 32.

clearly implies the insanity of the drinking alcoholic:

Power greater than ourselves could

"Came

restore us to sanity" (AA,

— 193— Notes to Pages 106-12

24. First published in The Saturday Evening Post (4 July 1931; Mizener, Far Side, p. 405).

Graham, Real

25.

he did not "No,

I

like to

Fitzgerald, p. 115. In

response to Fitzgerald's

comment

baby women, Laura Hearne perceptively noted

that

in her diary:

thought, you like them to baby you" (p. 236). Her diary, dealing with her

relations with Fitzgerald in Asheville,

Hearne acted as

North Carolina,

"Summer with

has been printed in Esquire as

in the

Fitzgerald."

summer

of 1935,

As a headnote

says,

companion, nurse, and confidential agent"

"secretary,

to

Fitzgerald.

26. Raleigh, "O'Neill's Long Day's" p. 137. 27. Buttitta, After the Good, p. 160. 28. The Saturday Evening Post (21 February 1931; Mizener, Far Side, p. 405).

29. Citing several other critics, Donaldson, Fool for Love, p. 151, notes both

the omission of alcoholism from Fitzgerald's account

and the probable reason

for

the omission: the alcoholic's denial of his illness. Fitzgerald's essay actually consists

of three parts, each with

of the

(March 1936); "Pasting parts

own

title:

"The Crack-Up," general

It

Together,"

title

title

title

and

title

of the second part

of the third part (April 1936). All three

appeared in Esquire.

first

30.

its

part (February 1936); "Handle with Care,"

first

The

friend

was Laura Hearne. Her estimate of Fitzgerald's peak consump-

"Summer with

On

p.

252, she records that

before he

was hospitalized on 19

September. Another published reminiscence of the same

summer (Peeples, "Twi-

tion

is

in

Fitzgerald," p.

Fitzgerald "was not sober at all" for a

light," p.

164.

month

171) confirms Fitzgerald's astonishing consumption of been In a

Hearne of 29 July 1935 announcing

letter

his reasons for leaving his hotel in

North

Carolina, Fitzgerald himself really verifies these two accounts: "I'm such a

wreck

to

physically that

notice

—

six

I

expect the heart, liver and lungs to collapse again at a

weeks of

never hurt anyone's

late

liver.

hours, beer and talk, talk, talk." Late hours and talk In the sentence preceding this, Fitzgerald characteris-

the responsibility for his drinking: "Dont

tically tries to displace

moments

anything more to do than to

sit

around and make love

&

women

have

drink beer?" (Corre-

sumsmoking

spondence, p. 417). See also Fitzgerald's letter of August to his lover of that

mer, Beatrice Dance, in which he mentions the

and beer drinking

(p.

effects of his excessive

419). Finally, Fitzgerald's ledger for 1935 almost certainly

belies his claim of a long spell of dryness before his crack-up.

mentions his "1st gloom ticles," in all

early 1936.

article"

Under October he

and, under December, "two more gloom ar-

probability the three-part "Crack-Up" that Esquire published in

So Fitzgerald wrote the

talization, a fact that

he records

the entry for August hints

first

part only one

in his ledger for

month

after his hospi-

September 1935 and that

was caused by drinking. See

Fitzgerald, Ledger,

"Appendix." 31. Fitzgerald does not give the

32. The Saturday Evening Post (3

Asylum. of Seabrook's book November 1934; Mizener, Far Side,

title

p. 406).

33. American Mercury (October 1932; Mizener, Far Side, p. 405). 34.

AA,

p. 21,

notes as one of the definitive

positive genius for" getting

drunk just when

traits

it is

of an alcoholic that "he has a

crucial that he should not. This

— —194 Notes to Pages 112-20

is

exactly

what Fitzgerald did at the Thalberg gathering. Eble clearly implies a between Fitzgerald's getting drunk at the Thalbergs and his

direct connection

being fired by

MGM;

who had watched

this

view agrees with LeVot,

spised alcoholics, fired

him

Fitzgerald, p. 264: "Thalberg,

performance from across the room and

[Fitzgerald's]

end of the week."

at the

who

de-

In contrast, Bruccoli, Epic

Grandeur, p. 323, suggests that, having finished his assignment, Fitzgerald

left

Hollywood voluntarily because of worry about Zelda's health. That opinion was probably based on a retrospective letter Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter, Scottie, in

which he even says

get East

when

that

he was asked to stay in Hollywood but

the contract expired to see

how your mother was"

"I

wanted

to

(letter of [July

1937] in Scott Fitzgerald, p. 26). Perhaps the truth of the matter can never be ascertained; but, given Fitzgerald's inclination to

not likely that he would admit that he

had been

at the party

being

—

deny

his drinking

problem,

it is

especially in a letter to his teenaged daughter

fired for drinking. In

would have been almost

any event, his shame over getting drunk

as great even

if it

had not resulted

in his

fired.

Oddly enough, Coles's drink count as given by Fitzgerald agrees with an number of drinks Fitzgerald had at the Thalberg party; in Joy Ride, p. 243, Dwight Taylor, who went to the party with Fitzgerald, says that Fitzgerald could have had only one or two drinks while out of his sight and before insulting Robert Montgomery. Taylor adds, however, that Fitzgerald was a condition that "as drunk as a man who had been swilling for half the night" Coles is far from exhibiting in the story. It does not seem to occur to Taylor that, to become as drunk as he reports, Fitzgerald must have managed to sneak quick drinks at the party or to be mostly drunk before ever arriving, each of these 35.

estimate of the

—

ploys being familiar to

many

alcoholics.

36. Fitzgerald, Pat Hobby, p.

Hereafter cited in parentheses in the text.

ix.

37. Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter, p. 192; Boughner, Braggart, p. 10; Cornford, Attic

Comedy, pp. 129, 134.

38. Raleigh, "O'Neill's Long Day's" p. 137. 39.

"Fun

p.

"Teamed with Genius," "On the in

an

Artist's Studio," p.

40.

Graham and

41.

The

Trail of Pat

Hobby," "Two Old-Timers";

128.

Frank, Beloved

Infidel, p.

279.

possibility of this connection is also seen

by Rees, "Pat Hobby,"

556. 42.

Graham,

College, p. 136.

CHAPTER 1.

2.

7

Vidal, "Immortal Bird," p. 5. Bell,

"Meaning of PR,"

p.

34. Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, p. 302, notes

Schwartz's "ominous injunction" that the poet

would have

to

be destroyed or sac-

rificed in the service of his art.

& Poetry," p. 9.

3.

Hyde, "Alcohol

4.

Crane, "Critical Principles," p. 97. After characterizing Berryman as "blind"

195

Notes to Pages 120-24

way

to the

his alcoholism

shaped his poems and

was not "trapped" by

nevertheless asserts that he

(pp. 9, 11), a qualification

that appears inconsistent with his deterministic views.

it is

approves of Hyde's deterministic thinking and Hall. In Remembering Poets, p. 29, Hall claims that "in our culture an

self-destructiveness"

artist's

is

by a self-hating bourgeois

substantially increased

society that believes that this tendency

is

wanted ... we would be drunk

really

Although generally more

who

plausible, another critic

abets

Hyde

"lost" in alcoholism,

it

admirable because

all

"if

we

did what

we

the time or addicted to heroin or at

least suicidal."

Dickey, Sorties, pp. 52, 85.

5.

"Afterword to the

more

New

affirmatively of

should be added, however, that

It

Ecco Edition," Babel

what he now

to

Berryman's "poetry of the

calls

in a brief

Byzantium, p. 296, Dickey speaks

Arpin

will."

also discusses Berryman's playfulness in Poetry of Berry man, p. 4.

who

In Berryman's unfinished novel, Recovery, p. 160, Alan Severance,

6.

bears a close resemblance to Berryman, recalls that at one point in his therapy for alcoholism

he

felt

primarily bewildered and confused. Because his years of

drinking have thoroughly distorted his natural responses and feelings, the alcoholic often has real,

it is

also

more than

made

the

problem of denying

feelings, including those

view with

Stitt,

We

at certain points."

touch

8.

I

agree (at

this absolute position

"Art of Poetry," p. 193:

last)

"Henry both

with Hyde, "Alcohol

ration of himself

from Henry was "a

The

Berryman and Henry

similarity of

Berryman,

Other critics, however,

is

1 1,

is

this is

innermost

insist

on

an

inter-

that Berryman's sepa-

whim" and should be also maintained

is

in

not me, obviously.

disregarded.

by Conarroe, John

their difference: see, e.g.,

I

Rosen-

strongly disagree with Ar-

conclusion that because of this difference "we never get a

picture of Henry's alcoholism" such as difference

fiction.

we

between Berryman and Lowry

man from Henry and

find in Lowry's

is

Dream Songs

specificity,

The

massive specificity of the novelist

kind of poetic form chosen by Berryman for Poets, p. 157.

See also Haffenden,

was

practically

to achieve these qualities (it

would be

was simply not the Dream Songs.

take to think of Under the Volcano as primarily realistic)

Simpson,

the Volcano.

has to do, simply, with the difference between poetry and

tersely or elliptically; the

in the

realistic, specific

Under

unrelated to any separation of Berry-

Berryman, though lacking neither realism nor

required by the brevity of individual

9.

somewhat

and

& Poetry," p.

poet's

695; and Arpin, Poetry of Berryman, pp. 61-62.

pin's

though his

"'Confessional Mode,'" pp. 158-59; Hoffman, "Impersonal Personalism,"

blatt,

p.

p. 95.

know

about his alcoholism.

Berryman perhaps modified

7.

his alcoholism;

possible by a genuine loss of ability to

Life of

a mis-

available

Berryman, pp. 167-95.

10. Berryman's Sonnets, pp. 33, 37, 93. 11.

Berryman, Dream Songs,

p.

372. Other citations will appear in paren-

theses in the text. 12. Boswell, Life of Johnson, 1:468. 13. Haffenden,

John Berryman,

p. 117.

14.

Haffenden, "Drink as Disease," p. 574.

15.

Although exhaustion was the

official

medical reason for the hospitaliza-

196

Notes to Pages 124-35

1958 during which Berryman wrote

tion in

this

poem,

his alcoholism could well

have been an important contributing cause: see Haffenden,

Life of

266, 268. According to Stefanik, John Berryman, p. 255,

Dream Song 54 was

first

Berryman, pp.

published on 22 April 1960.

comments

16. Barbera

in detail

on Song 225

"Under the Influence," pp.

in

56-65. 17.

AA, pp.

See also the classic early essay on alcoholism by

6, 65, 67.

682-83. This

Jellinek, "Phases of Alcohol Addiction," pp.

abridgment of a

much

article is essentially

an

longer one by Jellinek, "Phases in Drinking History,"

pp. 1-88.

seems also

18. This

to

be an instance of rationalization, another leading char-

mentioned by Jellinek, "Phases of Alcohol Addiction,"

acteristic of the alcoholic

680.

p.

19. Ibid., p. 681. In

morse without 20.

Berryman, Recovery,

respite" in a long

list

Heyen, "John Berryman,"

Simpson, The Maze,

p. 124,

of alcoholic

Alan Severance includes

"re-

traits.

Haffenden, "Drink as Disease," p. 570;

p. 54;

p. 142.

21. Luks, Four Authors Discuss, p. 20. 22.

Berryman, Recovery,

p. 96. In his interview

discoursed on the poets need to suffer. Haffenden,

with Peter

Life of

Stitt,

Berryman

Berryman, quotes this

portion of the interview at length (pp. 381-82), cogently citing

as "fan-

it

and as evidence of Berryman's "deludedness" during the inwhen he was once again (October 1970) hospitalized for alcoholism.

tastically hubristic"

terview,

Haffenden also says that Berryman told Ernest Samuels in 1967 that without alcohol he

would commit suicide

— perhaps because without

he would lose his

it

source of inspiration. Writing in his journal on 18 August 1971, however,

Berryman

rejected a connection

between

his art

and drinking

(Life of

Berryman,

p. 414).

23. Meredith reports

on meeting Berryman

in

May

1971: "He

who would

never wear decorations was wearing a rosette: the badge of three months' abstinence, from Alcoholics 24.

poems

Among is

Oberg, "John Berryman,"

ballad, minstrelsy,

than zin,

Anonymous" ("Foreword,"

the critics disappointed

art."

p. 86:

style in his later

"The complexities of lyric,

elegy, blues,

Dream Songs] dwindle to something less Vendler, "Ammons, Berryman, Cummings," p. 425, and Ka-

and vaudeville

See also

p. xiv).

by Berryman's changed

review of Henry's Fate,

[in

the

p. 35.

25. Haffenden, Life of Berryman, p. 417. 26. Love this

& Fame, pp. 69-70. Haffenden,

poem was composed

27.

On

Life of

Berryman, p. 378, shows that

in the spring of 1970.

the typicality of sick alcoholic dependence, see 12

&

12, pp.

54-55:

we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heav-

"The primary

fact that

.

ily

on people, they

will

sooner or

.

.

later fail us, for they are

human,

too,

and can-

not possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and

— 197

Notes to Pages 135-42

festers."

"The Recognition" (Henry's Fate,

p. 89), written

during one of Berryman's

hospitalizations for alcoholism in 1970, also demonstrates Berryman's depen-

dence. At a time

when he should have been

concentrating entirely on the therapy

had become

indifferent to him or was him fears totally unwarranted, as the poem makes clear could only distract him from therapy and thus reduce his chances of recovery. 28. Love & Fame, pp. 75-76; Stefanik, John Berryman, p. 258.

for his alcoholism, his fears that his wife

—

preparing to leave

29. Delusions, p. 40. Haffenden, Life of Berryman, p. 417, dates this

4 August

1970. For a similar poem, quoted from by Saul Bellow in his headnote to Recov-

Love

ery, see "Despair,"

& Fame, p.

72.

our

lives

and 3 of AA read: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol had become unmanageable" and "Made a decision to turn our will

and our

lives

over to the care of

30. Steps that

1

God

as

we understood Him" (AA,

p. 59).

"Spewed" suggests that Berryman might have had in mind Christ's words in Rev. 3:15- 16: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor 31.

hot,

will

I

spue thee out of

On"

32. "Pass

It

33. Love

&

my

mouth."

pp. 120-21; Haffenden, Life of Berryman, p. 385.

Fame,

p. 93; first

published 25 September 1970, according to

Stefanik, John Berryman, p. 259.

"Made

34.

35. 12

a searching

& 12, p.

divine spirit

and

fearless

108. C. G. Jung's

moral inventory of ourselves" (AA,

hope of combatting alcoholic

would not have worked

Berryman,

for

on a low

level,

alcoholic iden-

of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in

medieval language: the union with God.

the

and you use the same word

.

.

.

You

see, 'alcohol' in Latin is 'spir-

for the highest religious experience as well as for

most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore

itum" (letter to

Bill

Berryman,

p.

is:

Wilson, cofounder of AA, in Thomsen,

36. Delusions, pp.

68-69; Meredith, "Foreword,"

Bill

p. xix;

spiritus contra spir-

W., pp. 362-63).

Haffenden,

to the "Presence" in

Berryman's Recovery.

37. E.g., two of the four epigraphs to His Toy, His Dream, His Rest,

came

part of the

Dream

barked on without

am

Life of

397. Barbera, "Pipe Dreams," p. 128nl6, mentions another fore-

boding reference

I

p. 59).

with the

only as Roland H., Jung wrote, "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent,

tified

itus'

Of an

either.

spirits

fear.

Songs, concern fear: I

shall

be scared

always frightened, and very

much

to so.

"No

which beem-

interesting project can be

death half the time" and "For I

fear the future of all

my part

engagements."

See also Pooley, "Berryman's Last Poems," p. 292. 38. Haffenden, Life of Berryman, p. 420. 39. Delusions, p. 70; written, according to Haffenden (John Berryman, p. 156),

on 17 April 1971. Berryman would of course have known tional

that

David

is

a tradi-

symbol of the poet.

40. Henry's Fate prints "strands"; but in a letter to

Haffenden has kindly pointed out that

me

John and has pro-

of 26 July 1985,

this is a typographical error

vided the correct reading. 41.

An

autopsy revealed no trace of alcohol in his body, although Berryman

— 198

Notes to Pages 142-48

had

on 7 January 1972; before

briefly returned to drinking before his suicide

he had gone nearly a year since his

that,

last

drinking (Haffenden,

Life of

Berryman, pp. 393, 418). 42. Davis, "Li(v)es of the Poet," p. 59.

The

entire article

43. Ornstein,

"Marlowe and God,"

p.

1384. For conclusions about Berryman

that are similar to mine, see the review of Recovery entitled p.

of great importance

is

understanding Berryman.

for

1465. In the letter to

placed

last in

me of 26 July 1985

"The Sodden Soul,"

Haffenden says that "Phase Four" was

Henry's Fate at the publisher's suggestion "for artistic reasons," be-

has "a quality of appeasement or acceptance," but that

it was written at same time as the group of poems beginning with "Some Women in Here" meaning during one of Berryman's hospitalizations in 1970. Although I ob-

cause

it

the

viously disagree with Haffenden's interpretation of "Phase Four," his grouping of it

indicates that

it

was not

But Berryman's fear of

literally

God

Berryman's

final

word on

certainly expressed in

is

the subject of God.

one of his

poems, "Dry

last

Eleven Months," dated less than a month before his death; and "Phase Four"

seems

to offer the best explanation of the source of this fear.

CHAPTER 1.

Damrosch, "Burns, Blake,"

2.

Polhemus, Comic

ings

p.

648.

Faith, pp. 60,

and uses of alcohol

Jellinek,

is

3.

Marquis, Old Soak, p. 46.

4.

Freud, Jokes, pp. 105, 127.

8

76-79. Another study of symbolic mean-

"Symbolism of Drinking," pp. 849-66.

58.

5. Lentricchia, Criticism, p.

6.

See Hirst, Comedy, pp. 1-2.

7.

Heilbrun interpreting Frye in "Profession and Society,"

8. Frye,

410.

p.

"Mythos of Spring," pp. 163-86; Bergson, Laughter, pp.

10, 16, 29,

37, 58, 87. 9.

See esp. the description of Dixon's

citations of the novel will 10.

first

drive with

appear in parentheses

McFadden, Discovering

the Comic, p. 170.

Welch

Ch.

in

1.

Other

in the text.

This

is

from a passage interpret-

ing Frye's theory of comedy. 11.

Although Amis warns that "Dixon resembles Larkin

particular,"

it is still

Philip Larkin, the English poet sity

in not the smallest

tempting to see in Dixon something of the irreverence of

and Amis's

friend at Oxford, toward the univer-

and many of the readings required of undergraduates. The irreverence

is

described in Amis's "Oxford and After," pp. 23-30, a tribute to the poet. Amis's reference to Larkin's outstanding quality of "total honesty" (p. 29) also suggests

Dixon, the completeness of whose honesty

is

the

more

striking because he has to

struggle against repressive fears within himself. 12.

Bertrand

is

also an

his vocation, painting,

see Frye,

example of the alazon as impostor: he

and

is

"Mythos of Spring,"

not really in love with Christine. p. 172,

and Cornford,

Attic

is

incompetent

On

at

the impostor,

Comedy,

p. 129.

199

Notes to Pages 148-72 Power of Satire, pp. 135, 138-39.

13. Elliott,

14. Freud, Jokes, p. 127.

"Love Song,"

15. Eliot,

p. 5.

16. Blake, Marriage, p. 102.

"Mythos of Spring,"

17. Frye,

p. 171. Fallis also discusses the

mythic and

chetypal elements of the novel in "Lucky Jim" pp. 65-72. Gindin, "Amis' Novels," p. 39, contains similar

comment on Lucky Jim.

18.

Wilson makes almost exactly

19.

Amis,

this

point in "Jim, Jake," p. 55.

Further citations of the novel will appear in

Jake's Thing, p. 100.

parentheses in the

For an extended comparison of Lucky Jim and

text.

ar-

Funny

106-7. This

Thing, see Gardner, Kingsley Amis, pp.

is

Jake's

the only booklength study

of Amis's work. Civilization, p. 58: "men are not gentle creathem not only a potential helper or sexual obsomeone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually with-

from Freud,

20. See the following

....

tures ject,

their

but also

to exploit his

neighbour

is

for

out his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture

and

to kill

him.

Homo

homini lupus," which Freud borrows from Plautus's

and which translates: "Man McCollom, Divine Average, p.

Asinaria 21.

is

7.

a wolf to

man."

For the very different view that Orwell

Gordon as a "repulsive, intolerable fool," see Greenblatt, Three Modern pp. 53-57. The most extensive study of Orwell as a novelist, Lee, OrFiction, also claims that Orwell took a dim view of Gordon, "picturing him

satirizes

Satirists, well's

as a self-pitying adolescent of twenty-nine" (p. 52).

Other references

22. Orwell, Aspidistra, p. 242.

parentheses in the

text.

Among the critics who

to the novel will

appear in

find the completeness of Gordon's

Orwell, pp.

Wain, "Lower Binfield," p. 76; Alldritt, Making oj 35-36; Lodge, Modes of Modern, p. 190; and Hammond, Orwell

Companion,

p. 112.

change

difficult to credit are

23. Meredith, Essay on Comedy, p. 92. 24. Eagleton, Exiles, pp. 93, 98; Lee, Orwell's Fiction, p. 65. Eagleton's Marxist

analysis of Orwell's novel

is

greatly at variance with

my

own.

25. Orwell, 1984, p. 139.

26. Lee,

Orwell's Fiction, p.

"proves three attitudes are natically

Gordon

facts: that

58, shrewdly notices that Gordon's spending is

under the

affective

power

of

money;

that his

sham; that he shares the same lower-middle-class values he so

fa-

condemns."

27. Guild,

"Dubious

Battle," p. 54.

EPILOGUE 1.

New

The antipathy of modernism 53-55.

to reality

is

discussed by Lentricchia, After the

Criticism, pp.

2.

Abrams, Milk of Paradise; Hayter, Opium and Romantic.

3.

Dickey, Sorties, p. 101.

200

Notes to Pages 173-75

4. Boswell, Life of Johnson,

2:188, 193; 3:327n2.

5.

Boswell The Ominous Years, p. 178; Boswell

6.

Boswell, Life of Johnson, 4:221.

7. Ibid.,

Extremes, pp.

129-35.

3:41, 327.

Samuel Johnson, pp. 236-37, 263. Boswell, Life of Johnson, l:103-5n3, 446; 3:41, 169, 245, 327, 389.

8. Bate, 9.

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in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol. 35. New Plenum Press, 1973. Wortis, Herman. "Delirium Tremens." Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 1 (1940-41): 251-67.

pp.

305- 19. Advances

York:

Zettler,

Michael D. The Bowery.

New York:

Zimering, Stanley, and Calhoun, James Journal of Drug Education 6 (1976):

Drake Publishers, 1975.

F. "Is

There an Alcoholic Personality?"

97-103.

PERMISSIONS The author

is

grateful for permission to

From "The Love Song of J. in Collected Eliot,

Alfred Pru frock"

Poems 1909-1962 by

©1963, 1964 by

Inc.;

T

Reprinted

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.,

and Faber and

Faber, Ltd.

"Phase Four" from Henry's Fate Faber, Ltd.

From

"Little

Gidding" and "East Coker" in

Four Quartets by

1943 by

T. S. Eliot,

T. S. Eliot;

by Esme Valerie

copyright

Reprinted

Faber, Ltd.

"He Resigns" from

Faber, Ltd.

Excerpts from Berryman's Sonnets by John

Berryman. Copyright ©1952, 1967 by

and Faber and Faber,

Giroux,

Berryman. Copyright ©1959, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968,

Excerpts from Love

Ltd.

& Fame by John

Berryman. Copyright

©1970 by John

Berryman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus

and Giroux,

Inc.,

and

Faber and Faber, Ltd. Excerpts from Delusions,

Etc.

and

From "Drinking While Essays, Poems, Stories

Driving" in

Ltd.

Fires:

by Raymond

Carver, copyright 1983 by Capra Press.

Press.

and

and Faber and Faber,

Farrar, Straus

and Faber and Faber,

Reprinted with permission of Capra

1969 by John Berryman. Reprinted

Inc.,

Inc.,

Ltd.

Excerpts from The Dream Songs by John

Farrar, Straus

by John

John Berryman. Copyright ©1972 by

by permission of

permission of Farrar, Straus and

by permission of

Delusions, Etc.

Berryman. Copyright ©1969, 1971 by

the Estate of John Berryman. Reprinted

John Berryman. Reprinted by

Giroux,

John Berryman. Copyright ©1975,

Straus and Giroux, Inc., and Faber and

Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and

Inc.,

&

© 1969 by

Reprinted by permission of Farrar,

by permission of Harcourt Brace

Giroux,

Other Poems. Copyright

1976, 1977 by Mrs. Kate Berryman.

renewed 1971

Eliot.

Ltd.

& Other Poems

1976, 1977 by Mrs. Kate Berryman.

and Faber and

Inc.,

and Faber and Faber,

by John Berryman. Copyright ©1975,

by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

Inc.,

S.

copyright

T. S. Eliot.

Giroux,

Excerpts from Henry's Fate

copyright 1936 by Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich,

by John Berryman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and

reproduce quotations as follows:

by John

Berryman. Copyright ©1969, 1971

From "Bums, On Waking"

in

Helmets by

James Dickey, copyright 1963 by Wesleyan University

Press. Reprinted

by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Index

Abrams, M. H., 170

141, 150-51, 171-72; low

Agee, James, 5

esteem or self-hatred, 38-39, 51,

Alcohol: ambiguity of as spiritual

and comedy, 12, 15, 36, 62-63, 115-16, 123-28, 144-69; spirits or life, 12, 77-78,

source, 12;

115, 144-45, 150, 152-54,

166-69, 173, 178 (n. 9);

(n. 7),

68-69;

51,

aggression or liberation,

89-90, 93, 95, 132145, 154, 159-62, 168-69.

discovery,

(n. 7),

196

(n. 6),

191

(n. 3); solitary

irrationality, 40, 84, 101, 106,

114, 175; loneliness and isolation, 41-42, 69-70, 97-98, 110, 182 (n.

escape from

4-5, 54,

109, 135, 172; the shakes, 5, 39,

shame or guilt, 54-57,61, 112-14, 117, 122; skid-row type, 7, 10-12, 82,

63; will power, 6; 6,

as

85; objections to stereotyping 9, 11, 15, 17,

82-85;

12); periodic, 43, 48, 109; fear,

49,

of,

63-64, 77-80,

evasion, denial, self-

96-98, 100-106, 108-18, 121, 123-27,

53-55, 57,

61, 117, 184 (n. 2); cynicism, 50,

57-61; resentment,

authors Alcoholic, the: self-pity,

preference

drinking, 39, 194 (n. 35);

See also Alcoholic, the; Alcoholism

and names of individual

(n. 18);

low company, 39, 96, 98, 181

or heavy drinking; Hallucinations, alcoholic;

50-

rationalizations for

drinking, 39, 64, 84, 97, 112, 130,

for

145-46, 150-54, 158-59, 172; spiritual cleansing and self-

59, 140, 195 (n. 4);

manipulation of others, 39,

182

189

12,

33,

56-57,

54,

self-

52, 91, 138;

hangovers, 62, 92; susceptibility to

62-63, 65-66, 98-99, 127-28; remorse, 69, 117-18,

injury,

131, 136, 172, 196 (n. 19); hiding

69-70; tendency to 96-98, 191 (n. 3); personality change, 96-99, alcohol,

violence,

103-4, 107, 173, 190 (n. 1); life around alcohol, 98;

deception, 10, 16, 51, 54,

centering

129, 192 (n. 11), 193 (nn. 29, 30),

hope of being nursed or mothered, 105-7, 112, 135, 193 (n. 25) (see also Alcoholics Anonymous:

194

(n. 34),

195

(n. 6);

honesty,

97-100, 102, 108, 121, 123, 127-32; nonalcoholic's 10, 51,

fears of, 10, 82,

blackouts,

190

85-87,91-94;

11-12, 39, 91, 96, 105,

(n. 12); loss

of control,

11-

69-70, 90-91, 98, 130, 175; sense of renewal, 11-12, 12527; heroism, 16, 18-19, 24-26, 12,

61,

75-80, 124, 140, 142;

irresponsibility, defiance, rebellion,

16, 40,

52-53, 58, 126-27, 137,

"enabling" the alcoholic); will to

134-35, 137, 140-41; sudden mood swings,

die, 106, 108,

106, 114; exhaustion of inner

124-25; fears of becoming sober, 132-33; resources,

dependence, 135, 196-97

(n. 27).

See also Alcohol; Alcoholics

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy drinking; Hallucinations, alcoholic;

Writer, modern, drinking or

-220Index

Alcoholic, the (continued) alcoholic;

"spiritual experience," 133, 138;

and names of individual

authors

Anonymous,

Alcoholics

one day at a time, 138; Alcoholics Anonymous (the book), 50-53, 69, 91, 98, 110, 135, 137; Twelve Steps

4, 6, 8,

13-15, 45, 48-53, 56, 60, 69, 80, 91, 101, 128, 134, 137-38, 140,

and Twelve Traditions (AA book),

142, 175, 177 (n. 14); alcoholic's

Alcoholic, the; Alcoholism or heavy

will

power,

fear, 13,

6, 50;

alcoholism and

129, 139, 186 (n. 18);

respect for,

14-15, 196

129-

30, 135; alcoholism as family illness,

86

(n.

the:

185-

14) (see also Alcoholic,

Alcoholism or heavy drinking: as

40-42,

87, 110,

(n. 14),

182

from,

hope of being nursed or

11-15, 37,

(n. 10):

197

psychological

from

138-43, 177

42-43, and

spiritum, 45,

mothered); alcoholism as "soul sickness," 42; recovery

Bill: cofounder of AA; and names of individual authors

spiritual illness, 5, 9,

40; "enabling" the

alcoholic, 40, 107, 135,

drinking; Hallucinations, alcoholic;

Wilson,

(n. 23);

"geographical cure," 39, 43,

50, 52, 110, 130. See also Alcohol;

and recovery

spiritus contra

(n. 35); as

illness, 5,

37,

alcoholism, 42, 141-42; "the

illness, 5, 39,

bondage of self," 42-43, 136, 186

127-28, 130-32, 139, 177

(n. 17); "steps"

48- 50,

or principles

53, 60,

of,

137-39, 141, 184

(n. 6), 192 (n. 23), 197 (n. 30): and the "twelve steps" of AA, 184 (n. 7), and steps 4 and 5, 51-52, 60, 138-39, 197 (n. 34), and

steps 8

and

on

9, 52, 60; stress

39-

40, 110, 177 (n. 14); as physical

(n. 14),

192

101, 107, 110,

(n. 14); as total

105, 110, 131-32; will

illness, 5,

power and,

6; "invisibility" of, 6,

99-100;

interdisciplinary

approach

to,

7-8; inadequate

definitions of, 8; literature's

understanding

alcoholic's honesty with self, 49,

on,

9- 10;

of,

8- 14;

science

problematic perception

81; courage and, 13,

87-

51; sharing "experience, strength,

of, 10,

and hope," 49, 184 (n. 3); alcoholism as symptom, 49, 184

88, 95; salvation and, 14, 37,

(n. 4);

serenity of sober alcoholic,

49- 50, 52-53,

130, 184 (n. 5);

progress, not perfection, 50; "easier, softer

43-45, 171, 180-81

denial, 100. See also Alcohol;

Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

Anonymous;

way," 50, 137;

Hallucinations,

Modernism; Writer,

alcoholic's controlling others,

alcoholic;

50- 51,

modern, drinking or

69; forgiveness, 52;

humility, 52; brotherhood,

52-53;

the "promises," 53; acceptance of

alcoholism, 56, 141-42; "tough love," 60; ridicule of,

(nn. 28, 29),

183 (nn. 21, 22); as a disease of

62-63;

alcoholic;

and

names of individual authors Amis, Kingsley, 146, 154, 161, 173; Jake's Thing, 12, 144,

154-55, 159,

162, 169: wit, 154-55, 160,

"controlled" drinking, 129; "hitting

compared with Lucky Jim, 154-55, 155-62, public and private, 157-58, drunken selfdiscovery, connection with, 158-

bottom," 131, 190

62; Lucky Jim, 12, 25, 115, 144,

unmanageability of alcoholic's

life,

98, 110, 193 (n. 34); "dry drunk"

or emotional bender, 110, 139;

(n. 10);

the

alienation in,

-221Index

146-47, 153, 155, 159: luck, 148-50, 152, repression, 149-50, wit, 149-51, alcohol, liberation, self-discovery, 150-54. See also Alcohol;

Comedy

91, 114

Atlantic City,

New Jersey,

(n.

of,

172;

Delusions, Etc., 121, 137: alcoholic

surrender, 137, fear obstructing

128

Dream Songs, 119, 121-25, 128, 131-33, 172, 174: sex and drinking in Dream Songs sobriety, 140;

Whitney, 105

Behan, Brendan, Bell, Pearl,

350, 351, 311, 123-24, comedy

The Truants, 120

and alcoholic denial

5-6

Songs 350, 54, 57, 76, 96, 225,

Barrett, William:

120

Bellow, Saul, 3,

New York

City,

6-7, 10-11,

59

15, 17,

81; Adventures of Augie March, 7;

Humboldt's

in

Dream

232, 123-27, alcoholic defiance in

Bellevue Hospital,

3,

197

poetic style, 134, 196 (n. 24);

remorse, 136, alcoholic defiance,

North Carolina, 106

Augustine, Saint, 44

Balliett,

fears, especially of

antimodernist attitudes

Anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism, 82, 87,

Asheville,

132-33, 196 (n. 22); God, 132-43, 37), 198 (n. 43); changed

inspiration,

Gift,

6-7, 10-11,

81; The Victim, 13,

81-95:

Dream Songs

96, 225, 232,

126-

27, honesty about alcoholism in

Dream Songs

169, 250, 182, 210,

211,256, 275, 292, 283, 300, 365, 310, 356, 127-32; drinking

stereotyped alcoholic, 15, 17,

and

82-85, 189 (n. 3), fears of skid row, 85-87, alcoholic's courage, 87-88, union with alcoholic, 90-94. See also

& Other Poems,

spiritual despair,

Alcohol; Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

David Dances," 141; Love

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy

121: avoidance of alcoholism,

alcohol and Jews,

style of,

171-72; Henry's Fate 121, 138-40:

sober a day at a time, 138, sobriety

undermined by

fears,

138-40,

141-43; "King

& Fame,

drinking; Cheever, John;

134-36, escape from alcoholic

Hallucinations, alcoholic

bondage, 136; Recovery, 122, 133,

Bergreen, Lawrence, 5

139; Sonnets 33, 37, 93: sex and

Bergson, Henri, 147. See also

drinking, 122. See also Alcohol;

Comedy

Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy

9-10, 16, 119- 43, 171-75; supposed selfpity, 5, 172; no poete maudit, 120- 21; honesty about

Biographical fallacy, the, 3

alcoholism, 121, 123, 127-32;

Blake, William: "London,"

self-deception about alcoholism,

Bogart,

121, 123-27, 129, 133-36, 174;

Boswell, James, 124; as modern, 172;

struggle against alcoholism, 121 —

ambivalence toward drinking, 173;

Berryman, John, 4-5,

22,

7,

133-43: and changing

attitude

drinking; Modernism; Writer,

modern, drinking or alcoholic

66

Humphrey, 152

as alcoholic, 173; Boswell: The

toward, 130-32; Berryman and

Ominous

"Henry," 122; alcoholic defiance,

Boswell Laird of Auchinleck, 173;

126-27, 172; receives Guggenheim Fellowship, 129; drinking, suffering, and

Alcohol; Alcoholic, the;

Years, Boswell in Extremes,

Life of Johnson,

Modernism

173-74. See

also

-222Index

Bowery,

94

the, 85, 92,

alcoholic in, 63; "Reunion," 65:

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 119

domestic harm of alcohol

Broadway, 82, 85

67-69; "The 102

Bruccoli, Matthew,

Scarlet

Van," 11, 13, 66, 69: critique of

Bukowski, Charles, 16

stereotyped alcoholic

Bunyan, John, 20;

alcoholism as

Pilgrim's Progress,

Vanity Fair episode

in,

Moving

of,

in,

75-78,

vital spirit in,

77-78; "The Seaside Houses":

74

Burke, Kenneth, 146

domestic harm of alcohol

Burns, Robert, 46, 126, 144

69-70; "The Sorrows of Gin,"

Buttitta,

Tony: After the Good Gay

problematic alcoholism

64- 65,

Times, 106

Swimmer,"

65- 66: ambivalence toward

Cape, Jonathan, 19

43-44

drinking

Raymond, 12, 172, 175; "Drinking While Driving," 12 Catholic, Catholicism, 39, 41, 44 Cheeverjohn, 7-8, 10-11, 13, 15, Carver,

62-80, 144, 171, 173; challenge to definitions of alcoholism, 8,

on drinking and

15;

society,

72-75. See

in,

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy drinking; Bellow, Saul; Modernism;

Writer, modern, drinking or alcoholic

31

Christ, 35; Passion of,

47

Churchill, Randolph,

(n. 8); his

Churchill, Winston, 129

own

69-70, 80;

Columbia

transcendence of social norms,

also

Alcohol; Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

65-75, 187-88 alcoholism,

10:

in, 10,

objection to stereotyped

alcoholic in, 64; "The

Carthage,

in,

University, 119

Comedy: Freud's

ideas

of,

145-46; of

75-80; "The Angel of the Bridge": alcoholism and social disorder in,

manners, or Restoration, 146, 149,

66; "Artemis, the Honest Well

162; idyllic or "green world," 146,

Digger," "The Brigadier

and the

153, 159; Frye's ideas

167; Bergson's ideas

of,

of,

146, 153,

146-47,

Golf Widow," "Brimmer": drinking

162, 164; childlike character

66-67; Bullet Park: alcoholism and comedy in, 62-63;

150. See also Alcohol

Communist

"The Day the Pig

Contemptus mundi,

and

sex,

Fell into the

Well," 64: moderate drinking in,

70;

"An Educated American

Woman,"

63, 67; Falconer, 78:

acceptance of addiction

in,

79-80;

of,

Manifesto, the, 127

44-45

Cornford, Francis M., 159 Crane, Hart, 120

Crane, R.

S.,

120

Cross, Richard,

30

"The Five-Forty-Eight": drinking

and sex

in,

66; "The Fourth

Alarm," 78; "Goodbye,

My

Brother," 65, 79: moderate

71-72; "The Leaves, the Lion-fish and the Bear": drinking and homosexuality in, 78-79; "A Miscellany of Characters That Will Not Appear,"

drinking

in,

11: objection to stereotyped

Damrosch, Leopold, Dante

Alighieri:

Jr.,

144

The Divine Comedy,

28 Dartmouth College, 100, 117 Davis, Kathe, 142 Day, Douglas,

20-21

Days of Wine and Roses, 16 DeQuincey, Thomas: The Pains of Opium, 90

-223Index

Dickey, James, 11-12, 121, 140,

172-73, 175; "Bums, Waking," 11, 173 Disraeli,

On

Crack-Up," "Crazy Sunday": denial

Benjamin, earl of

of alcoholism

Beacons field, 83

Don

Quixote,

in the

29-30

Anonymous;

alcoholism

26,

54-56,

in,

Stories:

Hobby

48, 178 (n. 2); distinction between

the;

Anonymous;

112-13

College Days," 117-18. See also Alcohol; Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

Song of J. Alfred

150-51 Robert C, 76, 148

Prufrock,"

112, 135

32

Faulkner, William, 4 F. Scott, 4, 6-7, 9-10, 96-118, 121, 135, 171-72;

Fitzgerald, 16,

worsening alcoholism, 100; bender at

68

102

Freud, Sigmund, 56, 145, 150, 157.

Comedy

Frye, Northrop, 146. See also

Comedy Fuchs, Daniel, 7

Gingrich, Arnold, 115

115

11, 18,

or heavy

modern, drinking or alcoholic

See also

Four Quartets, 153-

Esquire, 105,

115-16, 116-17,

alcoholic guilt in "Pat Hobby's

Forel, Dr.,

Eden, 27, 31

Everyman,

of,

Fitzgerald, Zelda, 6, 9, 102, 106,

East Side, the, 85, 93

Elliott,

103-4; The Pat

comedy

as fantasy figure,

Five Easy Pieces,

54; "The Love

honesty

105-8; "One

drinking; Modernism; Writer,

Alcoholism or heavy drinking

Eliot, T. S.:

Leaf": in,

Anonymous; Alcoholism

58. See also Alcoholic, the

Drunkard's Holiday, The, 102

Drunkenness. See Alcoholic,

New

Trip Abroad": vacillation about

Hobby

names of individual authors Drunk driving, 12, 37 Drunk or drunkard, the, 6, 18, alcoholic and, 8, 15, 39,

Decade," "A

about alcoholism

and

Hallucinations, alcoholic;

Eble, Kenneth, 104, 107,

104,

in,

99-100, 172, 111-12; "The Lost

Alcoholism or heavy drinking;

Alcoholics

109- 15; "Family

drinking or alcoholic

99

Drinking. See Alcohol; Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

in,

Wind," The Great Gatsby,

"Her Last Case": romanticized

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 7 Dreiser, Theodore,

105-6, 16, 10897-100, 103, 105; "The

the alcoholic in, 9, 112,

Dartmouth, 100-101, 116-17;

100-106, 108-18, 174; refusal of AA, 101; correspondence, 101-2; honesty about alcoholism, 105-9, 118;

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Faust,

20 Goodwin, Donald W., 4 Graham, Sheilah, 96, 100-101, 104,

106-7, 117 Great Depression, the, 9, 166 Guernica, Spain, 32

denial of alcoholism,

Haffendenjohn, 121, 124, 132, 142 Hallucinations, alcoholic, 9, 15,

18-35, 92, 171, 190

(n. 13),

191

alcoholism nursed or mothered,

(n. 3); scientific vs. literary analysis

107, 112; "An Alcoholic Case,"

of, 9;

"Babylon Revisited," The Beautiful

imagination, 19, 21, 30, 171;

and Damned: honest treatments of

mingling with

expression of alcoholic's

reality, 19,

21-22,

-224Index

4

Kazin, Alfred,

Hallucinations (continued)

25-27: and relationship with reality, 26-35; moral and spiritual

Keats, John, 11

connections

Kerouac, Jack,

20, 22; auditory,

of,

20, 22, 27, 29; difference from

drug hallucinations, 20, 178

(n. 8);

persecution and violence

2020-

in,

21, 29; paranoiac character, 21,

179

23,

25-26, 34, 178

(n. 11); terror of, 21,

(n. 7),

(n. 12); definition of, 23,

exploring truth or

30-35; comedy (n. 15);

179

30;

reality, 24,

of,

24-25, 180

prophecies or prophetic

Kennedy, William: Ironweed, 16

19,

6, 10, 19;

BigSur,

175

Lardner, Ring, 102

Lawrence, D. H., 134 Lentricchia, Frank, 7,

146

Lewis, Sinclair, 4 Literature,

modern. See Writer,

modern, drinking or alcoholic London, England, 156, 168 Lowry, Malcolm,

7, 10, 18-22, 25, 30-32, 47, 171, 175; jailed

symbols, 31-32. See also Alcohol;

27,

Alcoholic, the; Alcoholism or heavy

in

drinking; Lowry, Malcolm: Under

hallucinations in, 21; October Ferry

the Volcano

to

Hart's Island,

New York

City,

86

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 76 Ernest, 4,

Hey en, William, 132 Hollywood, 112, 115 the,

Gabriola, 30; Under the Volcano,

7, 9, 13, 15,

18-35, 115, 135,

18-35, and comedy

101-2, 109

Herbert, George, 172

Holy Land,

letters,

175: alcoholic hallucinations in, 9,

Hayter, Alethea, 170

Hemingway,

Oaxaca, Mexico, 20;

of, 24-25, 32-35, 180 (n. 27), of possible salvation, 34-35, compared with Brideshead

as allegory,

Revisited, 47. See also Alcohol;

44

Alcoholic, the: heroism;

Homer, 116 Hugo, Richard, 16

Alcoholism or heavy drinking;

Hyde, Lewis, 120-22

modern, drinking or alcoholic

Hallucinations, alcoholic; Writer,

Luke, Gospel Ireland,

of,

135

129-30

Irish-American or Irishman, 107, 115

McCollom, William, 163

Mann, Thomas, 13 Jackson, Charles, 16, 19; The Lost

James, William, 13 Jeffs,

Rae,

Soak, 12

5-6

Jellinek, E. M.,

Jews, 83, 85,

Marlowe, Christopher, 20, 31, 142 Marquis, Don, 12, 145; The Old

Weekend, 16, 18

Mather, Cotton, 72

Matson, Norman, 31

129

87-89, 97-98, 115

Johnson, Samuel, 61, 124, 172,

Meredith, George, 164 Meredith, William, 140

174-75;

as "postmodern," 172,

Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), 112

174-75; 174-75;

hostility to drinking,

Mexico, 22-23, 134-35; Parian, 19,

wife's drinking,

174-75.

See also Postmodernism

Johnson, Vernon, Jung, C. G., 45

8, 39, 51,

27, 33; Oaxaca, 20;

Quauhnahuac,

27, 32; Tlaxcala, 28; Tomalin, 28,

54-55

33; Chichen Itza, 134 Mississippi River, 119

-225Index

Modernism: alcohol and altered consciousness, 170; late

modernism and

alcohol,

Oxford University, 37-40, 42, 44, 156, 160

171-72. Parker, Dorothy: "Big Blonde," 16

See also Boswell, James;

Postmodernism

127

Pascal, Blaise,

Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 163

Perkins, Maxwell, 102

Montgomery, Robert, 112

Plath, Sylvia,

120

Moore, Brian: The Lonely Passion of

Poete maudit,

119-20. See

also

Berryman, John Polhemus, Robert M., 144-45

Judith Hearne, 16

Morocco, 42, 45

Postmodernism: skeptical of benefits Newlove, Donald,

4, 10,

New York City, 86, 105 New York Public Library,

172

of alcohol, 175. See also Johnson,

Samuel; Modernism

92

Potter's Field, 82,

Nicholson, Jack, 69

Noah, 83

Nobel Prize

86

Powell, Anthony: Afternoon Men, 3

119

Prairie Schooner,

for literature, the,

4

Princeton University, 122, 135 Prohibition, 16, 170

Ober, Harold, 102

Old Testament,

Prometheus, 77

the,

83

Pulitzer Prize,

O'Neill, Eugene, 4, 8, 16, 48, 61,

119

Puritanism, 71

115; as periodic alcoholic, 48; as reformed alcoholic, 48; in

Raleigh,

characters of The Iceman Cometh,

Rembrandt, 135

John Henry, 107

61; The Iceman Cometh, 7-8,

Reynolds, Joshua, 174

15-16, 48-61:

Rimbaud, Arthur, 119

travesty of

AA, 49-53, pipe dreams and

Rivera, Diego,

27

52-55, 60, difference between alcoholic and drunk, 54-56, Hickey's polarities, 56-58, Larry's polarities, 58-61; Long

Robinson,

Perdido and Bed

alcoholism,

Day's Journey into Night, 52;

Moon for

A

the Misbegotten, 107. See

also Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

I

Story,

Jill:

I

Time

132

Roethke, Theodore, 119

Roman

Catholic, Catholicism. See

Catholic, Catholicism

Romantic movement and drugs, the,

170

99- 100

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy

Roth, Martin, 6,

drinking; Writer, modern,

Rousseau, Henri, 24

drinking or alcoholic

Russell, Pee

Wee, 105

Ornstein, Robert, 142

Orwell, George, 162, 164-65; Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 12, 144,

162, 165, 167, 169: Gordon's

Saturday Evening Post, 102 Schulberg, Budd: The Disenchanted,

101

powerlessness, 163-66, alcohol

Schwartz, Delmore, 119-20, 133

and

Seabrook, William, 110

vitality,

166-67, and

acceptance of

life,

168-69;

Nineteen Eighty-four, 166. See also

Alcohol;

Comedy

Shearer,

Norma, 112

Simpson, Eileen, 122; The Maze, 132 Socrates,

137

-226Index

Sophocles, 162

trilogy, 47.

Spanish Civil War, the, 23, 32

Alcoholic, the; Alcoholics

Spender, Stephen, 7

Anonymous; Alcoholism or heavy

Steinbeck, John, 4

See also Alcohol;

drinking

Whitman, Walt, 124

Stevens, Wallace, 120

Williams, Tennessee, 119

Terry-Thomas, 23

Wilson,

Bill:

cofounder of Alcoholics

Thalberg, Irving, 112

Anonymous,

Times Literary Supplement, 123,

also Alcoholics

131-32

6, 45, 91, 138. See

Anonymous

Wilson, Lois, 6 Winter Carnival, 101

Wordsworth, William: "Tintern

University of Iowa, 119

Abbey," 158 Vidal, Gore,

World War

119

II,

32, 156, 165

Writer, modern, drinking or

Waugh, Evelyn, 17, 36-40, 4344, 46-47, 171; Brideshead Revisited, 7, 13-15, 36-47, 110: psychological and physical

symptoms

of alcoholism

38-

symptoms of alcoholism, 41-42, partial

43-45, and objections to this view, 45-46, Brideshead compared with the Volcano, 47; Decline

A

Dust, 36, 47; Sword of

of, 3,

their

biographies

susceptibility of

work, of,

modern

writer to alcoholism, 4:

of literary criticism

42-43

alcoholism as means to salvation,

Under

3, 15; failures of

and

and

objections to this view, 4; failures

40, spiritual

Fall 78; Diaries, 47;

on work

5; alcoholic writers

3-6;

in,

recovery from alcoholism,

alcoholic, 3; focus

and

Handful of

Honour

also Alcoholic, the;

of,

6-7. See

Alcoholism or

heavy drinking; Modernism; and names of individual authors

Yeats,

W.

B.:

"Crazy Jane Talks with

the Bishop," 20

"Most this

critics

who have

considered the

ties

between writing and drink

in

century have done so in piecemeal fashion, usually with the stress on

biography rather than the works themselves. Thomas Gilmore is the first to address the subject broadly and with attention to its specifically literary im-

and he does

plications,

so with deftness

and

authority."

—Richard K. Cross,

University of Maryland

Of the

—

American Nobel Prize winners in literature, three Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, and William Faulkner were alcoholic drinkers, and two Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck were hard drinkers. Almost eight

— —

—

all critical

somehow is

comment about

these writers has treated their drinking habits as

separate from their work.

Thomas Gilmore

neither good biography nor good literary criticism.

argues that the result

He shows how

the

drinking and the work can each shed light on the other.

Although readers and

critics

acknowledge that many modern writers

tend to be heavy drinkers, Equivocal Spirits drinking as

it is

is

the

first

depicted in literature, both by writers

full-length study of

who have had

drink-

and those who have not. This interdisciplinary study of science and literature explores the ways scientific knowledge of alcoholism may enlighten the reader as well as the means by which literature may confirm, intensify, dramatize, extend, and occasionally even challenge empiriing problems

cal studies.

Examining the work of Malcolm Lowry, Evelyn Waugh, Eugene O'Neill, John Cheever, Saul Bellow, E Scott Fitzgerald, John Berryman, Kingsley Amis, and George Orwell, Gilmore evaluates the major genres of modern literature drama, poetry, the short story, and the novel for their distinctive portrayals of drinking or alcoholism. He argues that good literature resists stereotyping the alcoholic and portrays instead a figure divided into a welter of conflicting feelings. Gilmore shows that literature conveys the complex struggle in a fictional character or in a real person in a way that cannot. science which must be diagnostic, analytical, and objective Thomas B. Gilmore is professor of English at Georgia State University.

—

—

—

—

ISBN 0-8078-4174-9

The University

of North Carolina Press 2288 North Carolina 27514

Post Office Box

Chapel

Hill,

Illustration

by Ed Lindlof

Printed in U.S.A.