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Thirsty Muse Pa

Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Neill. All great American writers; all alcoholics. And, as Tom Dardis convincingly argues, the work of each suffered grievously from the disease.

In their early years, drink could be seen as a liberating force, even as a Faustian pact with creativity. But it took its toll: each of the four had, by the age of forty, sacrificed the creative drive. Their late writings, alas, show the effects; only O'Neill quit drinking, and went on to write The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night.

Dardis carefully examines the hereditary and environmental influences on each man. He also explores the strange and pernicious link between alcohol and creativity among American artists, a mix that is rarely evident among their European counterparts. This is a remarkably revealing study of the writer as a drink and of a time when, as Hemingway put it, "Good writers were drinking writers."

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 304
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780395574225
  • Release date
  • 1991