Customer Reviews

A Drinking Companion: Alcohol and Writers' Lives

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book immensely. It describes the wanton and horrific drinking habits of twelve of the most gifted writers/poets of the 20th century with a brutally comic eye for all the sordid details. Especially awful are the behaviors of truly childish and abjectly self-obsessed, abusive thugs such as John Berryman, Robert Lowell and Malcolm Lowry, as are the twisted antics of Anne Sexton who, for all her talent, was at heart a shameless courtesan with more mental illnesses than you could shake a stick at.

However, for all this book's skill and deft reporting, I was completely baffled by the sheer number of typos, missing words and errors in grammar and usage that appear on almost every page. Many mistakes appear as though the book was edited by someone whose first language is not English. I was disappointed that such a well-written book *about literature* was diminished by the sloppy proofreading and editing.

A great read. I heard about this book when the author was interviewed on NPR a while back. Not sure what attracted me to "A Drinking Companion." I guess I wanted to figure out if it was that writers are such creative beings that the only way they can handle that creativity and life is by losing themselves to drink. Or perhaps I was trying to figure out how these great writers were able to produce such incredible works of literature? I'm not sure I have the answers to these questions, but I certainly know a lot more about the lives of these tortured souls -- and what they went through to deliver their works of art to readers. I especially liked being introduced to Dashiell Hammett and Marguerite Duras.

I actually got this book off [...], because it sounded interesting...little did I know how enthralled I would be in this book. Like other reviewers have stated, the book has different chapters on different writers and their drinking and social/family problems. Many stories are heartbreaking, especially Anne Sexton's and John Berryman's. I have heard that many writers from our past had alcohol problems and mental illness, but, this book really shone the light on their lives and told the story well, really informing you of their TRUE character; I even learned about writer's I have never heard of before (and will be searching their work out). If you like Biographies about writers, or even biographies about people and life's choices...you will not be disapointed! This book was a very quick and entertaining read! I adore Kelly Boler's work!

I bought this book as a gift for a friend who has a journalism major. After she read it, she passed it on to me and said I had to check it out. I read it during every free second I had in the next week. I was very impressed that this is the author's first book, although the number of typos in it is horrifying. Anyhow, each featured author's life is a whirlwind of chaos and self-destruction with a little bit of time left over for writing. I plan to read the works of some of these people, especially the ones with which I had been unfamiliar. Great read, sad topic, but I guess people who have seen and done it all are the most qualified to write about anything they set their minds to.