Customer Reviews

Recovery

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

 

 

John Berryman was working on "Recovery" when he died, and in these pages there is hope of some ultimate victory over addiction. In the character of Alan Severance is the thinly-veiled personality of the poet himself, self-deprecating and perfectionist, attempting to overcome despair in a hospitalized addict's routine of recognition and confrontation. It is by no means an uplifting triumph to acknowledge that he got this far in the struggle -- but that he got this far, and then despaired, says much about the power of alcohol to ruin even the power of hope. This novel will change any romantic notions the reader may have about art and the role of drugs in the life of any artist.

Philistine that I am, I am not surprised to find myself out of my league when reading great poets; so when the first few chapters of this book of prose seemed incomprehensible I began to feel, once again, in over my head. I continued to read, however, and slowly I was able to make sense of what I was reading as the abstract language of a sick artist fell away to reveal a concrete human plight. Ironically neither this book nor John's recovery reached a conclusion, the book was published unedited by the author, posthumously - unfortunately John ended his life and his struggle with alcohol shortly after the events that inspired the book took place. I was horrified by the few lucid descriptions of what life is like in a treatment center, an asylum run by the inmates (former inmates), where the cure was browbeating and humiliating confrontation. Having struggled with alcohol myself, I am grateful that I never checked into one of these indoctrination camps. But then again I am an unqualified critic in denial!

Berryman did not survive his alcoholism. In 1972, while still writing this thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, he abandoned his attempts to recover from the addiction that had made his life a living hell and jumped from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father killled himself in 1926, when Berryman was twelve, an event which haunted Berryman and many of the images in his poetry. Berryman's suicide shadows my reading of the book (especially since both my brothers also committed suicide as a direct result of addiction -- April is the Cruelest Month - [...]

Set in the 1960s, in RECOVERY, Dr. Alan Severance wakes up from a blackout one morning to discover he has once again been confined to the alcoholic treatment wing of a hospital. He is, this time, determined to liberate himself from his disease, to face it head on and with rigorous honesty. Following the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, he struggles to take the first step - "To admit we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable." He confesses his humiliations, defeats, and delusions in an attempt to cleanse himself and achieve the humility necessary to recovery. Although the novel is clearly unfinished, unpolished and unedited, Berryman's sharp wit, humanity and intelligence are evident throughout. There are pacing problems, and the recovery-model examined is dated. One can't help but wonder what revisions Berryman might have made if he had been able to defy despair.

There is an interesting forward by Saul Bellow, in which he says, "Inspiration [for Berryman] contained a death threat. He would, as he wrote the things he had waited and prayed for, fall apart. Drink was a stabilizer. It somehow reduced the fatal intensity. Perhaps it replaced the pubic sanction which poets in the Twin Cities (or in Chicago, in Washington or New York) had to do without. This sanction was not wickedly withheld. It simply did not exist. No one minded if you bred poodles. No one objected if you wrote Dream Songs. Some men of genius were fortunate. They could somehow come to terms with their respective countries. Others had women, the bottle, the hospital. Even in France, far from the Twin Cities, a Verlaine had counted heavily on hospitals and prisons." Of course, the truth is that coming to terms with that shriek into the silence is something all writers, save for the anointed few, must contend with, and although I think Bellows, and perhaps even Berryman, romanticize it, that's what writers are prone to do, too, I'm afraid, and I count myself in that number.

If you are interested in my own voyage through the turbulent waters of alcoholism and writing, please read my essay, "When there's no sky left" - [...]