Alcohol in 20th Century Literature

hoody

I'm just beginning a Final Year Project on "Alcohol & the Male Character in 20th Century Literature". Now of course I'll be including the obvious writers (Hemingway for instance) but I'd really like to hear if anyone knows of authors writing about this subject during the Prohibition era, during either of the World Wars, or of anything that ye might think would be relevant.

Cheers for looking

H

simu

Bukowski maybe? Sorry if he's one of the "obvious ones" - I don't know! All I remember is reading some short stories of his about drunks and down-and-outs and they were extremely vivid to me!

The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill is a great work and is set in a bar in 1912, exploring the dregs of society.

Amazotheamazing

F Scott FitzGerald, wrote during the 1920's, wrote about alcoholism in several of his books and short stories, was an alcoholic himself. Perfect fit.

p.pete

Possibly not quite the right era but The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson.

John

Not in the eras you asked for but it's still 20th century, Stephen King's The Shining is about alcoholism.

gaf1983

"Down and out in Paris and London" by George Orwell has some accounts of drunkeness in the slums of Paris, there's some line about an anarchist who becomes a patriot after too much to drink.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt has the effect of the narrator's father's alcoholism father on the rest of the family as a bit of a running theme.

Most of the male characters in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting aren't exactly adverse to a few bevvies either.

Corndog

You should take a look at William Styron's Darkness Visible. It's a quick read about his desent into depression. One passage stands out about how his alcoholism or use of alcohol influenced his writing, interesting.

Also Kerouac has some stuff about drinking too much and the effect it was having on his life in Dharma Bums.

I suppose you've already looked a Bukowski, Behan et al.

BossArky

Slightly off topic but if I read whilst drunk then the next morning I cannot remember what I read.

John

I can't read while drunk. Just doesn't work.

BossArky

Read a page or two of Ulysses when drunk and you may find it makes more sense than when sober.

John

BossArky wrote:

Read a page or two of Ulysses when drunk and you may find it makes more sense than when sober.

I just might

Blush_01

If you can manage to make any sense out of Joyce... that man wrote nonsense, but people bought it - he's dead now, what's the point in arguing with it?

I know it may have nothing to do with it, but Alisdaire McLeod's "No Great Mischief" features alcohol heavily. I love a splash of Canadian fiction in things.