Why Writers Drink
Three very warm reviews of Olivia Laing’s The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink.
Olivia Laing’s . . . book takes its title from a line in Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It’s an apt phrase for a book about writers and alcoholism, with its combined dose of the sublime and the helplessly mortal. But “Echo Spring” is only the liquor cabinet, named after a brand of whiskey.
The alcoholic writer’s sense of mortality is key. F Scott Fitzgerald, an insomniac, had an annihilating vision before sleep; he imagined he was only one of the dark millions riding forward in black buses toward the unknown.
I neither want it [brandy] nor need it, but I should think it pretty hazardous to interfere with the ineradicable habit of a lifetime.
Churchill.
Fear, flying and freedom
The one and only Jeb Corliss now fully recovered.
Toole’s Legacy at Tulane
Oakeshott Association Conference Programme
Here is the programme for the MOA meeting at Colorado College.
Images of Jazz Greats
Some wonderful colour photos by Nat Singerman. (H/T to Ricky Riccardi).
Happy Endings
No, not that but it might as well be. Here is the very excellent Lorin Gaudin on desserts (or puds as we Brits like to call it). By the way, I had the best sticky toffee pud I’ve ever tried in Toronto a few nights ago at House on Parliament – the rest of the meal was very good as well.
Free Jazz in Armstrong Park
Kafka’s ruminations on summer
On this day in 1904. (By the way, the image is by Warhol, 1980).
I was amazed at the stalwart technique for living some people have.
From One Second to the Next
Werner Herzog’s PSA documentary on texting and driving. What concerns me as well is the flip side to the coin: my daughter blithely walking in front of a vehicle while texting and with earphones in, her presence of mind severely compromised. I’ve seen her and others do it.
On why he stressed emotion over graphic visuals
“What was proposed to me immediately made sense. It immediately gave me the feeling I’m the right person because I don’t need to show blood and gore and wrecked cars. What I wanted to do was show the interior side of the catastrophes. …
“It’s a deep raw emotion — the kind of deep wounds that are in those who were victims of accidents and also in those who were the perpetrators. Their life has changed and they are suffering forever. They have this sense of guilt that pervades every single action, every single day, every single dream and nightmare.”
On why he included people who have caused accidents while texting
“The real essential thing is we have to see what is happening — and it’s not just an accident, not just the mechanics of an accident. It’s a new form of culture coming at us and it’s coming with great vehemence. …
“You can tell, for example, when you look at schoolyards. Kids sit around but they don’t talk. They’re all texting. And accidents have happened at a staggering rate. I mean, it’s skyrocketing. The statistics are incredible.”
On why the PSA is so lengthy
“Originally I was supposed to do four spots, 30 seconds long, but I immediately said these deep emotions, this inner landscape can only be shown if you have more time. You have to know the persons. You have to allow silences, for example, deep silences of great suffering.”
