WRITING AND DRINKING; PART ONE
Other than writing itself, no behavior is more often associated with the writing life than drinking. For this reason alone, writers do well to avoid the subject. What can be left to say? From the biographies of famous boozers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, to Mailer to Cheever, up to Caroline Knapp’s very good personal memoir on the subject, Drinking: A Love Story, we have been down this road many times.
Perhaps, then, it’s just the challenge that makes this heavily mined topic register with me this morning. Can I come up with anything new?
In the seventies and eighties, I attended several summer writers’ conferences. Thinking them over, and comparing them with the last conference I was involved with in the New Millenium, I see some stark contrasts.
The first conference I attended was in 1977, in Rochester, New York. It took place on the University of Rochester campus, and was the brainchild of L.J. Davis, a novelist. Some notable figures were there, either flown in to deliver inspirational talks, or hired to run workshops.
I wasn’t in his group, but the star workshop leader that year was William Gaddis. His fifties-era novel, The Recognitions, was considered a later representative of the High Modernism associated with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and many others. He had recently published his second novel, J.R.
The only reason for mentioning Gaddis is that, at the end of each afternoon’s class session, the various groups of poets, short-story writers and would-be novelists came from their meeting rooms and congregated in the lobby. Magically each afternoon, someone had prepared a trestle table for our arrival: bottles and setups, cheese, chips, nuts.
At later conferences I attended, this same scene was repeated with jug wine and beer. But at Rochester, conference director Davis's personal sense of happy-hour decorum required--in abundance--gin, scotch, rum, vodka, and bourbon. But probably not tequila. Jimmy Buffett hadn't yet made the scene, so tequila’s time as a staple in the booze canon was yet to come.
Gaddis was at all other times quiet, even furtively reserved. He was then in his fifties, small and good-looking, tanned, always dressed smartly, usually in a linen suit. Other than a question or two that I asked of him at these cocktail hours—invariably answered obliquely--what I remember about Gaddis is seeing him, exactly at five o'clock, striding purposefully out of his classroom ahead of his students, calling “Whisky time! Whisky time!”
The room was soon filled with cigarette smoke, the volume increasing steadily as whisky time worked its magic. What it did was lubricate a multi-generational collection of strangers, all of them self-absorbed, self-described writers and poets who were not usually chatty. Alcohol did what it does: people talked, compared notes, laughed, postured, became grandiose or combative.
It was fun, a well-deserved reward after a day of listening to and commenting on the inspiring, inferior work of other members in your group. Or after sitting silently with arms folded, forced to hear the depressing work of pure genius produced by someone other than yourself.
Alcohol, tobacco and creative work are what the writers of Mad Men dumped in the blender to produce a frothy hit TV series. Something of this mood was present at that first conference. It was breezy, unencumbered by thoughts about calories, brain cells and lung cancer, electrolytes, early-onset dementia, liver or kidney disease, hypoglycemia, diabetes, etc.
It was an innocent time, made possible by an ignorance that would soon end. I know new delights have taken the place of our primitive pleasures. But my memory of that first conference is sepia-tinged. It was a happy time, and however much it compromised my various systems and ductwork, I have no regrets.
HERE'S THE BOOK
