Charles Jackson (1)Reseñas

his is a wild ride of a book. Don is a struggling writer, and a massive alcoholic. His brother reluctantly leaves him alone for a long weekend, and Don goes on a bender. He does whatever he can to make sure he has his next pint of booze, lie, steal, borrow if he can. It is a definite cautionary tale for the toll that alcoholism can take on a person. Excellent read.

There is so much in this. I wish I could take a class on it. The gay stuff is especially interesting as it is coming from a totally different kind of perspective. I don't really understand it. Great clear writing.

Good, but it reminded me of a bell--one that is perfectly tuned and true, but essentially only plays one note. Definitely a must read in the addiction and alcoholism genres.½

Heavy book, there’s a lot going on, definitely need to reread½

First published in 1946, this is a very brave and insightful novel. A long neglected classic, deservingly republished by Valancourt Books. I found the exploration of the prevailing attitudes of the characters, both male and female, very interesting. Naivety, generalizations of normal behaviour and rigid societal conventions reigned supreme. John’s continual doubts about the normalcy of his feelings and the legitimacy his marriage was particularly insightful.

As was probably quite common at the time, men who experienced same-sex attraction, agonizingly convinced themselves that it was a moral weakness and a wicked temptation that must be overcome. This could simply be achieved with the love of a good woman. The heteronormative path the only way forward, leading to socially acceptable lives of loveless marriages, shame and desperation.

Modern readers may find the novel frustrating and overly melodramatic, but it’s an incredibly telling piece of social history.½

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3089967.html

It’s as grim reading as the film is grim viewing, tight third throughout, vividly realised, and without the film’s happy ending.

Don Birnam is bisexual in the original novel, but firmly straight on screen; in the book, his ambiguous sexuality is part of the root of his addiction - which of course rather ignores the fact that in real life, many alcoholics are entirely secure in their sexual identities; but I guess Jackson had to tell the story he himself knew best.

The penultimate section of the book has Don hallucinating at his girlfriend Helen’s apartment, rather than his own - this gives a stronger sense of displacement, and of course reinforces the point that when he does get home he starts drinking again, ending the book in the same place he started, only worse off.

Several of the great visuals of the film (including the opera scene) were written for the screen and were not in the original book. The passage in the hospital is memorable in a very different way in the book - the nurse, Bim Nolan, hints at seducing Don as part of his treatment, though Don is not really interested either in being seduced or in being treated. (In fairness this is hinted at on screen, but it is text rather than subtext in the original.)

Well-written, eye-opening, Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend is a very good book. However, I can't say I enjoyed reading it. I picked it up, put it down, until I finally made myself finish it today. It just isn't pleasant spending so much time inside the head of an alcoholic.

This extended internal monologue of a gay alcoholic loose on the streets of Manhattan was in very modern in many ways despite its 1936 setting. Jackson gets very deep into the erratic, diseased alcoholic logic; his depictions of hangovers and lust for alcohol are moving and at times comic. The passing characters are a mix of distinct portraits (e.g., Bim, the nurse in the drunk tank at the hospital) and weak caricatures (e.g., the hostess at the narrator's customary bar). Indeed, the female characters in particular suffer in depth relative to the males. But what ultimately doomed this work was its repetition and length; it desperately needed an editor. The interminable dream sequence on his last day was both unnecessary and distracting.

Don Birnam is thirty-three, unemployed, supported by his younger brother, and he's an alcoholic. His brother is desperate to block Don's access to liquor, but Don manages to get left behind in Manhattan instead of going for the weekend in the country his brother planned. Don's weekend is spent drinking, finding money to buy liquor, stealing, pawning and hitting people up for money to buy liquor, worrying about running out of liquor, hallucinating and passing out. Don swings between feeling sophisticated, imagining himself as a literary professor lecturing on Fitzgerald or a great Shakespearean actor, to loathing himself for his weaknesses, his treatment of friends and his sexuality.

This is deeply introspective, with little dialogue. Don lives in his head, which tortures him, but the author really lays the delirium on pretty thick. His hallucinations and delirium seem more in line with heroin use than alcohol, even if Don is throwing back enough to kill a horse in an hour. My copy is only 244 pages, but the story would have benefited from losing around 60 pages, as Don's drinking, worry and hallucinations turned into an endless cycle a hundred pages in, then, after so much suffering, the ending had too much of a "all's well that ends well" feeling. I'd expected something more.

In LT hebben sommigen dit boek als trefwoord 'pulp' gegeven, maar dat is m.i. ten onrechte. Hoewel ik begrijp dat de vreselijk foute kaft doet vermoeden dat het hier een pulpboek betreft, stijgt dit boek daar zowel qua stijl, als qua psychologische karaktertekening ver bovenuit.
Het boek gaat over een universitair docent met huwelijksproblemen. Tijdens een vakantie in Florida met zijn vrouw ontmoet hij een studente van hem met haar vriend. De hoofdpersoon raakt gefascineerd door deze jongeman, maar of zijn kijk op de situatie wel helemaal realistisch is, is maar zeer de vraag. Zowel de huwelijkscrisis, als de identiteitscrisis van de man nemen steeds ernstigere vormen aan. Het einde is tamelijk dramatisch en wellicht wat 'over the top'.
Het boek zal misschien niet zo'n ruim publiek aanspreken als 'The Lost Weekend', maar het verdient zeker een herwaardering (en heruitgave met andere omslag).

In this short story collection Charles Jackson portrays small town life, in Arcadia, New York, including the darker side. Class distinction, corrosive gossip, repressed sexuality and deep concern about the opinions of others are all represented. Don Birnam, the alcoholic in Jackson’s first novel, “The Lost Weekend,” is represented as a boy in this collection.

In “A Night Visitor” the black sheep of a family drops in, much to their embarrassment. The story feels unfinished though. In “The Break” a boy helps capture an escaped convict, and carries out his first betrayal in the process. In “The Benighted Savage” social forces, and a clueless father, make a boy think that masturbation will be the end of him. ”You’ll be stunted, finished, an idiot in the crazy house, with ruined health, dead!”

A boy enjoys the festive atmosphere surrounding America’s entry into WWI in “How War Came to Arcadia, N.Y.”. “I was enjoying the war, I was determined to get the most out of it.” Although unrelated to the war, he also has fun discovering the meaning of words like “whore” in the dictionary: “It was a wonderful moment.”

Jackson cared about literature. “In real life we are something less than our best self, the best self that is brought out, widened, and deepened, by literature.” He also offers some truths about writing in the title story, which takes the form of a letter to a fan: “The writer’s job and life are a solitary one, no one can help him, all the king’s horses cannot drag him to his typewriter unless he goes there by himself with something of his own.”

Apparently borrowing heavily from his childhood, Jackson created his own version in Arcadia in “The Sunnier Side,” originally published in 1950. In addition to the previously mentioned taboo subjects, alcoholism, self-hatred, promiscuity and infidelity, and men with three children that claim to have never seen their wife naked are all represented here. Jackson wasn’t afraid to write about issues that most writers wouldn’t touch.

Wow. I can't say I've read many books centered on addiction to begin with, but I also find it hard to believe that anyone has ever written as believable an account of it as this. Don Birnam is clearly a man who is more introspective and sensitive than most, but he is also a man completely beholden to the vice of liquor. He will do absolutely anything (well, almost anything) for a drink, all the while understanding that his desire will lead to nothing more than wanton destruction. From the very beginning of the weekend and the novel, Don fully acknowledges that he knows exactly the path he will take in his quest for booze and further that he understands where this quest will ultimately lead. He knows he is hurting many more people aside from himself, but he persists with his behavior because he quite literally cannot stop. Hospital visits, near-run-ins with the law, a lack of money...all of these are minor obstacles for Don as he seeks out alcohol. Mr. Jackson has captured the mindset of the alcoholic perfectly (he unfortunately speaks from experience) and it is a paralyzing sad account indeed.

I think what struck me most was Don's understanding of self, even while drunk, while still being completely powerless to stop his own sickening behavior. There are only a few true events that occur to Don over the course of his lost weekend, but through the lens of these happenings he truly examines every nook and corner of his psyche. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the addict or for anyone who wants to observe how one singular, terrible character flaw can absolutely render destruction at every turn.

Of all the novels I’ve read about alcoholics, I think Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend (1944) comes closest to giving you an idea of what it’s like to be an alcoholic. It’s probably only remembered today because of Billy Wilder’s surprisingly good movie adaptation, which garnered four Oscars, including best picture of 1945. The book is not very well written – Jackson is awkward and his literary references and dips into stream of consciousness come across as pretentious – but its realism and unflinching honesty still shock.

The semi-autobiographical story revolves around a five-day drinking binge rife with blackouts, humiliations and overwhelming desperation. The protagonist, Don Birnam, is a failed writer tortured by his repressed homosexuality and guilt towards his younger brother and his girlfriend. The book is so agonizing largely because of Birnam’s self-awareness; he realizes how horribly he’s acting and how helpless he is to stop it. There are many harrowing scenes, but possibly the most distressful one has Birnam, in terrible physical pain and desperate for another drink, hobbling through New York City looking for a place to pawn the coat he stole from his girlfriend.

Lacking any humor and suffused with anxiety and regret, The Lost Weekend is a tough read. Where the movie ends in an ambiguous note – optimistic viewers could interpret the scene as a turning point in Birnam’s drinking – the book does not offer any palliatives. Neither does the author’s life – after a long period of sobriety he relapsed and eventually committed suicide.

Judging from the book’s modernist flourishes, I think Jackson would have preferred to have written Under the Volcano, but he clearly didn’t have the chops. Which might have been a good thing, as too much art would have blunted his novel’s impact.

You've seen the movie, now read the book! And discover in the process that the hero is hitting the bottle, not because he has writer's block, as portrayed by Ray Milland, but because he is a closeted gay man. I guess Hollywood wasn't ready for that in 1945.