“You’re writing has a sort of whiskey under the moon style”
- Sol Brah during the Sol x Winston podcast. Listen to us talk about vices + creativity here.
Hemingway said “if you want to get to know a city, don’t go to it’s courthouses, go to it’s bars instead.” He was an alcoholic and shot himself.
Bukowski nearly drink himself to death, hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer only to survive and start writing the words we read now. You’ve heard of Hunter S Thompsons daily schedule… (a slight exaggeration…)
… and one of his most famous quotes of all time, ““I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.” He shot himself in the head with his revolver at age 67. Stephen King used so much cocaine, drink so much beer while writing Cujo that he doesn’t remember it. This is of his best books of all time. Keith Richards partied all night, using cheese to fuel the madness before passing out in the early hours of the morning only to ‘wake up from a dream’ and scribble down what would become I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. Kerouac wrote On The Road during a two week Benzedrine bender (a popular amphetamine at the time.) He died at 47 from an abdominal hemorrhaging, a result of years of drink. But I want…
Thanks for ordering your copy of Celebrating The Funeral. The first editions will be shipped in two weeks. They’re raw, just as art should be. If you find typos let me know and I’ll edit them away before second editions get shipped.
… to make it clear I don’t advocate for this. In Celebrating the Funeral I make a conscious effort to never have the protagonist drink. He’ll hold a bottle of Stella, and lick the condensation away while growling to scare the women, but it’s never encouraged through background action to be taken up by the reader. In no way is any vice glamorized… except a cigarette.
My only goal is expound on the drugs/drank, show the slippery slope that exist between vice and art.
Bukowski has a quote,
“Thomas and Behan drank themselves
to death and
there are many others.
and you want to be a
writer?
it’s that kind of war:
creation kills,
many go mad,
some lose their way and
can’t do it
anymore.
a few make it to old age.
a few make money.
some starve (like Vallejo).
it’s that kind of war:
casualties everywhere.
all right, go ahead
do it
but when they sandbag you
from the blind side
don’t come to me with your
regrets.
now I’m going to smoke a cigarette
in the bathtub
and them I’m going to
sleep.”
I’ll share my personal journey with these things after the wall of text below. Tilt an eye.. see how deep the well runs…
Bukowski is referencing Dylan Thomas who died at 39 from excessive drinking. Robert Louis Stephenson wrote 60,000 words in 6 days on cocaine. Coleridge’s Kubla Kahn was inspired by an opium dream. The opium habit killed him later on. Dickens smoked opium. Yeats had a hash addiction that he kicked. Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffanys while drinking a couple martinis every morning. Faulkner says he never wrote while drinking… uh drink while writing… but was known to drink daily. Poe was an alcoholic. Thomas de Quincey got famous from being addicted to opium and writing about it. Burroughs was a heroin addict (re. Junkie). One time in Mexico, he told his wife to put an apple on her head. They were all drunk, having a good time and so she does it, she stands a couple dozen yards away and Burroughs lines up a shot with his pistol only to…
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