"The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot."
These words, on the printed page, had the unsettling effect no doubt intended, but with a difference. At once, he put the book aside; closed it, but with his fingers still between the pages....This in case he wanted to look at it again. But he did not need to. Already he knew the sentence by heart....Now, as he relaxed his grip and dropped the book to the floor, he said aloud to himself: "That's me, all right." The book hit the rug, and the Scottie looked up from its basket. "You heard me, Mac!" he called out. "That's what I said!" He glared at the sleepy dog and added, loudly, burlesquing his fear and delight: "It's ME they're talking about! Me!"
He had been alone for nearly an hour. When Wick left, they had had one of their familiar and painful scenes, a scene in which he had played dumb, as usual, leaving to his brother the burden of talking around the subject....
This is the opening from "The Lost Weekend." Charles Jackson wrote it and sold it to the movies, and the Billy Wilder production became more famous than the book itself (though I hear the movie isn't as great as the book). Jackson was a semi-closeted homosexual who struggled with drinking, and "The Lost Weekend" was almost nakedly autobiographical. After "Weekend," Jackson struggled to find another subject. He had some success with "The Sunnier Side," which apparently collected all the most gossipy and most shocking stories from his--Jackson's--own hometown. Then Jackson went quiet for a long while and finally had a mild resurgence with a novel about sex addiction. Shortly thereafter: the end of Charles Jackson.
Jackson's biographer, Blake Bailey, has a specialty: men with terrible addictions. John Cheever: drunk and closeted homosexual. Richard Yates: drunk and lunatic. Charles Jackson: drunk and uncomfortable with his sexual orientation. In every Bailey book, the terrible mess at the center is also a genius artist, and you read on and on because you're fascinated by the tension between the messiness and the brilliance, the self-destruction and the creativity. Bailey's next subject will be Philip Roth--and I'm worried about that. I'm worried because Roth was more or less functional. Can Bailey write well about a guy who actually paid his bills and held himself together (give-or-take) until death?
Anyway, you can see what is great about "The Lost Weekend." Jackson is able to mock and mythologize himself, as Amy Schumer does, or as Edward St. Aubyn does. There's a "Send in the Clowns" vibe. I especially like when the main character "burlesques" his own terror and delight. Such a complicated moment: The main character already knows he is going to drink, and this knowledge both dazzles and repels him, and he also has nothing he can make out of his self-knowledge. All he can do is mock himself, for an audience of one--his dog. There's a creative impulse behind self-mockery: We might wonder what the narrator could do with that creativity, if he had some self-control. And so we are rooting for him, even though we know he is doomed. (I also like the attention to subtext and evasiveness: Drinking forces everyone to become a liar, including the main character's brother. The main character, consumed with self-loathing, simply watches as his brother queasily dances around the ugly subject no one wants to talk about. "I'm leaving you alone and I want you to swear not to take a drink.")
Jackson was a Literary True Believer; he loved words. His choice of epigraph is Shakespeare: "Can you get from him....why he puts on this confusion? Grating so harshly all his days of quiet....with turbulent lunacy?" In other words, how do you explain self-murder? What causes some people to antagonize themselves? The main character will go on a crazy journey, pleading with barmen for extra drinks, pawning prized possessions for drug money. He will hallucinate. At the end of the novel, he will be right back where he started, lying to himself to justify one "mere" extra guzzle. The tone is unsparing and sometimes even funny. If you have ever struggled with your own failing will power (in other words, if you're human), then you can relate.
Jackson doesn't get the attention given to some other gay male novelists (Cheever, Michael Cunningham, Proust, Hollinghurst). But that ought to change. "The Lost Weekend" is a smart, bitchy, morbid account of the human comedy, and it doesn't feel dated. Mostly. Not if you ask me. It's a missing piece in the history of gay male American writing. Jackson's narrator seems to be a cousin of the self-deluded protagonist in "The Swimmer," or the lost man at the center of "The Country Husband." Despair--"transmogrified" into art. Worth checking out.
These words, on the printed page, had the unsettling effect no doubt intended, but with a difference. At once, he put the book aside; closed it, but with his fingers still between the pages....This in case he wanted to look at it again. But he did not need to. Already he knew the sentence by heart....Now, as he relaxed his grip and dropped the book to the floor, he said aloud to himself: "That's me, all right." The book hit the rug, and the Scottie looked up from its basket. "You heard me, Mac!" he called out. "That's what I said!" He glared at the sleepy dog and added, loudly, burlesquing his fear and delight: "It's ME they're talking about! Me!"
He had been alone for nearly an hour. When Wick left, they had had one of their familiar and painful scenes, a scene in which he had played dumb, as usual, leaving to his brother the burden of talking around the subject....
This is the opening from "The Lost Weekend." Charles Jackson wrote it and sold it to the movies, and the Billy Wilder production became more famous than the book itself (though I hear the movie isn't as great as the book). Jackson was a semi-closeted homosexual who struggled with drinking, and "The Lost Weekend" was almost nakedly autobiographical. After "Weekend," Jackson struggled to find another subject. He had some success with "The Sunnier Side," which apparently collected all the most gossipy and most shocking stories from his--Jackson's--own hometown. Then Jackson went quiet for a long while and finally had a mild resurgence with a novel about sex addiction. Shortly thereafter: the end of Charles Jackson.
Jackson's biographer, Blake Bailey, has a specialty: men with terrible addictions. John Cheever: drunk and closeted homosexual. Richard Yates: drunk and lunatic. Charles Jackson: drunk and uncomfortable with his sexual orientation. In every Bailey book, the terrible mess at the center is also a genius artist, and you read on and on because you're fascinated by the tension between the messiness and the brilliance, the self-destruction and the creativity. Bailey's next subject will be Philip Roth--and I'm worried about that. I'm worried because Roth was more or less functional. Can Bailey write well about a guy who actually paid his bills and held himself together (give-or-take) until death?
Anyway, you can see what is great about "The Lost Weekend." Jackson is able to mock and mythologize himself, as Amy Schumer does, or as Edward St. Aubyn does. There's a "Send in the Clowns" vibe. I especially like when the main character "burlesques" his own terror and delight. Such a complicated moment: The main character already knows he is going to drink, and this knowledge both dazzles and repels him, and he also has nothing he can make out of his self-knowledge. All he can do is mock himself, for an audience of one--his dog. There's a creative impulse behind self-mockery: We might wonder what the narrator could do with that creativity, if he had some self-control. And so we are rooting for him, even though we know he is doomed. (I also like the attention to subtext and evasiveness: Drinking forces everyone to become a liar, including the main character's brother. The main character, consumed with self-loathing, simply watches as his brother queasily dances around the ugly subject no one wants to talk about. "I'm leaving you alone and I want you to swear not to take a drink.")
Jackson was a Literary True Believer; he loved words. His choice of epigraph is Shakespeare: "Can you get from him....why he puts on this confusion? Grating so harshly all his days of quiet....with turbulent lunacy?" In other words, how do you explain self-murder? What causes some people to antagonize themselves? The main character will go on a crazy journey, pleading with barmen for extra drinks, pawning prized possessions for drug money. He will hallucinate. At the end of the novel, he will be right back where he started, lying to himself to justify one "mere" extra guzzle. The tone is unsparing and sometimes even funny. If you have ever struggled with your own failing will power (in other words, if you're human), then you can relate.
Jackson doesn't get the attention given to some other gay male novelists (Cheever, Michael Cunningham, Proust, Hollinghurst). But that ought to change. "The Lost Weekend" is a smart, bitchy, morbid account of the human comedy, and it doesn't feel dated. Mostly. Not if you ask me. It's a missing piece in the history of gay male American writing. Jackson's narrator seems to be a cousin of the self-deluded protagonist in "The Swimmer," or the lost man at the center of "The Country Husband." Despair--"transmogrified" into art. Worth checking out.
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