Roth, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Lowry... would they have been better writers without alcohol?

One of the first books by Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) after returning to Buenos Aires, after studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, was titled The Extraction of the Stone of Madness . Something she never achieved, but even without achieving it, her poetic creation was brilliant and fruitful. She received scholarships, awards, and support from writers such as Octavio Paz and Julio Cortázar , but her career was interrupted by various bouts of severe depression that drove her to suicide on several occasions. She finally achieved it while living in Buenos Aires, through an overdose of barbiturates . She was thirty-six years old. Her biographers emphasize that her constant consideration of herself as a foreigner—her origin was Ukrainian—plus the constant comparison with her more-than-perfect sister, may have contributed to shaping a person with multiple severe psychophysiological problems such as stuttering, overweight, acne, and asthma, which some Argentine psychoanalyst, of course, interpreted as early metaphysical anxiety. Added to this was a rebellious, eccentric, and sometimes rude attitude, in an intelligent person who, from a very early age, relied on barbiturates and amphetamines. Alongside the development of his difficult personality, his passion forliterature grew.

Paris drove her mad with pleasure and anxiety, with company and solitude. She associated with some of the most important writers of the 20th century. She underwent psychoanalysis and managed to connect her poetry with the altered mental contents that were increasingly emerging.

The fusion of an intensely passionate life, literature, and the influence of his intellectual relationships, with a poorly managed homosexual and heterosexual sexual life, created states of great excitement and anxiety. Added to this was the fact that his surroundings celebrated his excesses . He began taking pills to help him write and others to help him sleep. He had to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals several times. His poetic output declined. It wasn't feasible in his current state of mind.

His poetry is neither easy nor complacent. The blend of childlike happiness and the presence of death is both powerful and powerful. His final lines:

"I don't want to go anymore"

That to the bottom"

One of the many definitions of personality is that of a system for achieving personal balance . When circumstances become difficult, the necessary personality modifications cause it to become bizarre, strange, or clearly maladjusted. Although sometimes these personality changes are not seen as crazy or inappropriate.

If the narrative we're producing about ourselves becomes unacceptable, it becomes necessary to activate some process to cope with it. One of these is to develop obsessive thoughts that focus on a minor issue (pollution, cleanliness, etc.) and, to a certain extent, elude the anguish of the painful thought, thus returning us to a state of relative equilibrium. A rigidity of character serves a similar function, preventing us from expanding our horizons of understanding and perception. This definition can also be applied to delirium . A necessary mistake , as Castilla del Pino titled his essay on the subject. It consists of inventing a convincing narrative that is removed from the painful and intolerable reality for the sufferer. It may also happen that the altered and disturbing narrative is only serious for oneself, without becoming unacceptable. In this case, anxiety or depression will exercise their dominance in the mental realm without altering the judgment of reality. In short, we can view psychological symptoms as forms of expression of a narrative that is becoming unacceptable to the person who hides it and compensates with symptoms that can ultimately be lethal. Therefore, it is useful to understand psychological symptoms as the product of a poorly articulated narrative, even for the patient themselves. This can be so intense and invasive that the person loses connection with their own reality. The world around them is perceived as something external, objective, and alien, in which they have no participation. These are delusions and hallucinations.

Let's reconsider the possible relationship between psychosis and literary creation . Castilla del Pino insists, contrary to what is often claimed, that for the delusional, their ideas are not a belief they hold, but evidence they have. Hence, they are so irreducible to criticism and experience. Certainly, delirium is a psychopathological problem and also a dimension of the human condition, always in need of being someone, of having an explanation, of understanding something of what happens to them, even if they do so through a crazy narrative. This is why it is an evolutionary process. One doesn't fall into delirium, one arrives at it. Human beings don't live in a reality they know and grasp objectively, but rather they create that reality in an egocentric and egotistical way, from and for themselves. And this is not a defect or a moral problem. It is the human essence and, therefore, unchangeable . The human being, Castilla del Pino maintains, lives installed in error. More frivolously, we're all a little crazy. This makes reality a little closer to what we want or need. Despite this, it's an adaptive error. It helps us live more easily.

We always want to confirm that what we feel, believe, and perceive is true. This is a mistaken desire that, despite this, is often desirable. The problem lies in that we don't always do it in an appropriate and well-adapted way, and in extreme cases, it has consequences. In this case, we are dealing with the delusional individual and his difficulties integrating into his community and managing his own life. Correcting this error is very difficult and always painful, as it leaves the person vulnerable. When Don Quixote briefly accepts being Don Alonso Quijano, he is plunged into desolation . This acceptance is a form of conversion; it's like Paul of Tarsus falling from his horse and radically changing his life. For better or worse. The usual thing is to persist in the error and even increase it , so that life and its interpretation become rigid and limited. Real delirium, not literary delirium, is boring, no matter how florid it may appear.

We live in error, in narrative, in a false theory about the world. We can't do without that. It's useful. This reality of storytellers brings us all a little closer to literature, but only a few are capable of building from that approximation what we call literature.

A particular case within personality disorders is alcoholism . Its consumption is both the cause and effect of many disorders. This curious psychoactive substance, used according to archaeological records since the dawn of humanity, has the peculiarity that at moderate doses it dissolves the boundaries that structure brain function. It produces a certain liberation from the rational and moral controls with which the mind is endowed, to ensure proper integration into group structures. This freedom is exploited by some people to be a pain in the ass, while for others it constitutes a good springboard for developing the creativity of the imagination. This is the case of William Faulkner . His influence on literature lies both in technical aspects—think of the development of the interior monologue, multiperspectivism, the oral nature of the narrative, the non-chronological use of time in the story—and in thematic aspects: the decline of a family, failure, the creation of his own fictional territory in which to base a cycle of stories, the obsession with history, the combination of localism and universality. Faulkner was often self-absorbed, with little interest in formal education, and a very dedicated writer. In fact, he was compulsive in at least three activities: reading, writing... and drinking. Any moment was a good time to do it. Some critics attribute the most impressive technical discoveries mentioned to alcohol. In that case, it would be the most spectacular and fruitful effect of a pathology as destructive as alcoholism. In any case, this effectiveness did not last long. Drinking eventually won the battle and stifled his creativity . By that time, he had managed to write some of the most important works of world literature.

Equally relevant is the case of Francis Scott Fitzgerald who, between his complicated love affairs and terrible alcoholism, only had time to write five works , all of them magnificent... Soft is the night In all of them, he reflected the fear of losing his youth and attractiveness, the horror of decadence , and the fear of failure. Perhaps his frivolous life can be understood as a defense. He wrote: "I am equally fed up with life, liquor, and literature."

Not very different is the story of writers, perhaps not as important but very valuable, like Charles Bukowski (1929-1994), capable of precise descriptions of a terrible, desolate, and cynical world . An example: Erections, exhibitions, and general stories of ordinary madness. According to what is said, on his tombstone is written: "Don't try it."

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) achieved literary success, although his life was marked by many problems. The rise of Nazism forced him to flee Vienna, and he wandered through many European cities until he settled in Paris, where he eventually died.

In his novel The legend of the holy drinker , Andreas Kartak's character finds himself immersed in a disoriented and nihilistic existence . He seems a carbon copy of the world the author himself was experiencing: abandonment, exile, identity crisis, decadence and severe alcoholism. It is believable given the eve of the Second World War . Roth wrote in cafés surrounded by bustle and chaos. They say he drank a Pernod a page . He claimed: "That's really me: evil, drunk, but lucid." In fact, Hermann Kesten , his friend and editor, said that "even his madness had the flavor of poetry."

The legend of the holy drinker is related to works about jesters, or rather, prophets, madmen, and loners. In it, Andreas, instead of choosing a path of sobriety and action, leans toward alcohol, just like Roth. This leads him to a satisfying unreality at times, but as time progresses, to destruction and delirium tremens . Roth was a steadfast and fragile man who paid dearly for his desire to be independent, not giving up until his brain collapsed.

It's impossible to write about literature and alcohol without mentioning Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957), who lived for those two passions, obsessions or destructions, depending on how you look at it. A writer, a turbulent, passionate and self-destructive man like few others . He and his wife moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, in an already futile attempt to save their marriage and give up alcohol. He was unsuccessful. They separated and he remained in Oaxaca , totally dedicated to the consumption of tequila and mezcal . This is the period narrated in his great novel Under the volcano .

He subsequently traveled through various places until he reached Great Britain with his second wife, where he died from excessive drinking and psychoactive drugs. In the last stages of his life, alcohol was more powerful than he was. Perhaps his death was caused by delirium tremens, but others believe it was suicide or even due to a blow inflicted by his second wife. It matters little.

Under the Volcano is a descent into hell , symbolically set on the Day of the Dead, in which the character, Geoffrey Firmin, gets drunk to the point of delirium. It is inspired by the author himself, who was British Consul in Cuernavaca.

In the novel, he recounts a true story of a dead man standing next to a horse being stolen by a Mexican. From that moment on, and throughout the Day of the Dead, he constructs a moving, erratic, delirious, and gripping narrative. And at times confusing and jumbled. It is the story of a man who, like Lowry himself , chose to drink rather than live. And he did so until his death. He drank, a friend said, oceans of tequila and mezcal until he achieved a strange sobriety. Attempts at psychiatric help didn't work. Despite his excesses , he managed to finish the novel after ten long years of work , and to publish it despite rejections from numerous publishers. He left unfinished a work with a beautiful title: Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Lies .

Curiously, Under the Volcano corresponds to a part of a trilogy in the style of the Comedy Dante 's with hell, paradise, and heaven. He never appeared in those last two places. Today he is a benchmark of 20th-century narrative.

Roth, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Lowry... would they have been better writers without alcohol? We'll never know. The fact is that, for them, straddling the line between sanity and madness allowed them, for a time, to access a world that is otherwise almost impossible to penetrate. It also destroyed them. Therefore, one cannot make a frivolous and senseless praise for their excessive consumption; let's not forget that the vast majority of alcoholics are just that, alcoholics and nothing more. Jon Fosse , Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2023 , said in an interview after winning the prize: " I have never been able to write when I drank . I became sentimental, I lost precision, sharpness, focus, clarity."