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The Lost Weekend
Don Birnam is a sensitive, charming and well-read man. Yet when left alone for a few days by his brother, he struggles with his overwhelming desire for alcohol, succumbs to it and, in the resulting prolonged agony, goes over much of his life up to and including the lost weekend.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
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5261 people want to read
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Charles Jackson
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 303 reviews
September 3, 2018
This is a gripping novel about an alcoholic trying to survive a long weekend in Manhattan. The story follows a struggling writer, Don Birnam, who can't get anything written because he's so focused on finding his next drink. It's one of the best novels about alcoholism I've read.
I became interested in the book after reading Leslie Jamison's description of it in her nonfiction work "The Recovering." I would highly recommend both books for those interested in addiction.
Meaningful Passage
"The telephone finally stopped ringing and then didn't ring any more. He looked at the clock. It was half-past nine. The room was filled with light, a kind of glare reflected from the bright sun on the back of the apartment building across the garden. He turned his head on the pillow and looked around to see where the bottle was and found it. Oh there it was all right. On the table. A great big quart. Large as life and twice as empty.
"Was he ever going to learn? Ever be wise and smart and sober enough one night, or one day, to see that he had something put by for tomorrow? Did he always have to drink it all up? Was he going to keep on forever and ever being trapped for a fool, by no one but himself?
"He got up to see if was really empty but really empty, he meant of the last little slip. It was. Trust him. Trust the drunken hog of the night before. And the stupid fool. Never put off till tomorrow what you can drink today, that's me. This was hangover. But the real thing."
I became interested in the book after reading Leslie Jamison's description of it in her nonfiction work "The Recovering." I would highly recommend both books for those interested in addiction.
Meaningful Passage
"The telephone finally stopped ringing and then didn't ring any more. He looked at the clock. It was half-past nine. The room was filled with light, a kind of glare reflected from the bright sun on the back of the apartment building across the garden. He turned his head on the pillow and looked around to see where the bottle was and found it. Oh there it was all right. On the table. A great big quart. Large as life and twice as empty.
"Was he ever going to learn? Ever be wise and smart and sober enough one night, or one day, to see that he had something put by for tomorrow? Did he always have to drink it all up? Was he going to keep on forever and ever being trapped for a fool, by no one but himself?
"He got up to see if was really empty but really empty, he meant of the last little slip. It was. Trust him. Trust the drunken hog of the night before. And the stupid fool. Never put off till tomorrow what you can drink today, that's me. This was hangover. But the real thing."
December 13, 2013
Fantastic novel. The most acute portrayal of alcoholism I have ever read. Joins my alcoholic canon alongside John Barleycorn by Jack London, Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys and Factotum by Charles Bukowski. This book feels like a descendent of Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky and Hunger by Knut Hamsun in its intense portrayal of a pathological personality you can partially identify with (or maybe that's just me). I don't know why it isn't more celebrated.
October 7, 2018
Arrivederci alla prossima ricaduta
Posso dire che un romanzo che parla di alcolismo è bellissimo? Sì, posso dirlo, perché lo è. Giorni perduti è il racconto dell’inesorabile discesa agli inferi di Don Birman, scrittore in crisi, in cui albergano gli stati d’animo che nutrono la disperazione: rimorso, rabbia, vergogna, disprezzo, timore di fallire… Un uomo che inganna quelli che gli vogliono bene, che promette e non mantiene (non è capace di mantenere), che ruba, che arriva a dare in pegno la sua macchina da scrivere (il suo strumento di lavoro), perché l’alcolista è disposto a fare qualsiasi cosa per ottenere l’alcol di cui ha disperatamente bisogno. Qualsiasi cosa.
Quanto al resto, l’intreccio è costituito da divagazioni, domande senza risposta, incubi, delirium tremens con spaventose allucinazioni e un finale nient’affatto consolatorio.
Giorni perduti (titolo originale: The Lost Weekend) è diventato anche un film; diretto da Billy Wilder e interpretato da uno straordinario Ray Milland, nel 1946 ottenne ben quattro premi Oscar (film, regia, attore protagonista e sceneggiatura non originale), oltre alla Palma d'oro a Cannes.
https://youtu.be/N0-wNWJxGFM
Qui Oreste Del Buono presenta brevemente il film:
https://youtu.be/63A4qzkfvkk
Posso dire che un romanzo che parla di alcolismo è bellissimo? Sì, posso dirlo, perché lo è. Giorni perduti è il racconto dell’inesorabile discesa agli inferi di Don Birman, scrittore in crisi, in cui albergano gli stati d’animo che nutrono la disperazione: rimorso, rabbia, vergogna, disprezzo, timore di fallire… Un uomo che inganna quelli che gli vogliono bene, che promette e non mantiene (non è capace di mantenere), che ruba, che arriva a dare in pegno la sua macchina da scrivere (il suo strumento di lavoro), perché l’alcolista è disposto a fare qualsiasi cosa per ottenere l’alcol di cui ha disperatamente bisogno. Qualsiasi cosa.
Quanto al resto, l’intreccio è costituito da divagazioni, domande senza risposta, incubi, delirium tremens con spaventose allucinazioni e un finale nient’affatto consolatorio.
Giorni perduti (titolo originale: The Lost Weekend) è diventato anche un film; diretto da Billy Wilder e interpretato da uno straordinario Ray Milland, nel 1946 ottenne ben quattro premi Oscar (film, regia, attore protagonista e sceneggiatura non originale), oltre alla Palma d'oro a Cannes.
https://youtu.be/N0-wNWJxGFM
Qui Oreste Del Buono presenta brevemente il film:
https://youtu.be/63A4qzkfvkk
February 10, 2019
Last year while reading Ernest Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, I decided to look to see if the movie, Lost Weekend, was based on a book because of the alcohol use of Hemingway in his story. Yes, it was based on Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, (1944). There are so many kinds of drinkers and though a person drinks does not deem him an alcoholic. Having just read, William Inge's Come Back Little Sheba, (1949), which is about an alcoholic and his wife; I decided to read this novel. I had see the movie several times and Ray Milland did a fantastic job as Don Birnam. I will compare the book/movie later under a "spoiler" section.
Alcoholics are usually portrayed as aggressive and abusive but like anything, drinkers vary just as people do, except the alcoholic can not just drink and stop, the only hope is to abstain. I know from experience that alcoholics can be kind people. My step father was one and the harm he did was all to himself, except my mom who stopped working after they married had to start working again. My mom married him when I was 10 and at that time he was successful but with his inability to stop drinking, he lost that position and became a janitor before his death. He died before reaching 50. He was never abusive and when my dad was not there for me this troubled man was more a father to me than my dad ever was, my dad had different troubles. It was hard seeing my step dad drink himself to death. He was a veteran from the Korean War and made this lonely little girl feel love of a parent that my father was unable to give to me. So when I hear or read about alcoholics, my step dad's comes to mind and a sadness for all these troubled souls, so reading this I felt for Don.
Before going onto the review, several excerpts from the foreword of this edition.
"The Lost Weekend—a novel about five disastrous days in the life of Don Birnam—was written in the early 1940s, a time when alcoholism was widely regarded as a moral failing rather than a disease. The publisher, Stanley Rinehart, realized the book would need all the clinical validation it could get, and sent advance copies to medical schools around the country. Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, claimed that the novel captured “the very soul of the dipsomaniac” (“I found myself at the end…full of sympathy and a desire to help”), while another specialist, Dr. Herbert L. Nossen, called it “expert and wonderful—the work of a courageous man.”
Author of Asylum, William B. Seabrook comments
"There go I but for the grace of God” and all that stuff, in that horrible, hopeless, cumulative nightmare this guy’s devil-guided pen (or portable) has envoked [sic]. I’ve suffered as a drunk but not like that and hope to Christ I never will. It’s the only book that ever scared me. It should be soberly read by every white-collar souse in America. If it doesn’t scare the liver, lights and daylights out of him as it did me, it means the poor bastard has softening of the brain and is already sunk.… As it happened, Seabrook was then in the midst of a final alcoholic relapse; twenty months later he’d kill himself with an overdose of sleeping pills, though friends claimed it wasn’t a matter of deliberate suicide so much as “another drastic attempt to accomplish what he had tried, vainly, all his life to do—to get away from himself.” Jackson would have understood only too well.
"The movie, released less than two years after the novel, almost swept the Oscars—winning Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, as well as Best Actor for Ray Milland, a Welshman hitherto known as a competent light comedian for supporting roles. A near teetotaler, Milland had been coached in the ways of drunkenness by the novel’s author—a balding, impeccably groomed middle-aged man whose weird combination of wistfulness and zest put the actor in mind of “a bright, erratic problem child.”
In the movie homosexuality was not brought up as you read his story, the struggles of Don with this is apparent and quite unclear how he really see his sexuality.
"Everyone, it seemed, had read his book and experienced an almost Seabrook-like shock of recognition, regarding Jackson (as one journalist put it) “in the manner of a returned war hero…of a man who had been through hellfire and emerged bloodshot but unbowed.” By then Jackson had been sober for almost a decade and was appalled by how readily people identified him with his narcissistic, crypto-homosexual, writer-manqué protagonist. “One third of the history is based on what I have experienced myself,” he told Louella Parsons and others, “about one third on the experiences of a very good friend whose drinking career I followed very closely, and the other third is pure invention.”
"Jackson himself was doing just fine: a devoted family man (the married father of two daughters) and chairman of the Alcoholics Anonymous chapter in New Brunswick, New Jersey—a man who now freely admitted that he was indeed Don Birnam, and hence his many hospitalizations for drug- and alcohol-related collapses in the twenty years since his famous first novel had been published. To be sure, he could afford to be candid by then; very few people had any idea who Jackson was, and even those happy few tended to muddle the matter. “I have become so used to having people say ‘We loved your movie’ instead of ‘We read your book,’” said Jackson, “that now I merely say ‘Thanks.’"
"For his part Jackson never stopped fighting against his later obscurity, and finally was even willing to sacrifice his hard-won sobriety in order to resume writing, which he’d found all but impossible without the stimulus of drugs or alcohol. A recurrence of tuberculosis resulted in the removal of his right lung in 1963, and while recuperating at Will Rogers Hospital in Saranac Lake, Jackson was given medication that not only reduced his pain but restored his creative impulse. By 1967 he was back on the Times best-seller list with a novel about a nymphomaniac, A Second-Hand Life, and was eager to resume work on his long-awaited “Birnam saga,” the first volume of which was to be titled Farther and Wilder. According to his editor at Macmillan, Robert Markel, Jackson had finished at least three hundred pages of this magnum opus when, in 1968, he took a fatal overdose of Seconal at the Hotel Chelsea, where he’d been living with a Czechoslovakian factory worker named Stanley Zednik."
It was interesting in the story hearing the psychiatrist and the doctors treating him in the hospital.
“[S]ince the publication of Charles Jackson’s somber novel about an alcoholic,” Life magazine had reported in 1946, “an unprecedented amount of attention has been paid to the drinking of alcohol and the problems arising therefrom.” Jackson’s insights were widely cited by such organizations as AA, the National Council on Alcoholism, and the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (where Jackson’s devoted wife, Rhoda, worked for almost fifteen years), until at last the American Medical Association was roused to recognize alcoholism, officially, as a treatable disease."
The story-
Don narrates his experience after his brother leaves for the country. The plan was that a trip to the country would help Don and his brother, Wick could keep an eye on him but Don makes excuses. The lives of his brother and his girlfriend, Helen are concentrated on helping him, which makes their lives complicated. Don when alone must find money to drink and his weekend keeps spiraling downwards. Loss of memory, physical and mental deterioration are power for the course and Don reminisces about his past. Can he survive the weekend and will the darn phone stop ringing?
I found this an extremely interesting read from the mind of an alcoholic and Jackson struggles, this is a kind of autobiography but how much is his reality or storyline. This is reality and there is a difference in the book and movie but not enough to the message given
Wonderfully written story of self destruction and the inability to stop.
******Spoilers******
The movie ending was positive one after his struggles and the writing of a book. The book is the start again of the roller coaster. I think his novel was perfect in this bleak ending because it shows reality but the movie gives hope where hope is needed for the general public. There are many success stories but it is not an easy path as the book shows us.
Gloria is portrayed different because though she likes Don and sees him as a gentleman, she is not trying to win him, as in the movie.
Don steals a purse in both but he does not steal for liqueur as in the movie.
Alcoholics are usually portrayed as aggressive and abusive but like anything, drinkers vary just as people do, except the alcoholic can not just drink and stop, the only hope is to abstain. I know from experience that alcoholics can be kind people. My step father was one and the harm he did was all to himself, except my mom who stopped working after they married had to start working again. My mom married him when I was 10 and at that time he was successful but with his inability to stop drinking, he lost that position and became a janitor before his death. He died before reaching 50. He was never abusive and when my dad was not there for me this troubled man was more a father to me than my dad ever was, my dad had different troubles. It was hard seeing my step dad drink himself to death. He was a veteran from the Korean War and made this lonely little girl feel love of a parent that my father was unable to give to me. So when I hear or read about alcoholics, my step dad's comes to mind and a sadness for all these troubled souls, so reading this I felt for Don.
Before going onto the review, several excerpts from the foreword of this edition.
"The Lost Weekend—a novel about five disastrous days in the life of Don Birnam—was written in the early 1940s, a time when alcoholism was widely regarded as a moral failing rather than a disease. The publisher, Stanley Rinehart, realized the book would need all the clinical validation it could get, and sent advance copies to medical schools around the country. Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, claimed that the novel captured “the very soul of the dipsomaniac” (“I found myself at the end…full of sympathy and a desire to help”), while another specialist, Dr. Herbert L. Nossen, called it “expert and wonderful—the work of a courageous man.”
Author of Asylum, William B. Seabrook comments
"There go I but for the grace of God” and all that stuff, in that horrible, hopeless, cumulative nightmare this guy’s devil-guided pen (or portable) has envoked [sic]. I’ve suffered as a drunk but not like that and hope to Christ I never will. It’s the only book that ever scared me. It should be soberly read by every white-collar souse in America. If it doesn’t scare the liver, lights and daylights out of him as it did me, it means the poor bastard has softening of the brain and is already sunk.… As it happened, Seabrook was then in the midst of a final alcoholic relapse; twenty months later he’d kill himself with an overdose of sleeping pills, though friends claimed it wasn’t a matter of deliberate suicide so much as “another drastic attempt to accomplish what he had tried, vainly, all his life to do—to get away from himself.” Jackson would have understood only too well.
"The movie, released less than two years after the novel, almost swept the Oscars—winning Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, as well as Best Actor for Ray Milland, a Welshman hitherto known as a competent light comedian for supporting roles. A near teetotaler, Milland had been coached in the ways of drunkenness by the novel’s author—a balding, impeccably groomed middle-aged man whose weird combination of wistfulness and zest put the actor in mind of “a bright, erratic problem child.”
In the movie homosexuality was not brought up as you read his story, the struggles of Don with this is apparent and quite unclear how he really see his sexuality.
"Everyone, it seemed, had read his book and experienced an almost Seabrook-like shock of recognition, regarding Jackson (as one journalist put it) “in the manner of a returned war hero…of a man who had been through hellfire and emerged bloodshot but unbowed.” By then Jackson had been sober for almost a decade and was appalled by how readily people identified him with his narcissistic, crypto-homosexual, writer-manqué protagonist. “One third of the history is based on what I have experienced myself,” he told Louella Parsons and others, “about one third on the experiences of a very good friend whose drinking career I followed very closely, and the other third is pure invention.”
"Jackson himself was doing just fine: a devoted family man (the married father of two daughters) and chairman of the Alcoholics Anonymous chapter in New Brunswick, New Jersey—a man who now freely admitted that he was indeed Don Birnam, and hence his many hospitalizations for drug- and alcohol-related collapses in the twenty years since his famous first novel had been published. To be sure, he could afford to be candid by then; very few people had any idea who Jackson was, and even those happy few tended to muddle the matter. “I have become so used to having people say ‘We loved your movie’ instead of ‘We read your book,’” said Jackson, “that now I merely say ‘Thanks.’"
"For his part Jackson never stopped fighting against his later obscurity, and finally was even willing to sacrifice his hard-won sobriety in order to resume writing, which he’d found all but impossible without the stimulus of drugs or alcohol. A recurrence of tuberculosis resulted in the removal of his right lung in 1963, and while recuperating at Will Rogers Hospital in Saranac Lake, Jackson was given medication that not only reduced his pain but restored his creative impulse. By 1967 he was back on the Times best-seller list with a novel about a nymphomaniac, A Second-Hand Life, and was eager to resume work on his long-awaited “Birnam saga,” the first volume of which was to be titled Farther and Wilder. According to his editor at Macmillan, Robert Markel, Jackson had finished at least three hundred pages of this magnum opus when, in 1968, he took a fatal overdose of Seconal at the Hotel Chelsea, where he’d been living with a Czechoslovakian factory worker named Stanley Zednik."
It was interesting in the story hearing the psychiatrist and the doctors treating him in the hospital.
“[S]ince the publication of Charles Jackson’s somber novel about an alcoholic,” Life magazine had reported in 1946, “an unprecedented amount of attention has been paid to the drinking of alcohol and the problems arising therefrom.” Jackson’s insights were widely cited by such organizations as AA, the National Council on Alcoholism, and the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (where Jackson’s devoted wife, Rhoda, worked for almost fifteen years), until at last the American Medical Association was roused to recognize alcoholism, officially, as a treatable disease."
The story-
Don narrates his experience after his brother leaves for the country. The plan was that a trip to the country would help Don and his brother, Wick could keep an eye on him but Don makes excuses. The lives of his brother and his girlfriend, Helen are concentrated on helping him, which makes their lives complicated. Don when alone must find money to drink and his weekend keeps spiraling downwards. Loss of memory, physical and mental deterioration are power for the course and Don reminisces about his past. Can he survive the weekend and will the darn phone stop ringing?
I found this an extremely interesting read from the mind of an alcoholic and Jackson struggles, this is a kind of autobiography but how much is his reality or storyline. This is reality and there is a difference in the book and movie but not enough to the message given
Wonderfully written story of self destruction and the inability to stop.
******Spoilers******
The movie ending was positive one after his struggles and the writing of a book. The book is the start again of the roller coaster. I think his novel was perfect in this bleak ending because it shows reality but the movie gives hope where hope is needed for the general public. There are many success stories but it is not an easy path as the book shows us.
Gloria is portrayed different because though she likes Don and sees him as a gentleman, she is not trying to win him, as in the movie.
Don steals a purse in both but he does not steal for liqueur as in the movie.
December 4, 2018
"Η απάντηση δεν ήταν πουθενά, το ποτό ήταν παντού!".
Οι κύκλοι της Κόλασης τελικά δεν είναι εννέα, όπως τους περιέγραψε ο Δάντης - είναι μόνο ένας, ο οποίος επαναλαμβάνεται αέναα. Όποιος εισέλθει σε αυτόν, δεν θα μπορέσει ποτέ να ξεφύγει και αυτό ακριβώς περιγράφει ο Τζάκσον στο μοναδικό του (ναι, όπως και ο "καταραμένος" Malcolm Lowry) αριστούργημα.
Κεκλεισμένων των θυρών, ο Ντον Μπέρναμ δεν επιχειρεί ουσιαστικά να ξεφύγει από τη φρίκη που τον υποβάλλει η στέρηση, απλά μηχανεύεται τρόπους να ικανοποιήσει τη δίψα που ποτέ δεν παύει. Οι άνθρωποι γύρω του που συχνά επιχειρούν να τον σώσουν, δεν ανήκουν στο δικό του σύμπαν, αυτό του αλκοόλ και των αναθυμιάσεών του, απλά θεώνται το δράμα του ως χορός αρχαίας τραγωδίας.
Και στο τέλος; Μα, δεν υπάρχει τέλος (αλλά και αρχή) στην Κόλαση. Άλλη μια μέρα ξεκινά και η Δίψα, αυτή η Δίψα…
Οι κύκλοι της Κόλασης τελικά δεν είναι εννέα, όπως τους περιέγραψε ο Δάντης - είναι μόνο ένας, ο οποίος επαναλαμβάνεται αέναα. Όποιος εισέλθει σε αυτόν, δεν θα μπορέσει ποτέ να ξεφύγει και αυτό ακριβώς περιγράφει ο Τζάκσον στο μοναδικό του (ναι, όπως και ο "καταραμένος" Malcolm Lowry) αριστούργημα.
Κεκλεισμένων των θυρών, ο Ντον Μπέρναμ δεν επιχειρεί ουσιαστικά να ξεφύγει από τη φρίκη που τον υποβάλλει η στέρηση, απλά μηχανεύεται τρόπους να ικανοποιήσει τη δίψα που ποτέ δεν παύει. Οι άνθρωποι γύρω του που συχνά επιχειρούν να τον σώσουν, δεν ανήκουν στο δικό του σύμπαν, αυτό του αλκοόλ και των αναθυμιάσεών του, απλά θεώνται το δράμα του ως χορός αρχαίας τραγωδίας.
Και στο τέλος; Μα, δεν υπάρχει τέλος (αλλά και αρχή) στην Κόλαση. Άλλη μια μέρα ξεκινά και η Δίψα, αυτή η Δίψα…
August 3, 2021
I saw the movie decades ago, so it was good to get around to the book. The book differs somewhat from the movie. Apart from focusing on an unsuccessful writer rather than a successful one and having a homosexual thread they decided to leave out of the film, it has a different ending. I felt the constant stream of thoughts really gave insight into how we think and rationalize our actions. I also loved the way while he was drinking in the bar, he looked in the mirror, got an idea for a novel, plotted it out, and moved straight to focus on the acclaim he would receive without ever getting down to writing a word. I wonder how many of us have been there.
March 10, 2025
Books read back to back often resonate with each other. The Lost Weekend, I realized, overlapped greatly with my last book, Real Life. Both take place over one weekend. Both deal with anxiety, depression, and internalized homophobia. They are both novels of projection and self-absorption.
The Lost Weekend is a 1944 bestseller about a privileged man who is an alcoholic. The text carried incredible propulsive energy—I read it quickly, gripped.
The introduction describes “Don” as crypto-homosexual, a term I had to look up. Don is more than “closeted” though— his denial and lack of self-acceptance is toxic and self-destroying. He is beyond closeted.
He is, in this book, a friend of Dorothy! “A friend of Dorothy” is old-school slang. I wondered if Jackson used this term knowingly, or if his use of the name contributed to its popularity.
(Jackson’s next book, in 1946, The Fall of Valor, also explores homosexuality but I’ve only just heard of it.)
The Lost Weekend was made into an award winning movie, which I have seen. I did not realize from the movie that the character was tortured by same-sex attraction, but that is probably just me being clueless rather than 1940s Hollywood censoring the topic ... right?
The Lost Weekend is a 1944 bestseller about a privileged man who is an alcoholic. The text carried incredible propulsive energy—I read it quickly, gripped.
The introduction describes “Don” as crypto-homosexual, a term I had to look up. Don is more than “closeted” though— his denial and lack of self-acceptance is toxic and self-destroying. He is beyond closeted.
He is, in this book, a friend of Dorothy! “A friend of Dorothy” is old-school slang. I wondered if Jackson used this term knowingly, or if his use of the name contributed to its popularity.
(Jackson’s next book, in 1946, The Fall of Valor, also explores homosexuality but I’ve only just heard of it.)
The Lost Weekend was made into an award winning movie, which I have seen. I did not realize from the movie that the character was tortured by same-sex attraction, but that is probably just me being clueless rather than 1940s Hollywood censoring the topic ... right?
July 16, 2019
This book was quite the eye opener. I have never suffered from alcohol or drug addictions nor have I lived with anyone suffering from this sickness. Sickness it certainly is. How someone arrives at this state, I don't know. I'm sure there are a lot of different causes, both environmental and genetic, but based on this semi-autobiographical account by Charles Jackson, I think that one's mental faculties become seriously impaired.
The Lost Weekend is about one man's nightmarish life. His entire reason to live is to get that next drink. Don Birnam is a writer, we are not informed as to how successful he is. Not very, the reader gathers since he lives with his brother and has no money. What little money he is able to beg, borrow and steal is quickly liquidated, pun intended.
The story takes place in 1936 on the East Side of Manhatten. Don Birnam is sitting in a chair in his brother's apartment. His brother is about to go away for the weekend and he pleads with his brother to come with him. They argue back and forth, but Don is adamant that he is not leaving his chair. His brother finally gives up and leaves.
Thus begins a drinking binge that starts on Friday and doesn't end until the following Tuesday, when his brother returns.
We live inside Don's mind. We know his every thought. We see him lie at the bar, so people will buy him drinks, he lies to the woman at the laundromat who doesn't want to give him money because she knows what he'll do with it, but it's just a loan you see...yeah right...here take it and go away...
We listen to his thoughts as he becomes inebriated and delusional. It's so painful to watch. He takes a taxi to an upscale bar where he drinks himself into believing that he can steal the purse from the woman next to him and get away with it, because he has super powers. He's smarter than everyone else in the whole world. Then the humiliating exposure as the woman and her boyfriend demand the purse back and the bouncer throws him out.
But where can he get the next drink? Where's his money? He has it, then he doesn't have it. Here it is in his coat pocket. Now it's not there. What happened to it? He doesn't know what's going on.
He decides he must sell his typewriter. He carries it blocks and blocks to a pawn shop, but the shop is closed. Why is it closed? He has to carry his typewriter back. It's miserably heavy.
What day is it? Is it still Friday? No it's Saturday.
Then he's in the hospital. How did he end up there? That's right, he fell down the stairs as he was returning to the apartment.
The doctor and nurse treat him and the other patients, it's a ward for drug addicts and alcoholics, like specimens. His head is badly fractured and they want him to stay until he is properly treated, but he refuses. They give him a pain killer which is great! Where can he get more of this stuff? He wheedles the nurse but the nurse won't budge.
He leaves and somehow makes it back home. The phone rings incessantly, probably his brother checking on him, but he won't answer. He doesn't want to speak to anyone or see anyone.
He finds he has to see someone because the woman who has been trying to contact him all weekend finally shows up at his apartment. The janitor has let her in.
She takes him to her house and tries to get him to shower and rest. The next morning when she goes to work, he rifles through her stuff to see if she has any liquor. He finally leaves with her fur coat and goes to hock it.
He was somebody once. Sometimes his thoughts drift to his past. He went to university, taught in university, but somehow he ended up homeless, jobless and obsessing over how to connive another drink.
Charles Jackson wrote this story in 1946. He had a rich source of material to draw on, his own life. He fought his demons for years, but finally, in 1967, in his room in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, he died of alcohol and drug poisoning.
This is a horrible, excruciating and beautifully written book and I highly recommend it.
The Lost Weekend is about one man's nightmarish life. His entire reason to live is to get that next drink. Don Birnam is a writer, we are not informed as to how successful he is. Not very, the reader gathers since he lives with his brother and has no money. What little money he is able to beg, borrow and steal is quickly liquidated, pun intended.
The story takes place in 1936 on the East Side of Manhatten. Don Birnam is sitting in a chair in his brother's apartment. His brother is about to go away for the weekend and he pleads with his brother to come with him. They argue back and forth, but Don is adamant that he is not leaving his chair. His brother finally gives up and leaves.
Thus begins a drinking binge that starts on Friday and doesn't end until the following Tuesday, when his brother returns.
We live inside Don's mind. We know his every thought. We see him lie at the bar, so people will buy him drinks, he lies to the woman at the laundromat who doesn't want to give him money because she knows what he'll do with it, but it's just a loan you see...yeah right...here take it and go away...
We listen to his thoughts as he becomes inebriated and delusional. It's so painful to watch. He takes a taxi to an upscale bar where he drinks himself into believing that he can steal the purse from the woman next to him and get away with it, because he has super powers. He's smarter than everyone else in the whole world. Then the humiliating exposure as the woman and her boyfriend demand the purse back and the bouncer throws him out.
But where can he get the next drink? Where's his money? He has it, then he doesn't have it. Here it is in his coat pocket. Now it's not there. What happened to it? He doesn't know what's going on.
He decides he must sell his typewriter. He carries it blocks and blocks to a pawn shop, but the shop is closed. Why is it closed? He has to carry his typewriter back. It's miserably heavy.
What day is it? Is it still Friday? No it's Saturday.
Then he's in the hospital. How did he end up there? That's right, he fell down the stairs as he was returning to the apartment.
The doctor and nurse treat him and the other patients, it's a ward for drug addicts and alcoholics, like specimens. His head is badly fractured and they want him to stay until he is properly treated, but he refuses. They give him a pain killer which is great! Where can he get more of this stuff? He wheedles the nurse but the nurse won't budge.
He leaves and somehow makes it back home. The phone rings incessantly, probably his brother checking on him, but he won't answer. He doesn't want to speak to anyone or see anyone.
He finds he has to see someone because the woman who has been trying to contact him all weekend finally shows up at his apartment. The janitor has let her in.
She takes him to her house and tries to get him to shower and rest. The next morning when she goes to work, he rifles through her stuff to see if she has any liquor. He finally leaves with her fur coat and goes to hock it.
He was somebody once. Sometimes his thoughts drift to his past. He went to university, taught in university, but somehow he ended up homeless, jobless and obsessing over how to connive another drink.
Charles Jackson wrote this story in 1946. He had a rich source of material to draw on, his own life. He fought his demons for years, but finally, in 1967, in his room in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, he died of alcohol and drug poisoning.
This is a horrible, excruciating and beautifully written book and I highly recommend it.
February 17, 2023
Another fraught, poetic tale of addiction… (cue sarcastic ‘woohoo’). Except, this one is good!
Having recently attempted William S. Burroughs addiction trilogy (Junkie, Queer, Naked Lunch), for me, there feels like obvious comparisons to The Lost Weekend, however I got on much better with Charles Jackson.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Lost Weekend takes us through at full-speed, the protagonist’s long-weekend bender (4/5ish days), a constant quest for excessive amounts of alcohol, who’s only challenge to his quest is paying for it, and the desperate lengths this drives him to.
What I really appreciated about Jackson’s account of addiction, is how we get into the mind of the protagonist, his justifications/delusions for his habit are presented as (almost) plausible in that, we feel his need, his cravings, and understand how his reasonings make sense to him.
So, the reasons for his decent into alcoholism… internalised homophobia is clearly one of the main factors. But there is also the disappearance during childhood of his father – which is cited a lot throughout the book. There are also ‘daydreaming’ passages of being a concert pianist, an actor, a teacher, and lies told about being married with children… all accumulating to the overall sense of a failed existence.
Jackson clearly had his own struggles (dying from an overdose in 1968), and this unfortunate ‘inside knowledge’ is very apparent in the book’s honest, frank, and somewhat horrifying accounts of the protagonist’s struggles.
It is also, I thought, a sympathetic account of alcoholism/addiction. The protagonist argues that alcoholics are not themselves whilst under the influence, and thus should only be judged as such. I think it also goes some way to presenting, as hopefully we can all agree from our modern perspective, that addiction is a disease, rather than a state of mind.
Having recently attempted William S. Burroughs addiction trilogy (Junkie, Queer, Naked Lunch), for me, there feels like obvious comparisons to The Lost Weekend, however I got on much better with Charles Jackson.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Lost Weekend takes us through at full-speed, the protagonist’s long-weekend bender (4/5ish days), a constant quest for excessive amounts of alcohol, who’s only challenge to his quest is paying for it, and the desperate lengths this drives him to.
What I really appreciated about Jackson’s account of addiction, is how we get into the mind of the protagonist, his justifications/delusions for his habit are presented as (almost) plausible in that, we feel his need, his cravings, and understand how his reasonings make sense to him.
So, the reasons for his decent into alcoholism… internalised homophobia is clearly one of the main factors. But there is also the disappearance during childhood of his father – which is cited a lot throughout the book. There are also ‘daydreaming’ passages of being a concert pianist, an actor, a teacher, and lies told about being married with children… all accumulating to the overall sense of a failed existence.
Jackson clearly had his own struggles (dying from an overdose in 1968), and this unfortunate ‘inside knowledge’ is very apparent in the book’s honest, frank, and somewhat horrifying accounts of the protagonist’s struggles.
It is also, I thought, a sympathetic account of alcoholism/addiction. The protagonist argues that alcoholics are not themselves whilst under the influence, and thus should only be judged as such. I think it also goes some way to presenting, as hopefully we can all agree from our modern perspective, that addiction is a disease, rather than a state of mind.
December 8, 2017
Βαθμολογία: 9/10
Φοβερό βιβλίο! Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες κατάλαβα ότι θα είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα που θα με εντυπωσιάσει με την γραφή και την ατμόσφαιρα, αλλά και ότι θα με συγκλονίσει με την δύναμη της αφήγησης και την εξαιρετικά ρεαλιστική αποτύπωση ενός ξεγυρισμένου και ποταπού μεθυσιού. Το βιβλίο μιλάει για τον αλκοολισμό και τις συνέπειες αυτού, όχι μόνο τόσο στην σωματική υγεία του πότη, όσο κυρίως στην ψυχική. Και έχω την εντύπωση ότι όλα αυτά που περιγράφονται στο βιβλίο, όλα όσα κάνει ο αλκοολικός πρωταγωνιστής ονόματι Ντον Μπέρναμ και όλα όσα σκέφτεται στις λίγες μέρες κατά τις οποίες διαδραματίζεται το μεθυσμένο δράμα του, είναι βγαλμένα από την ψυχή του συγγραφέα, είναι παρμένα από δικές του πράξεις και σκέψεις.
Γιατί ο Τσαρλς Τζάκσον ήταν αλκοολικός, μεταξύ άλλων. Και το 1936, χρονιά κατά την οποία διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία, τόσο ο πρωταγωνιστής όσο και ο ίδιος ο συγγραφέας, ήταν τριάντα τριών ετών. Άρα, μπορεί να υποστηρίξει κανείς ότι δεν έχουμε να κάνουμε απλώς με ένα μυθιστόρημα, αλλά ίσως και με ένα αυτοβιογραφικό κείμενο. Όπως και να'χει, μιλάμε για ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο, που όμως δεν ψυχαγωγεί. Δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο που θα διαβάσεις για να περάσεις καλά. Ο αναγνώστης θα περάσει δύσκολες στιγμές, όπως και ο πρωταγωνιστής. Θα νιώσει στο πετσί του την κατάπτωση, την μοναξιά, την μαυρίλα που χαρακτηρίζει τον αλκοολικό Ντον Μπέρναμ. Είναι ένα στενάχωρο βιβλίο, που μπορεί να ταρακουνήσει αρκετούς αναγνώστες, ανάλογα με τις εμπειρίες που έχει ο καθένας με το αλκοόλ. Προσωπικά έχω πιει ελάχιστο αλκοόλ στην ζωή μου. Και μονάχα κρασί ή μπύρα, τίποτα παραπάνω. Οπότε ίσως να μην μπορώ να κατανοήσω απόλυτα την ανάγκη που έχει ένας αλκοολικός για ένα ποτηράκι παραπάνω. Εντάξει, υποθέτω ότι ως ένα βαθμό μπορεί να το κατανοήσω, αν ξαφνικά κάποιος εξαφανίσει όλα τα βιβλία από την Γη, με αποτέλεσμα να μην έχω να τίποτα να διαβάσω. Τότε μάλλον θα τρελαθώ. Γιατί, όπως μπορείτε να καταλάβετε, είμαι εθισμένος στα... βιβλία. Αλλά το καλό με τον δικό μου εθισμό, είναι ότι δεν κάνω κακό στον εαυτό μου. Τουναντίον!
Αλλά τώρα μιλάμε για το βιβλίο του Τζάκσον, όχι για μένα. Ναι, είναι ένα δύσκολο βιβλίο. Και ίσως κουραστικό σε μερικά σημεία, γιατί, μεταξύ άλλων, έχουμε μεθυσμένα όνειρα, ενδοσκοπήσεις και παραληρήματα. Όμως είναι ένα κλασικό στο είδος του βιβλίο, ανελέητα αληθινό και ρεαλιστικό, έντονα γραμμένο, με ατμόσφαιρα σκοτεινή και καταθλιπτική, που δύσκολα δεν θ'αγγίξει με τον έναν ή τον άλλο τρόπο τον αναγνώστη. Λίαν συντόμως θα δω και την ομότιτλη ταινία του 1945, σε σκηνοθεσία Billy Wilder και με πρωταγωνιστή τον Ray Milland, η οποία ευτυχώς ανήκει στην ταινιοθήκη μου.
Φοβερό βιβλίο! Από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες κατάλαβα ότι θα είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα που θα με εντυπωσιάσει με την γραφή και την ατμόσφαιρα, αλλά και ότι θα με συγκλονίσει με την δύναμη της αφήγησης και την εξαιρετικά ρεαλιστική αποτύπωση ενός ξεγυρισμένου και ποταπού μεθυσιού. Το βιβλίο μιλάει για τον αλκοολισμό και τις συνέπειες αυτού, όχι μόνο τόσο στην σωματική υγεία του πότη, όσο κυρίως στην ψυχική. Και έχω την εντύπωση ότι όλα αυτά που περιγράφονται στο βιβλίο, όλα όσα κάνει ο αλκοολικός πρωταγωνιστής ονόματι Ντον Μπέρναμ και όλα όσα σκέφτεται στις λίγες μέρες κατά τις οποίες διαδραματίζεται το μεθυσμένο δράμα του, είναι βγαλμένα από την ψυχή του συγγραφέα, είναι παρμένα από δικές του πράξεις και σκέψεις.
Γιατί ο Τσαρλς Τζάκσον ήταν αλκοολικός, μεταξύ άλλων. Και το 1936, χρονιά κατά την οποία διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία, τόσο ο πρωταγωνιστής όσο και ο ίδιος ο συγγραφέας, ήταν τριάντα τριών ετών. Άρα, μπορεί να υποστηρίξει κανείς ότι δεν έχουμε να κάνουμε απλώς με ένα μυθιστόρημα, αλλά ίσως και με ένα αυτοβιογραφικό κείμενο. Όπως και να'χει, μιλάμε για ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο, που όμως δεν ψυχαγωγεί. Δεν είναι ένα βιβλίο που θα διαβάσεις για να περάσεις καλά. Ο αναγνώστης θα περάσει δύσκολες στιγμές, όπως και ο πρωταγωνιστής. Θα νιώσει στο πετσί του την κατάπτωση, την μοναξιά, την μαυρίλα που χαρακτηρίζει τον αλκοολικό Ντον Μπέρναμ. Είναι ένα στενάχωρο βιβλίο, που μπορεί να ταρακουνήσει αρκετούς αναγνώστες, ανάλογα με τις εμπειρίες που έχει ο καθένας με το αλκοόλ. Προσωπικά έχω πιει ελάχιστο αλκοόλ στην ζωή μου. Και μονάχα κρασί ή μπύρα, τίποτα παραπάνω. Οπότε ίσως να μην μπορώ να κατανοήσω απόλυτα την ανάγκη που έχει ένας αλκοολικός για ένα ποτηράκι παραπάνω. Εντάξει, υποθέτω ότι ως ένα βαθμό μπορεί να το κατανοήσω, αν ξαφνικά κάποιος εξαφανίσει όλα τα βιβλία από την Γη, με αποτέλεσμα να μην έχω να τίποτα να διαβάσω. Τότε μάλλον θα τρελαθώ. Γιατί, όπως μπορείτε να καταλάβετε, είμαι εθισμένος στα... βιβλία. Αλλά το καλό με τον δικό μου εθισμό, είναι ότι δεν κάνω κακό στον εαυτό μου. Τουναντίον!
Αλλά τώρα μιλάμε για το βιβλίο του Τζάκσον, όχι για μένα. Ναι, είναι ένα δύσκολο βιβλίο. Και ίσως κουραστικό σε μερικά σημεία, γιατί, μεταξύ άλλων, έχουμε μεθυσμένα όνειρα, ενδοσκοπήσεις και παραληρήματα. Όμως είναι ένα κλασικό στο είδος του βιβλίο, ανελέητα αληθινό και ρεαλιστικό, έντονα γραμμένο, με ατμόσφαιρα σκοτεινή και καταθλιπτική, που δύσκολα δεν θ'αγγίξει με τον έναν ή τον άλλο τρόπο τον αναγνώστη. Λίαν συντόμως θα δω και την ομότιτλη ταινία του 1945, σε σκηνοθεσία Billy Wilder και με πρωταγωνιστή τον Ray Milland, η οποία ευτυχώς ανήκει στην ταινιοθήκη μου.
July 3, 2022
The primary attraction of this book for me is that it had been heralded as a novel that dealt frankly with homosexuality long before most others did. And yes, for 1944, it is quite open about what would be termed internalized homophobia these days. The protagonist, Don Birnam, is an unreformed alcoholic, and in the course of the book, it makes clear that he drinks due to never coming to terms with his own same sex attraction.
Flashbacks reveal that as a boy, Don experimented with another adolescent and fantasized about the other lad's father; he had been kicked out of his college fraternity for his passion for another pledge, to whom he'd penned an obvious mash note; and even in the hospital drunk ward, he is wary of the male nurse who pays a bit too much attention to him. The final chapter even ends with him locked in a public men's room stall and witnessing what is apparent to the reader is two males cruising each other at a urinal - which inexplicably Birnam doesn't quite understand.
So yes, all of this is quite intriguing and presented forthrightly - but it isn't really a major focal point of the novel - which is fine when it details Birnam's four-day drunken odyssey - but too often veers into heightened, long-winded philosophical passages that are - quite frankly, tedious. Not sorry I read it - but it's not essential reading; and I will tackle Jackson's subsequent novel, The Fall of Valor next, which is supposedly even more candid about repressed gay urges.
After finishing the book, I watched the award-winning 1945 film adaptation for the first time - much of the sexual repression was scraped from the movie, although Don does flirt with Nat the bartender, and Bim, the male nurse, is still a little light in the loafers. In many respects, the movie is actually an improvement on the book, deleting much of the superfluity and making the narrative stronger.
Flashbacks reveal that as a boy, Don experimented with another adolescent and fantasized about the other lad's father; he had been kicked out of his college fraternity for his passion for another pledge, to whom he'd penned an obvious mash note; and even in the hospital drunk ward, he is wary of the male nurse who pays a bit too much attention to him. The final chapter even ends with him locked in a public men's room stall and witnessing what is apparent to the reader is two males cruising each other at a urinal - which inexplicably Birnam doesn't quite understand.
So yes, all of this is quite intriguing and presented forthrightly - but it isn't really a major focal point of the novel - which is fine when it details Birnam's four-day drunken odyssey - but too often veers into heightened, long-winded philosophical passages that are - quite frankly, tedious. Not sorry I read it - but it's not essential reading; and I will tackle Jackson's subsequent novel, The Fall of Valor next, which is supposedly even more candid about repressed gay urges.
After finishing the book, I watched the award-winning 1945 film adaptation for the first time - much of the sexual repression was scraped from the movie, although Don does flirt with Nat the bartender, and Bim, the male nurse, is still a little light in the loafers. In many respects, the movie is actually an improvement on the book, deleting much of the superfluity and making the narrative stronger.
September 19, 2011
Perhaps instead of being titled The Lost Weekend, this book should have been titled The Lost Cause. If you're looking for a tale of someone falling into the depths of alcoholism and them coming out a changed and better person, look elsewhere, because here you will only find a tale of someone falling into the depths of alcoholism. Here there is no fulfilled redemption.
So, why read the book?
Don Birnam, the protagonist, though he displays a great deal of intelligence and self-awareness, very seldom surprises. He steals, neglects people, wastes money without remorse, and the reader always sees it coming. He is often despicable and self-serving despite his underlying sincerity, and the reader very seldom expects any change from him or finds himself sympathizing with him.
So why read the book?
His family and friends enable him, lending him money, allowing him to pawn off his possessions.
So why...
The reader may not be able to sympathize, but he or she can certainly empathize. Birnam may be abhorrent, but he knows that he is, and though the reader is seldom convinced that there is hope for him, Birnam is sometimes able to convince himself that there is hope but is ultimately powerless. It is this to which the reader can relate. The reader is also given further insight into the nature of alcoholism without being hit over the head with elements of victimization. In the end, though, it is Jackson's style that makes this such a great read— poetic yet still authentic and provocative.
It is certainly not an uplifting book. Perhaps that is why I have decided to award it four stars instead of five.
So, why read the book?
Don Birnam, the protagonist, though he displays a great deal of intelligence and self-awareness, very seldom surprises. He steals, neglects people, wastes money without remorse, and the reader always sees it coming. He is often despicable and self-serving despite his underlying sincerity, and the reader very seldom expects any change from him or finds himself sympathizing with him.
So why read the book?
His family and friends enable him, lending him money, allowing him to pawn off his possessions.
So why...
The reader may not be able to sympathize, but he or she can certainly empathize. Birnam may be abhorrent, but he knows that he is, and though the reader is seldom convinced that there is hope for him, Birnam is sometimes able to convince himself that there is hope but is ultimately powerless. It is this to which the reader can relate. The reader is also given further insight into the nature of alcoholism without being hit over the head with elements of victimization. In the end, though, it is Jackson's style that makes this such a great read— poetic yet still authentic and provocative.
It is certainly not an uplifting book. Perhaps that is why I have decided to award it four stars instead of five.
January 14, 2019
This novel has been on my TBR-list for a long time and I'm glad I've finally managed to read it.
The book chronicles five days and nights in the life of Don Birnam, an alcoholic writer whom we follow on his 'lost weekend' of binge drinking and frantic search for booze and money. Things quickly spiral out of control for Don and the number of chaotic incidents and dramatic events grows page after page in a relentlessly dramatic crescendo.
What I've found very compelling in the novel was Don's narrative voice, who alternates long digressions on his past, literary reflections and complex mental machinations to get one more bottle in his hands. Everything he says is delivered with a hefty dose of self-loathing and matter-of-factness that made me irritated, uneasy and sad.
Don is far from being a lovable character. He's not looking for redemption and seems to have no intention to stop drinking. His periods of sobriety are only short brackets between other lost days and wild benders. There is something raw and honest in his personality, though, that ultimately made me care for him.
The dissection of alcohol addiction and the main character's desperate predicament are still incredibly compelling more than seventy years after the novel's release.
Billy Wilder directed a film adaptation of The Lost Weekend in 1945. Although diverting from the novel in some crucial elements (e.g. Don's homosexuality, that is completely disregarded in the movie), the film is equally uncompromising and sincere.
The book chronicles five days and nights in the life of Don Birnam, an alcoholic writer whom we follow on his 'lost weekend' of binge drinking and frantic search for booze and money. Things quickly spiral out of control for Don and the number of chaotic incidents and dramatic events grows page after page in a relentlessly dramatic crescendo.
What I've found very compelling in the novel was Don's narrative voice, who alternates long digressions on his past, literary reflections and complex mental machinations to get one more bottle in his hands. Everything he says is delivered with a hefty dose of self-loathing and matter-of-factness that made me irritated, uneasy and sad.
Don is far from being a lovable character. He's not looking for redemption and seems to have no intention to stop drinking. His periods of sobriety are only short brackets between other lost days and wild benders. There is something raw and honest in his personality, though, that ultimately made me care for him.
The dissection of alcohol addiction and the main character's desperate predicament are still incredibly compelling more than seventy years after the novel's release.
Billy Wilder directed a film adaptation of The Lost Weekend in 1945. Although diverting from the novel in some crucial elements (e.g. Don's homosexuality, that is completely disregarded in the movie), the film is equally uncompromising and sincere.
September 21, 2024
Ma agli occhi di un uomo chi potrà mai essere più interessante e importante di sé stesso?
Come tutti i suoi tentativi di fare letteratura, anche quello sarebbe stato qualcosa di personale, come una lettera – qualcosa di doloroso per quelli che lo conoscevano, e di nessun interesse per tutti gli altri; grondante di affettazione e di autocommiserazione in alcune parti, inutilmente intelligente in altre; talmente infarcito di Shakespeare da dare l’idea che l’autore l’avesse scritto tenendo aperto sulle ginocchia un manuale di citazioni; talmente narcisista che l’effetto finale sarebbe stato quello della stanza degli specchi, che restituisce una stessa immagine infinitamente moltiplicata…
L’ho estrapolato dal secondo capitolo, Jackson tramite il protagonista Don Birman rivela l’idea che ha del libro che ha composto. Come è stato appurato riscostruendo la sua vita, i Giorni Perduti sono marcatamente autobiografici.
Sei macro capitoli, il primo ben riuscito, poi a decrescere: il secondo leggibile; il terzo e il quarto una nausea da mal di Mar-ai; apprezzabili gli ultimi due.
Di che cosa si tratta?
Della storia paradigmatica di un alcolizzato, di come il vizio si trasformi sopra una certa soglia in malattia. La bottiglia per Don B. è l’equivalente della siringa per Christiane F. una ragione di vita tale da superare anche il cibo.
Il tentativo di fare letteratura riesce grazie all’apporto di decine di citazioni shakespiriane non sempre evidenti. In questa edizione c’è una provvida sezione di note nella quale sono riportate fedelmente, la maggior parte di esse arrivano dall’Amleto. Il bardo non è l’unico contribuente, a Joyce è dedicato l’incipit
“Il barometro della sua indole volubile indicava che era in arrivo un periodo di baldoria”
a Fitzgerald un vero e proprio omaggio
Tirò giù Il grande Gatsby e passò il dito sull’elegante rilegatura verde. “Non esiste”, disse ad alta voce, “un romanzo senza difetti. Ma se esiste, è questo”. Annuì.
In alcune descrizioni di NY (la vicenda si svolge lì) ho sentito echi di Dos Passos, in postfazione Simone Barillari aggiunge Dostoevskij, Mann, Faulkner. Capite bene che non si tratta del libro di un giovane esordiente italiano, ricordate però che è la storia della discesa all’inferno di un alcolizzato, tenetelo presente se non avete nessuna dimestichezza con la sostanza, perché per quanto io possa dire di averne, ho sofferto il mar di Mar-ai dei due capitoli centrali, scritti con una prosa troppo densa e ripetitiva.
Come tutti i suoi tentativi di fare letteratura, anche quello sarebbe stato qualcosa di personale, come una lettera – qualcosa di doloroso per quelli che lo conoscevano, e di nessun interesse per tutti gli altri; grondante di affettazione e di autocommiserazione in alcune parti, inutilmente intelligente in altre; talmente infarcito di Shakespeare da dare l’idea che l’autore l’avesse scritto tenendo aperto sulle ginocchia un manuale di citazioni; talmente narcisista che l’effetto finale sarebbe stato quello della stanza degli specchi, che restituisce una stessa immagine infinitamente moltiplicata…
L’ho estrapolato dal secondo capitolo, Jackson tramite il protagonista Don Birman rivela l’idea che ha del libro che ha composto. Come è stato appurato riscostruendo la sua vita, i Giorni Perduti sono marcatamente autobiografici.
Sei macro capitoli, il primo ben riuscito, poi a decrescere: il secondo leggibile; il terzo e il quarto una nausea da mal di Mar-ai; apprezzabili gli ultimi due.
Di che cosa si tratta?
Della storia paradigmatica di un alcolizzato, di come il vizio si trasformi sopra una certa soglia in malattia. La bottiglia per Don B. è l’equivalente della siringa per Christiane F. una ragione di vita tale da superare anche il cibo.
Il tentativo di fare letteratura riesce grazie all’apporto di decine di citazioni shakespiriane non sempre evidenti. In questa edizione c’è una provvida sezione di note nella quale sono riportate fedelmente, la maggior parte di esse arrivano dall’Amleto. Il bardo non è l’unico contribuente, a Joyce è dedicato l’incipit
“Il barometro della sua indole volubile indicava che era in arrivo un periodo di baldoria”
a Fitzgerald un vero e proprio omaggio
Tirò giù Il grande Gatsby e passò il dito sull’elegante rilegatura verde. “Non esiste”, disse ad alta voce, “un romanzo senza difetti. Ma se esiste, è questo”. Annuì.
In alcune descrizioni di NY (la vicenda si svolge lì) ho sentito echi di Dos Passos, in postfazione Simone Barillari aggiunge Dostoevskij, Mann, Faulkner. Capite bene che non si tratta del libro di un giovane esordiente italiano, ricordate però che è la storia della discesa all’inferno di un alcolizzato, tenetelo presente se non avete nessuna dimestichezza con la sostanza, perché per quanto io possa dire di averne, ho sofferto il mar di Mar-ai dei due capitoli centrali, scritti con una prosa troppo densa e ripetitiva.
June 27, 2013
My favorite line from the book: "Spinal tap, baby."
I read the novel first, then saw the film. Both are excellent, but very different. Novel: super gay (sex in the church sheds with boyhood friend Melvin; getting kicked out of his fraternity for his big crush on a senior boy; the fiance who will NEVER become his wife; lots of closets, filled with booze, of course; a dream in which he is saved from a homophobic lynching by his brother). Film: super hetero (Don kisses two girls [what?!] and even the swishy male nurse is butch [Bim is less lovable and less dangerous here]; outstanding female supporting roles, even though there is little basis in the book for them). A great contrast.
I read the novel first, then saw the film. Both are excellent, but very different. Novel: super gay (sex in the church sheds with boyhood friend Melvin; getting kicked out of his fraternity for his big crush on a senior boy; the fiance who will NEVER become his wife; lots of closets, filled with booze, of course; a dream in which he is saved from a homophobic lynching by his brother). Film: super hetero (Don kisses two girls [what?!] and even the swishy male nurse is butch [Bim is less lovable and less dangerous here]; outstanding female supporting roles, even though there is little basis in the book for them). A great contrast.
January 9, 2020
Redneck Haiku Review
James Beam
Inebriated,
I, midnight god, go flaccid.
Performance issues.
James Beam
Inebriated,
I, midnight god, go flaccid.
Performance issues.
June 30, 2018
*****Don’t read this review if you don’t already know the premise behind The Lost Weekend (book or movie).*****
“It’s all right for you to ruin your life; that’s up to you,” he said; "But you have no right to ruin someone else’s.”
That’s Don Birnham’s brother Wick chastising Don one more time after the later has drunk his way through another weekend bender. Don let down Wick again by not visiting the farm with him over a long weekend in October. Don optioned to stay in the city and drink himself to oblivion.
Our MC Don is an alcoholic. Every weekend, it seems Don is living on and for alcohol. He can’t shake it and he doesn’t want to. He loves it because he needs it. He’s sick and everything revolves around it. This is serious fiction that helps explain what makes an alcoholic do what he does. It’s stark reality.
During much of the book Don explains the psyche of an alcoholic. His own reason for the sickness and torture is his father’s abandoning the family when Don was a boy. Don is soothed by alcohol. He yearns for it because it helps him forget his painful childhood and cover up a trait he’d rather keep secret.
He becomes much more interesting and inspired on booze. To a point. After that, he becomes drunk and eventually knocked out.
I was amazed at how much alcohol he’d drink. Tall glasses of whiskey. A quart in an evening. It’s killing him, his health and creativity (he dreams of writing fiction). It’s making him neurotic and withdrawn. He lives for time alone to get knock down drunk. He has to do it and he doesn’t want anyone to see it.
Billy Wilder made an excellent movie in 1945 that stared Ray Milland and is based almost entirely on the book. It’s just as scary and troubling. There are some aspects of the book kept from movie goers as they weren’t deemed ready to watch in that era.
“It’s all right for you to ruin your life; that’s up to you,” he said; "But you have no right to ruin someone else’s.”
That’s Don Birnham’s brother Wick chastising Don one more time after the later has drunk his way through another weekend bender. Don let down Wick again by not visiting the farm with him over a long weekend in October. Don optioned to stay in the city and drink himself to oblivion.
Our MC Don is an alcoholic. Every weekend, it seems Don is living on and for alcohol. He can’t shake it and he doesn’t want to. He loves it because he needs it. He’s sick and everything revolves around it. This is serious fiction that helps explain what makes an alcoholic do what he does. It’s stark reality.
During much of the book Don explains the psyche of an alcoholic. His own reason for the sickness and torture is his father’s abandoning the family when Don was a boy. Don is soothed by alcohol. He yearns for it because it helps him forget his painful childhood and cover up a trait he’d rather keep secret.
He becomes much more interesting and inspired on booze. To a point. After that, he becomes drunk and eventually knocked out.
I was amazed at how much alcohol he’d drink. Tall glasses of whiskey. A quart in an evening. It’s killing him, his health and creativity (he dreams of writing fiction). It’s making him neurotic and withdrawn. He lives for time alone to get knock down drunk. He has to do it and he doesn’t want anyone to see it.
Billy Wilder made an excellent movie in 1945 that stared Ray Milland and is based almost entirely on the book. It’s just as scary and troubling. There are some aspects of the book kept from movie goers as they weren’t deemed ready to watch in that era.
April 30, 2017
As an alcoholic with many years of sobriety under by belt, this is maybe one of the most important books in my library. If ever you need a reminder of what the bad years were like, read this book and see if it strikes you the way it did me. Its literally full of accounts of what my thirties were like in the 00’s. Its extremely unusual that I would romanticize drinking these days, but if I ever do, I’ll be reading this book again to remind me what it was really like.
September 7, 2012
I couldn't stop reading this. I was even drunk for a few of the readings. Then I looked up Charles Jackson's life and thought a lot of this might have been semi-autobiographical. That sort of bummed me out.
I have a feeling you'll know if this type of book is for you; it's the type informed by Hamsun's Hunger; and could be lazily categorised with Celine or Bukowsi, The Drinker by Fallada or maybe Junky by Burroughs. Like a lot of these books, what plot there is can be summed up in a sentence: Don Birnam, an alcoholic, has dodged his brother's pleas to come away for a long weekend in the country, instead choosing to relapse into solitary drinking. It's got a real subtlety to it, maybe because the protagonist is kept at arms reach from us; although we're shown his delusions and hallucinations, we're also the only ones who know why the woman at the bar thinks he's married for some reason, or why he's got that horrible bruising on his head. The flipside of this is that we're often given a hazy picture of his past; whatever the exact details of his disgrace at college, the memory is too painful for Birnam to really relive, and so we're never told the full story.
Unlike a couple of the books mentioned above, there's not much in the way of wise-ass platitudes, so Don Birnam isn't going to become an idol to college hipsters or party-try-hards any time soon in the way that Bukowski can do. There is a scene where Birnam staggers out to try and pawn his typewriter for booze money in the throes of a splitting hangover that really stood out for me-he's pathetic in the midst of a teeming, uncaring but most importantly living city. He's not a lone wolf drinking to kick against the pricks-all he's kicking is himself. If as I assume this book was based on Jackson's own problems with drink, it must have been a painfully honest baring of the soul. It might even be said it's only superficially about alcohol, because everything 'wrong' with Don isn't going to disappear if he goes teetotal-not the way he sees himself. I'd say it's more about being a man-in the sense that being a man is about responsibility for your actions and emotions.
Ok so it's too long and over grandiose a review already, but to summarise; it's a heartbreaking and emotionally intense book that I'd recommend to anyone that is, or knows someone who is dependent on something. It probably goes without saying that if you're looking for action or lightning fast plotting, it's not the book for you.
I have a feeling you'll know if this type of book is for you; it's the type informed by Hamsun's Hunger; and could be lazily categorised with Celine or Bukowsi, The Drinker by Fallada or maybe Junky by Burroughs. Like a lot of these books, what plot there is can be summed up in a sentence: Don Birnam, an alcoholic, has dodged his brother's pleas to come away for a long weekend in the country, instead choosing to relapse into solitary drinking. It's got a real subtlety to it, maybe because the protagonist is kept at arms reach from us; although we're shown his delusions and hallucinations, we're also the only ones who know why the woman at the bar thinks he's married for some reason, or why he's got that horrible bruising on his head. The flipside of this is that we're often given a hazy picture of his past; whatever the exact details of his disgrace at college, the memory is too painful for Birnam to really relive, and so we're never told the full story.
Unlike a couple of the books mentioned above, there's not much in the way of wise-ass platitudes, so Don Birnam isn't going to become an idol to college hipsters or party-try-hards any time soon in the way that Bukowski can do. There is a scene where Birnam staggers out to try and pawn his typewriter for booze money in the throes of a splitting hangover that really stood out for me-he's pathetic in the midst of a teeming, uncaring but most importantly living city. He's not a lone wolf drinking to kick against the pricks-all he's kicking is himself. If as I assume this book was based on Jackson's own problems with drink, it must have been a painfully honest baring of the soul. It might even be said it's only superficially about alcohol, because everything 'wrong' with Don isn't going to disappear if he goes teetotal-not the way he sees himself. I'd say it's more about being a man-in the sense that being a man is about responsibility for your actions and emotions.
Ok so it's too long and over grandiose a review already, but to summarise; it's a heartbreaking and emotionally intense book that I'd recommend to anyone that is, or knows someone who is dependent on something. It probably goes without saying that if you're looking for action or lightning fast plotting, it's not the book for you.
June 9, 2016
Τι πιο πρόσφορο για να εξαγριώσουμε έναν άνθρωπο άρρωστο από χαρά , από το να θελήσουμε να τον θεραπεύσουμε;
April 25, 2020
Alkol bağımlılığı ile ilgili otobiyografik tarafı çok kuvvetli bir eser.
Yazar çok ilginç biri. Gençliğinde veremle savaşmış, onu yenmeyi başarabilmiş, hayatının daha ileri bir döneminde(20 ve 30'lu yaşlarda) alkol bağımlılığı gelişmiş, hayatının son dönemlerinde ise uyuşturucuya da başlamış, sonunu ise bu uyuşturucuyla hazırlamış biri Charles Jackson. Ölümü overdose(aşırı doz) alımından gelmiş.
Bunları en başta yazmak istedim çünkü birinci elden bunları yaşamış olan Jackson, muazzam iş çıkartmış bize aktarırken. Aslında her şeyin farkında ama bir şekilde kendini ikna etmeyi başarıyor.
Kitabın bir de filmi var. (1944) Yayınlandığı dönemde epey sükse de yapmış.
Kitap Don Birnam isimli birinin bir haftasonu boyunca yaşadıklarını anlatıyor. Oblomov'u okurken hissettiğimiz o "hadi kalk be adam, biraz diren, mücadele et" duyguları aynen burada da var. İnsan gerçekten hayret ediyor şu okuduklarına.
sf. 204'te Don'ın alkolikliğinin boyutları hususunda çok özel bir paragraf da mevcut;
" Yüzleşmesi gereken tek bir şey vardı, tek bir şey, sonra hallolacaktı. Bugün içki içmeyeceksin, o kadar.
Ama aklın başından giderken seyirci kalmayı nasıl kabullenirsin, öyle bir kenarda durup gerçekleşmesine nasıl izin verebilirsin, bununla nasıl yüzleşirsin? İçkinin, bir bardak içkinin, seni yıkımdan kurtaracağını bile bile, nasıl orada oturup yıkılacağın anı beklersin? Katlanılmaz olanı yaşamaktansa kendini yok etmenin bir yolunu, evet, böylesi ümitsiz bir durumda olmana rağmen, bulsan daha iyi değil mi? "
Alkol batağına düşmüş yazarların aslında böyle başarılı otobiyografiler yazma eğilimleri var. Bu tarz çok etkileyici başka kitaplar da mevcut. Bir insan kendine bunları nasıl yapabilir diye şoka girip okumalık, ibretlik gerilim hikâyeleri. Ben uyuşturucu dışında bir maddenin bir insanı bu kadar esir edebilmesine çok şaşırdım. Bu, sigara bağımlılığından kesinlikle daha üst seviyede bir esaret. Tabi çok daha dramatik aynı zamanda.
Yazar çok ilginç biri. Gençliğinde veremle savaşmış, onu yenmeyi başarabilmiş, hayatının daha ileri bir döneminde(20 ve 30'lu yaşlarda) alkol bağımlılığı gelişmiş, hayatının son dönemlerinde ise uyuşturucuya da başlamış, sonunu ise bu uyuşturucuyla hazırlamış biri Charles Jackson. Ölümü overdose(aşırı doz) alımından gelmiş.
Bunları en başta yazmak istedim çünkü birinci elden bunları yaşamış olan Jackson, muazzam iş çıkartmış bize aktarırken. Aslında her şeyin farkında ama bir şekilde kendini ikna etmeyi başarıyor.
Kitabın bir de filmi var. (1944) Yayınlandığı dönemde epey sükse de yapmış.
Kitap Don Birnam isimli birinin bir haftasonu boyunca yaşadıklarını anlatıyor. Oblomov'u okurken hissettiğimiz o "hadi kalk be adam, biraz diren, mücadele et" duyguları aynen burada da var. İnsan gerçekten hayret ediyor şu okuduklarına.
sf. 204'te Don'ın alkolikliğinin boyutları hususunda çok özel bir paragraf da mevcut;
" Yüzleşmesi gereken tek bir şey vardı, tek bir şey, sonra hallolacaktı. Bugün içki içmeyeceksin, o kadar.
Ama aklın başından giderken seyirci kalmayı nasıl kabullenirsin, öyle bir kenarda durup gerçekleşmesine nasıl izin verebilirsin, bununla nasıl yüzleşirsin? İçkinin, bir bardak içkinin, seni yıkımdan kurtaracağını bile bile, nasıl orada oturup yıkılacağın anı beklersin? Katlanılmaz olanı yaşamaktansa kendini yok etmenin bir yolunu, evet, böylesi ümitsiz bir durumda olmana rağmen, bulsan daha iyi değil mi? "
Alkol batağına düşmüş yazarların aslında böyle başarılı otobiyografiler yazma eğilimleri var. Bu tarz çok etkileyici başka kitaplar da mevcut. Bir insan kendine bunları nasıl yapabilir diye şoka girip okumalık, ibretlik gerilim hikâyeleri. Ben uyuşturucu dışında bir maddenin bir insanı bu kadar esir edebilmesine çok şaşırdım. Bu, sigara bağımlılığından kesinlikle daha üst seviyede bir esaret. Tabi çok daha dramatik aynı zamanda.
August 24, 2018
This horrific Forties novel inspired the Forties movie starring Ray Milland. A career drunk himself, Jackson knew whereof he wrote; as a result this remains "the" book about long-term, not-so-social alcoholism for many of us.
Read it -- but not for the faint-hearted.
Read it -- but not for the faint-hearted.
September 12, 2024
Got to be one of the best novels on alcohol addiction. Encapsulates the complexities of the disease in one. Hard to believe it's over 80 years old. 100% recommend.
April 13, 2013
In an age where scads of celebrities routinely confess their darkest secrets, and some even become celebrities precisely by doing so, the idea of a fictionalized account of a five-day alcohol binge seems almost tame. But when Charles Jackson's "The Lost Weekend" was released in the mid-1940s, it was groundbreaking stuff. The ink was barely dry on the first copies shipped when it was adapted for the screen and became an Oscar-winning film. Since that time, it has largely been forgotten, as has its author, who died of a prescription drug overdose in the late 1960s.
Now Vintage has blown the dust off "The Lost Weekend" in an attractively-packaged new edition. I stumbled upon it at Book People in Austin, and I hope others stumble upon it as well. For it is searing stuff. Even in an age where most of us are hard to shock, Jackson's tale of alcoholism and its effects contains some surprising and discomforting moments. His protagonist, Don Birnam, spends three rye-whiskey-soaked days lying, committing petty crime, absorbing physical blows both self-inflicted and otherwise, and constantly scheming to find new sources of money and booze to keep the whole thing going. When he hits a wall, as we know he ultimately must, he descends into madness and hallucination. Along the way he betrays the trust of the few people who still love and want to help him, and burns bridges with a mindlessness that borders on glee. It's no spoiler alert to say that there's no happy ending to "The Lost Weekend," although in the twisted logic of his world one could argue that the ending is happy enough for Birnam.
For the reader (especially one like me, who is not an alcoholic and has only distantly known one or two people who are), it's a dizzying and edifying ride. For anyone who's known and loved an alcoholic, I suspect it'll be a painful one as well, filled with moments of recognition. Attitudes toward alcoholism have changed drastically since "The Lost Weekend" first touched shelves; we now recognize it as an illness that can only be treated but not cured, rather than a personal failing or weakness. One could argue that "The Lost Weekend" deserves a share of credit for this evolution of perception.
As for the writing, it's mystifying to me how Jackson could've been forgotten and neglected so long. This was apparently his masterpiece, but its fiery, descriptive, and witty prose should've been enough to keep Jackson's name among the short list of great twentieth-century novelists. It's clear the man had serious talent, and if Bacchus was the only muse to fully bring that talent out of him, then we can at least be grateful for that one burst of inspiration.
The late Roger Ebert wrote of "Withnail and I," one of my favorite films, that it captures the sensation of being drunk better than any other movie. Similarly, I've never read a more convincing literary portrayal of the descent into drunkenness, or description of the feeling of being badly hung over, than "The Lost Weekend." Brief but powerful, it should be on anyone's "must-read" list. Big props to Vintage for hauling it and its author from obscurity and introducing them to a new generation of readers.
Now Vintage has blown the dust off "The Lost Weekend" in an attractively-packaged new edition. I stumbled upon it at Book People in Austin, and I hope others stumble upon it as well. For it is searing stuff. Even in an age where most of us are hard to shock, Jackson's tale of alcoholism and its effects contains some surprising and discomforting moments. His protagonist, Don Birnam, spends three rye-whiskey-soaked days lying, committing petty crime, absorbing physical blows both self-inflicted and otherwise, and constantly scheming to find new sources of money and booze to keep the whole thing going. When he hits a wall, as we know he ultimately must, he descends into madness and hallucination. Along the way he betrays the trust of the few people who still love and want to help him, and burns bridges with a mindlessness that borders on glee. It's no spoiler alert to say that there's no happy ending to "The Lost Weekend," although in the twisted logic of his world one could argue that the ending is happy enough for Birnam.
For the reader (especially one like me, who is not an alcoholic and has only distantly known one or two people who are), it's a dizzying and edifying ride. For anyone who's known and loved an alcoholic, I suspect it'll be a painful one as well, filled with moments of recognition. Attitudes toward alcoholism have changed drastically since "The Lost Weekend" first touched shelves; we now recognize it as an illness that can only be treated but not cured, rather than a personal failing or weakness. One could argue that "The Lost Weekend" deserves a share of credit for this evolution of perception.
As for the writing, it's mystifying to me how Jackson could've been forgotten and neglected so long. This was apparently his masterpiece, but its fiery, descriptive, and witty prose should've been enough to keep Jackson's name among the short list of great twentieth-century novelists. It's clear the man had serious talent, and if Bacchus was the only muse to fully bring that talent out of him, then we can at least be grateful for that one burst of inspiration.
The late Roger Ebert wrote of "Withnail and I," one of my favorite films, that it captures the sensation of being drunk better than any other movie. Similarly, I've never read a more convincing literary portrayal of the descent into drunkenness, or description of the feeling of being badly hung over, than "The Lost Weekend." Brief but powerful, it should be on anyone's "must-read" list. Big props to Vintage for hauling it and its author from obscurity and introducing them to a new generation of readers.
February 27, 2021
"The Lost Weekend" by Charles Jackson is a riveting look inside the mind of an alcoholic, Don, during a binge. It is a seamless blend of narrative, flashback and inner monologue that makes the reader feel like a hovering spectator. We observe the trainwreck unfolding and are powerless to prevent the certain tragedy. It is a solitary journey with moments of euphoria and camaraderie before the selfish desperation and paranoia kick in. Unlike other boozy morality tales, there is no romantic drinking partner to sit at the next barstool and engage in Bukowski-esque banter. Reasons for Don's spiral to oblivion are pondered, but seem little more than excuses. The original reason is no longer relevant in the face of the immediate need to self-medicate and keep the katzenjammers away. This book won't stop me from drinking but it did make a lasting impression.
December 22, 2009
Appropriately, I read the bulk of this book last weekend when I was snowed in, which was in a sense my own lost weekend. The Lost Weekend goes right up there with the best of the novels on addicts and neurotics I've read (Hunger, Man With the Golden Arm, Confessions of Zeno), and it even has a little homosexual guilt thrown in to juice it up.
It is very clear from the prose that alcoholism was a subject the author cared about, that he was close to, perhaps too close. The words read the mind of the addict protagonist effortlessly, and I was swept away with him on his long, amnesiac binge until it became painful to read and by proxy experience. His self-loathing, his self-conscious, self-indulgent pity, the knowledge he has that he is at the brim of abyss and can't turn back yet knows he will, the repeat behavior, the delusions, the flashbacks- it can all be a lot to handle, and it was very easy to become lost in his maddening mind.
Even without the alcoholism and more generally, the novel is sometimes so unbearably accurate that it is difficult to read:
"He supposed he was only one of several million persons of his generation who had grown up and, somewhere around thirty, made the upsetting discovery that life wasn't going to pan out the way you'd always expected it would; and why this realization should have thrown him and not them-or not too many of them-was something he couldn't fathom. Life offered none of those prizes you'd been looking forward to since adolescence (he less than others, but looking forward to them all the same, if only out of curiosity). Adulthood came through with none of the pledges you'd been led somehow to believe in; the future still remained the future-illusion; a non-existent period of constantly-receding promise, hinting fulfillment, yet forever withholding the rewards. All the things that had never happened yet were never going to happen after all. It was a mug's game and there ought to be a law. But there wasn't any law, there was no rhyme or reason; and with the sour-grapes attitude of “Why the hell should there be”- which is as near as you ever came to sophistication- you retired within yourself and compensated for the disappointment by drink, by subsisting on daydreams, by living in a private world of your own making (hell or heaven, what did it matter?), bv accomplishing or becoming in fancy what you could never bring about in fact.”
The bulk of the book is made of raw, unpolished, emotional outbursts like that passage- it can be a lot to handle, to swim in, but I think there's more honesty and human-brain simulation in a book like this than in the often over-stylized, overly-ironic prose I've come across in later years. For a certain kind of mind, at least, this is the cream of a diseased crop. There is no rhetoric, just the words of a brilliant author who was an alcoholic and killed himself in his sixties.
So go ahead, drink it up! Doesn't this sound like a fun thing to read?
It is very clear from the prose that alcoholism was a subject the author cared about, that he was close to, perhaps too close. The words read the mind of the addict protagonist effortlessly, and I was swept away with him on his long, amnesiac binge until it became painful to read and by proxy experience. His self-loathing, his self-conscious, self-indulgent pity, the knowledge he has that he is at the brim of abyss and can't turn back yet knows he will, the repeat behavior, the delusions, the flashbacks- it can all be a lot to handle, and it was very easy to become lost in his maddening mind.
Even without the alcoholism and more generally, the novel is sometimes so unbearably accurate that it is difficult to read:
"He supposed he was only one of several million persons of his generation who had grown up and, somewhere around thirty, made the upsetting discovery that life wasn't going to pan out the way you'd always expected it would; and why this realization should have thrown him and not them-or not too many of them-was something he couldn't fathom. Life offered none of those prizes you'd been looking forward to since adolescence (he less than others, but looking forward to them all the same, if only out of curiosity). Adulthood came through with none of the pledges you'd been led somehow to believe in; the future still remained the future-illusion; a non-existent period of constantly-receding promise, hinting fulfillment, yet forever withholding the rewards. All the things that had never happened yet were never going to happen after all. It was a mug's game and there ought to be a law. But there wasn't any law, there was no rhyme or reason; and with the sour-grapes attitude of “Why the hell should there be”- which is as near as you ever came to sophistication- you retired within yourself and compensated for the disappointment by drink, by subsisting on daydreams, by living in a private world of your own making (hell or heaven, what did it matter?), bv accomplishing or becoming in fancy what you could never bring about in fact.”
The bulk of the book is made of raw, unpolished, emotional outbursts like that passage- it can be a lot to handle, to swim in, but I think there's more honesty and human-brain simulation in a book like this than in the often over-stylized, overly-ironic prose I've come across in later years. For a certain kind of mind, at least, this is the cream of a diseased crop. There is no rhetoric, just the words of a brilliant author who was an alcoholic and killed himself in his sixties.
So go ahead, drink it up! Doesn't this sound like a fun thing to read?
September 7, 2018
I was reluctant for a long time to read this ever since first hearing about it from reading Kingsley Amis. Reluctant because I knew it would hit close to home, that it would speak to me directly, finally someone else who *gets* it. A man lost to drink, lost in life, with sight to see ahead and possessing no wisdom to know what to do.
We follow our narrator Don through the "lost weekend" a span of four days to himself where he intends to binge on alcohol while his brother Wick is away. This is nothing like a Bukowski binge, unrepentant and wild, there is no mania, no drama, just a neurotic alcoholic spiraling downwards always wondering why, always stabbing towards the root of his addiction getting so tantalizingly close to realizing it, but the answer is always on the periphery and maybe even hits upon it but turns a blind eye to it- he's simply a drunk, a narcissistic, selfish person stuck in adolescence and unable to move forward. And it is horrifying to read that and every word is true as much for yourself as the author.
This is the truest account of alcoholism I have ever read, so if one has an interest in that kind of thing, this is a must read. The writing is fine, even funny at times. But the self analyzing psychology is where the real gold is found. Classical references abound (even a nod or two to Thomas Mann!) and there is hero worship of Fitzgerald.
All in all this book left me shook, it's eerie how similar Don Birman and I think, especially while drinking.
We follow our narrator Don through the "lost weekend" a span of four days to himself where he intends to binge on alcohol while his brother Wick is away. This is nothing like a Bukowski binge, unrepentant and wild, there is no mania, no drama, just a neurotic alcoholic spiraling downwards always wondering why, always stabbing towards the root of his addiction getting so tantalizingly close to realizing it, but the answer is always on the periphery and maybe even hits upon it but turns a blind eye to it- he's simply a drunk, a narcissistic, selfish person stuck in adolescence and unable to move forward. And it is horrifying to read that and every word is true as much for yourself as the author.
This is the truest account of alcoholism I have ever read, so if one has an interest in that kind of thing, this is a must read. The writing is fine, even funny at times. But the self analyzing psychology is where the real gold is found. Classical references abound (even a nod or two to Thomas Mann!) and there is hero worship of Fitzgerald.
All in all this book left me shook, it's eerie how similar Don Birman and I think, especially while drinking.
February 19, 2015
An interesting and reflective book about intense drinking. Neither a cautionary or a book to scare you away. I suspect most who have read this book has either a drinking problem themselves or know someone who is deeply infected by the demon alcohol. It is a good "Manhattan" novel, where it focuses on one, of many people in that New York City state-of-mind. There are many painful moments while reading this book, but on the other hand I enjoyed getting into the lead character's head-space. A horror narrative if there ever was one - A very good alcohol novel. A good friend of "Under the Volcano" or any of the late Scott Fitzgerald writings - "The Crack Up" to be more specific.
December 27, 2016
Tekrar gün yüzü gördüğü için sevindiğimiz, unutulmuş klasiklerden.
June 6, 2018
'Don, Wick'in şu an uyanık olduğunu ve Bay ya da Bayan Hansen'in çiftlikte kuzinedeki kahvaltısını getirmelerini beklediğini biliyordu ya da belki çoktan dışarı çıkmış Mac'i besliyor, çimde onunla oynuyor ya da yüzüp çıkarması için suya sopa atıyordu; bu esnada o ise burada oturmuş kendini toplamaya çalışıyor, içki dükkanının açılmasını ve Wick'in şükürler olsun ki beş gün daha düşünmekten kaçınacağı içki faslına kaldığı yerden devam etmeyi bekliyordu. Beklerken de, günün ilk içkisiyle pişmanlığının geçeceğinin ve keyfinin yerine geleceğinin bilinciyle pişmanlık duygusunu bile isteye gözden geçirip inceledi; kendini küçük düşürerek bir nevi kefaret ödüyormuş gibi, kendini sorgulaması için eline son bir fırsat geçmiş gibi, gerçeklerle yüzleşip neyle karşılaşacağını önceden bilirse bütün vaat edilmiş içkileri hak edecekmiş gibi.' Sf:62
'Bugün içebileceğini asla yarına bırakma, işte benim felsefem.' Sf: 116
'....Anna sordu:"Neden benimle sadece sarhoşken yatıyorsun?" Don keyifli bir kahkaha patlattı. Anna'nın bunu sormaya hakkı olduğunu gayet iyi biliyordu; ama daha kötüsü olmadığı için rahatlayıp sanki fazlasıyla komik bir şeymiş gibi gülebildi ve neredeyse bağırarak, "Çünkü ben hep sarhoşum!" dedi. Sf:219
'Neden her zaman umutsuz bir ayyaşa umutsuzca bağlanmış bir kadın oluyor, bu dünyadaki Helen'ların sayısı yüz bini buluyordu? Sonra devamı geliyordu: Neden ayyaşlar hemen her zaman yetenekli, kişilikli, akıllı ve nitelikli insanlar oluyordu (başka türlü onları kim umursardı ki zaten?); neden per çok parlak insan alkolikti? Bunu takiben de şu soru geliyordu: Sen neden içiyordun?
Diğerleri gibi bu da retorik ve soyut bir soruydu, hiç mi hiç pragmatik bir yanı yoktu; onun akıllıca sorusu ne kadar anlamsızsa bu soruyu sormak da bir o kadar anlamsızdı. Bir yanıt gelir ümidiye -ya da gelen yanıtın dinlemeye değer olacağı, bir şeyleri doğrulayacağı ümidiyle- böyle bir soru sormak için artık çok geçti. Neden sorusu önemini uzun zaman önce kaybetmişti. Sen bir ayyaştın; işte o kadar. İçiyordun; nokta. Bir içki içtikten, bir kez harekete geçtikten sonra neden sorusunun bir anlamı kalıyor muydu? Hiçbir önemi olmayan onlarca sebep vardı, hepsi önemsizdi. Belki mutsuz olduğun için ya da çok mutlu olduğun için içiyordun; belki hava çok sıcak ya da çok soğuktu; Partisan Review'u beğenmemiştin ya da Partisan Review'a bayılmıştın. İşte bu kadar saçmaydı sebepler. Sebeplerin canı cehenneme: baba tarafından terk edilmek, öğrenci derneği şoku, fazla anne ilgisi, fazla para ya da kendini doğrulamak için dönüp dolaşıp öne sürdüğün başka onlarca sebep. Bunların hiçbir önemi yoktu, sadece tek bir gerçek vardı: İçiyordun ve bu seni öldürüyordu. Neden? Çünkü alkolle başa çıkamıyordun, alkol seni alt etmişti. Neden? Çünkü öyle bir noktaya gelmiştin ki bir içki çok, yüzlercesiyse yetersizdi.' Sf:260
'Bugün içebileceğini asla yarına bırakma, işte benim felsefem.' Sf: 116
'....Anna sordu:"Neden benimle sadece sarhoşken yatıyorsun?" Don keyifli bir kahkaha patlattı. Anna'nın bunu sormaya hakkı olduğunu gayet iyi biliyordu; ama daha kötüsü olmadığı için rahatlayıp sanki fazlasıyla komik bir şeymiş gibi gülebildi ve neredeyse bağırarak, "Çünkü ben hep sarhoşum!" dedi. Sf:219
'Neden her zaman umutsuz bir ayyaşa umutsuzca bağlanmış bir kadın oluyor, bu dünyadaki Helen'ların sayısı yüz bini buluyordu? Sonra devamı geliyordu: Neden ayyaşlar hemen her zaman yetenekli, kişilikli, akıllı ve nitelikli insanlar oluyordu (başka türlü onları kim umursardı ki zaten?); neden per çok parlak insan alkolikti? Bunu takiben de şu soru geliyordu: Sen neden içiyordun?
Diğerleri gibi bu da retorik ve soyut bir soruydu, hiç mi hiç pragmatik bir yanı yoktu; onun akıllıca sorusu ne kadar anlamsızsa bu soruyu sormak da bir o kadar anlamsızdı. Bir yanıt gelir ümidiye -ya da gelen yanıtın dinlemeye değer olacağı, bir şeyleri doğrulayacağı ümidiyle- böyle bir soru sormak için artık çok geçti. Neden sorusu önemini uzun zaman önce kaybetmişti. Sen bir ayyaştın; işte o kadar. İçiyordun; nokta. Bir içki içtikten, bir kez harekete geçtikten sonra neden sorusunun bir anlamı kalıyor muydu? Hiçbir önemi olmayan onlarca sebep vardı, hepsi önemsizdi. Belki mutsuz olduğun için ya da çok mutlu olduğun için içiyordun; belki hava çok sıcak ya da çok soğuktu; Partisan Review'u beğenmemiştin ya da Partisan Review'a bayılmıştın. İşte bu kadar saçmaydı sebepler. Sebeplerin canı cehenneme: baba tarafından terk edilmek, öğrenci derneği şoku, fazla anne ilgisi, fazla para ya da kendini doğrulamak için dönüp dolaşıp öne sürdüğün başka onlarca sebep. Bunların hiçbir önemi yoktu, sadece tek bir gerçek vardı: İçiyordun ve bu seni öldürüyordu. Neden? Çünkü alkolle başa çıkamıyordun, alkol seni alt etmişti. Neden? Çünkü öyle bir noktaya gelmiştin ki bir içki çok, yüzlercesiyse yetersizdi.' Sf:260
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