A few days back, at the library, I found the new biography of Jackson Pollock, who was surprisingly naive. On the advice of a Park Avenue “healer,” he started drinking a combination of bat shit and ground beets, this to establish a “proper balance of gold and silver in his urine.” In 1951 the doctor put him on a special diet for his alcoholism. No dairy and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. The only meat permitted was fowl, which had to have been shot within the past two hours and had to be wild—“Eat no bird that can’t take off at fifty miles per hour.” Meanwhile, he could still drink as
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