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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Drunkard:
A Hard-Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Candor Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg’s
memoir, Drunkard:
A Hard-Drinking Life, tells the story of his struggles with drinking and
recovery. Steinberg’s fine writing shines in each chapter, no matter how
uncomfortable or embarrassing the story may be. Here’s an excerpt, from the
end of Chapter 11, pp. 159-161: As I talk, about being a
reporter, putting my foot on the rail, drinking, drinking, drinking, it
strikes me that I am cataloging practices, but not touching my finger to the
reason at all. Don't you see? There was an
attitude, a lifestyle. You could be a civilian, a nobody, and grind away at a
job and drink tea, or you could be glittering and special and an artist and
drink alcohol. I try to explain. F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Thurber, Mike
Royko and Hunter S. Thompson. We were just doing what we were supposed to do.
What was expected of us. Just doing our jobs, and boy did drinking seem like
a job at the end. A bad job, something I had to do whether I wanted to or
not. By then it was too late. I hid
the problem as well as I could. Not a single close friend ever suggested that
I had a drinking problem, not one, except for Edie. They may have thought it
they must have thought so—but were too polite to say it and, after
all, so much of my personality was taken up with it. I was a drinker, a guy
who owns a black silk smoking jacket and a chrome-plated martini shaker. Nor was I alone. The standard
first crisis is supposed to be trouble at work that's what happens in the Big
Book. Not for me heck, half the time I was with my bosses, happily
drinking away upstairs at Gene & Georgetti. Drinking never got me in
trouble at work never, not once. Drinking
never gets me in trouble at work. But Edie trying to get me to stop sure as
hell does. Now I'm damaged goods, a citywide laughingstock whom they won't
even let pen obituaries at home in the afternoons, not until his legal woes
are resolved. I don't tell them this, my
fellows in rehab, earnestly following my drunkard's tale. None of it. No
resistance, no romanticizing, no clinging to happy booze memories here. I
tell them how I move to the suburbs in 2000 and start taking the Metra
commuter home, which requires me to walk past the Goat on Washington, where I
grow to like sharing a drink or three with Phyllis on my way to the train,
which itself is like sitting in a bar. Like being forced to sit in a bar
every single evening for forty-five minutes. The wonder is that all commuters
don't become alcoholics. I tell them how the years go by and I shift from having
a drink by myself in my office at home because it's pleasant to having a
drink by myself in my office at home because I have to and never even realize
that a fundamental change has taken place. The time to stop talking
approaches—a practiced speaker will feel when his audience is getting
restless. And I haven't done it. An engaging story, perhaps, but the central
mystery—the reason—is still unaddressed. As a child I could not sleep
if the sheets were taut and smooth. I would yank at a neatly made bed until
there was a fold, a wrinkle I could worry between my fingers and, thus
comforted, fall asleep. Maybe that's it. Comforted by a wrinkle. Then
food—eating, not a single Fig Newton, but one after the other, until I ran
out or someone took them away. That led right into alcoholism. Didn't it? Lots
of people are fat, but fewer are alcoholics. Children are allowed their
comfort; they cling to blankies and special toys, suck on pacifiers or
thumbs. They have great fears, even at this moment of greatest comfort and
protection, which says something about the depth of human anxiety. While
adults might gently argue there is no monster in the closet, Mommy is not
going anywhere we do not yank their blankie away. Maybe
we should. We should take their comfort objects and destroy them, burn teddy
in front of their eyes. Because that is what happens when you grow up. They
take it away, your source of greatest comfort, and leave you in a room with
strangers, pouring out your soul, clawing at the smooth, sealed box of an
impenetrable mystery. I finish speaking, and we move to the next person. No
matter what connection a reader may have to an addiction, Drunkard
brings home the story of a regular guy struggling with life, and Steinberg
does this with a writing style that draws readers in and helps the pages turn
quickly. He describes a person who is inside or close to each of us. Steve
Hopkins, September 20, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Drunkard.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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