Alcohol and Literature

The prominence of alcoholism in American literature, at least in the first half of the twentieth century, is such that the presence of drink in the lives and writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, and many others has become a literary cliché

And, despite all of the myths surrounding the alcoholism of so many American writers and its relation to their literary talent, the facts remain that any list of American Nobel prize-winning artists would include more than a few heavy drinkers. Critics, and even the writers themselves, have observed, however, that alcohol, rather than inspiring creativity seems to anesthetize the poetic spirit as it deadens the senses. Still the equivocal qualities of alcohol where...