Tuesday 14 June 2016

Bonus Quote of the Day: On drinking

 

“When things are all right and it is you that is feeling low a drink can make you feel better. But when things are really bad and you are all right, a drink just makes it clearer.”
Ernest Hemingway, from his short story ‘Night Before Battle’

2 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

To the lovely alcohol. Hip hip, hooray.

My specialty topic.

paul scott said...

mm he also said "Write drunk, edit sober" .. Whereas Kerouac wrote drunk and did not edit much at all.
Like Kerouac it could have been as much his life as the writing which attracted people.

Kerouac's alcoholism did not leave him time for suicidal depression because his oesophageal varices saw him out at about age 40. Oesophageal varices, enlarged blood vessels in throat from alcoholism often, and they can rupture . Hemingway entered his sixties with terrible alcoholic depression which forced his violent way out with a shotgun.
For me Hemingway has not lasted as well as many authors . He did edit down to absolute clarity, and was uninterested in any superfluous fill in .