Ludwig van Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata. A part of it anyway with scenes from the great Coen Bros. film, "The Man Who Wasn't There."
Addendum:
A reader comments:
If you are to include Beethoven, It would be perverse to omit Schumann’s Mondnacht (moonlit night), set to a poem by Eichendorff, supposedly the favourite poem of the Germans, when they are not invading other countries. “The image of death is tenderly and touchingly portrayed as the soul quietly returning home”. The progression at 2:23 is sublime.
Undoubtedly the most Joycean of the booze novels. This is not what one could call a 'page turner.' Not suitable for beach or bed reading. But it looks to be a deep work that will repay the close attention it demands. Under the Volcano was originally published in 1947. Two other booze novels from the '40s are rather more suited for entertainment: Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend, 1944, and Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square, 1941.
And then there is the grandpappy of them all, Jack London's John Barleycorn. My analysis: Jack London, John Barleycorn, and the Noseless One. (Perhaps an astute literary type will point me to a booze novel in English temporally antecedent to London's.)
It is interesting to note in these waning days of dear October, Kerouac month, that Lowry and Jack both died of drink and at the same age: 47. The difference seems to have have been that Lowry was deliberately out to off himself on the day of his death, his last binge fueled as it was with barbiturates, while Kerouac had not fixed upon 21 October 1969 as Todestag.
The mystery of self-destruction! Is there a natural explanation? Or is the booze monkey a real demon?
There follows an example of of a Lowry sentence that will slow down the serious reader, indeed bring him to a dead stop, as he tries to untangle the syntax. Lowry being a Cambridge man, we assume he knows how to write English. But then we come across this:
His love had brought a peace, for all too short a while, that was strangely like the enchantment, the spell, of Chartres itself, long ago, whose every sidestreet he had come to love and café where he could gaze at the Cathedral eternally sailing against the clouds, the spell not even the fact he was scandalously in debt there could break. (13)
As I said, this novel is not a 'page turner.'
Addendum (10/28)
London Ed writes,
If you mean a novel that is almost entirely about drunkenness, i.e. whose subject is just drunkenness, such as Lowry, then you won’t find much in 19thcentury literature. I recommend Lamb’s Confessions of a Drunkard, if you haven’t come across it already, but that is an essay, not a novel. (It has been questioned whether Lamb actually was a drunkard, but the evidence suggests he was).
In A Tale of Two Cities – as you surely know – a drunkard is the central character, and drunkenness is one of the themes, but the central theme is an unusual kind of redemption, not drink itself.
See also The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where again drunkenness is a theme, but not central. Bronte may have modelled the drunken character on her alcoholic brother Bramwell, although she may have been influenced by The Anatomy of Drinking (Robert Macnish, 1835), which is worth a visit (‘Men of genius are often unfortunately addicted to drinking’).
For an interesting conspectus of modern ‘feminist’ writers who were no enemies to the bottle, see this Guardian article. ‘Not many writers manage to get sober and those who do often suffer a decline in output’. Is there a relation between the bottle and the writing? Macnish argues that genius is accompanied by ‘melancholy’, i.e. depression. ‘High talent has ever been distinguished for sadness and gloom’. So they drink to relieve the gloom. So the bottle, on his account, is more a property in the Aristotelian sense: it accompanies the phenomenon of genius, but is not essential to it. Or by contrast is it essential? It is hard to imagine Burroughs without junk. (Or Kerouac without the drink?).
Enjoy the volcano book. I have it in the attic somewhere, but didn’t get beyond the first chapter or two.
And let's not forget the role that benzedrine played in the composition of On the Road.
Addendum 2 (10/28, 5:08 AM MST)
Ed adds,
Sorry, some more. Macnish rightly says the the most ‘delightful’ state is when sobriety and inebriation briefly become neighbours. That’s right. There is a short episode, usually after the first glass, when the gods come down to the planet, and the world is blessed. Unfortunately the blessedness is so good you want to continue it, and have another, but this never works. For this reason, wise men (and women) never go beyond the third glass. Another alcoholic writer, (Chandler) cleverly said “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.” Perhaps you meant the same when you spoke (somewhere) about having a couple of Buds but being none the weiser).
I agree entirely. The wise man stops at the third when returns diminish bigly. But you and I are not alkies. They achieve some crazy bliss from continuing.
Raymond Chandler? Funny you should mention him. In the midst of his high-falutin' Joycean prose, Lowry uncorked a Chandleresque line: "Darkness had fallen like the House of Usher." (22-23) Here is my attempt at Chandler-style prose:
The stranger sat down and played his King's pawn to e4. I countered with the French Defense and in a few moves he was all over me like a cheap suit.
I wasn't thinking about taking any girl's clothes off when I repeated the old redneck line, in a blog post circa 2004, "Ah had me a coupla Buds, but I got none the wiser." 'Wiser' pronounced something like waah-zr.
Addendum 3 (10/28, 11:04)
Ed continues,
“Darkness had fallen like the House of Usher.”
“in a few moves he was all over me like a cheap suit.”
Love them both. I think the second is more Chandleresque. Hard to say why. The first contains a literary illusion. The second is just cheap suits. You have to remember that Chandler was brought up in London, quite near where I live, and he went to an English public school (Dulwich). So he carried an English snobbery with him to the US. When he says ‘Los Angeles has the personality of a paper cup’ you can hear that public school sneer under his voice. His work is almost entirely about the vulgar, but that is the point of it.
I mentioned the London thing to a hard core noir fan, who was astonished. He thought, not without reason, that Chandler was a quintessentially American writer. No more than Joseph Conrad (who did not speak fluent English until his twenties) was quintessentially English.
3. The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear—as do we. They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt their secular, multicultural outlook. Sunk in prejudice, superstition and ignorance, and blinded by vain, self-congratulating visions of a utopian future, the false Europe reflexively stifles dissent. This is done, of course, in the name of freedom and tolerance.
[. . .]
17. The false Europe also boasts of an unprecedented commitment to equality. It claims to promote non-discrimination and the inclusion of all races, religions and identities. Here, genuine progress has been made, but a utopian detachment from reality has taken hold. Over the past generation, Europe has pursued a grand project of multiculturalism. To demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion, has been thought a gross injustice. A commitment to equality, we have been told, demands that we abjure any hint that we believe our culture superior. Paradoxically, Europe’s multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable form. It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is being born.
[ . . .]
21. Europe’s intellectual classes are, alas, among the chief ideological partisans of the conceits of the false Europe. Without doubt, our universities are one of the glories of European civilization. But where once they sought to transmit to each new generation the wisdom of past ages, today most within the universities equate critical thinking with a simpleminded repudiation of the past. A lodestar of the European spirit has been the rigorous discipline of intellectual honesty and objectivity. But over the past two generations, this noble ideal has been transformed. The asceticism that once sought to free the mind of the tyranny of dominant opinion has become an often complacent and unreflective animus against everything that is our own. This stance of cultural repudiation functions as a cheap and easy way of being ‘critical.’ Over the last generation, it has been rehearsed in the lecture halls, becoming a doctrine, a dogma. And to join in professing this creed is taken to be the mark of ‘enlightenment,’ and of spiritual election. As a consequence, our universities are now active agents of ongoing cultural destruction.
[. . .]
33. Marriage is the foundation of civil society and the basis for harmony between men and women. It is the intimate bond organized around sustaining a household and raising children. We affirm that our most fundamental roles in society and as human beings are as fathers and mothers. Marriage and children are integral to any vision of human flourishing. Children require sacrifice from those who bring them into the world. This sacrifice is noble and must be honoured. We endorse prudent social policies to encourage and strengthen marriage, childbearing, and childrearing. A society that fails to welcome children has no future.
[. . .]
36. In this moment, we ask all Europeans to join us in rejecting the utopian fantasy of a multicultural world without borders. We rightly love our homelands, and we seek to hand on to our children every noble thing that we have ourselves received as our patrimony. As Europeans, we also share a common heritage, and this heritage asks us to live together in peace as a Europe of nations. Let us renew national sovereignty, and recover the dignity of a shared political responsibility for Europe’s future.
UPDATE:
The Paris Statement is too namby-pamby for Jacques who comments here. He may well be right. PS is a fine theoretical statement, but where are the concrete proposals?
William Kilpatrick is always good on the Islamist threat:
The good news is that ISIS has been defeated in Mosul and Raqqa, and may soon be driven entirely out of Iraq and Syria. The bad news is that Islamists continue to pile up victory after victory on the home front.
The home front war is basically a culture war. Islamists are winning it because they understand the nature of the war. The West is losing because its leaders have only the vaguest awareness that they are under attack. Let’s take Canada as a case in point.
You are misusing 'never-trumper' if your usage does not comport with this conditional:
If you are a never-trumper, then you are a conservative, real or at least self-proclaimed.
Bill Kristol is a never-trumper; Hillary is not.
Underlying principle: do not engage in verbal inflation without a damned good reason. If a word or phrase has a specific meaning use it in that meaning.
The sign reads, 'Peace.' It neglects to say that the desert is a place of unseen warfare.
The desert fathers of old believed in demons because of their experiences in quest of the "narrow gate" that only few find. They sought to perfect themselves and so became involved as combatants in il combattimento spirituale. They felt as if thwarted in their practices by opponents both malevolent and invisible. The moderns do not try to perfect themselves and so the demons leave them alone. They prefer deserts to flesh pots when it comes to hunting. Those who luxuriate in the latter have already been captured.
Moderns who enter the desert for spiritual purposes need to be aware that they may get more than they bargained for, phenomenologically, if not really.
That older post on Zapffe and his absurdism is fantastic. You present the problem with deep sympathy and clarity. We're kindred spirits. I've often felt that if people just considered _seriously_ their own commitments, or our shared predicament–just to realize that it really is a predicament–their lives would be different. It is _not_ just talk and "word games". But it's so hard to get anyone to that point. People take comfort in a facile unserious unreflective nihilism or absurdism. Real philosophical thinking, with serious moral intent, offers a way out–as you argue, a rational freedom, at least, to embrace Meaning and Purpose and Value. But it's so hard to get people to see this. Anyway, thanks again for excellent essays like this.
'Pap and smear' is part of the explanation why Hillary lost. If you listen to her speak you soon realize that she has nothing concrete to offer. It is all empty rhetoric, or pap. But she really sealed her fate when she smeared as 'deplorables' the decent Americans who do not subscribe to her (well-hidden) agenda.
Pap and smear.
It is becoming increasingly clear how unfit for the presidency she is. Her complicity in the Uranium One scandal for starters.
Matt. 3:3 quoting Isaiah 40:3. The Vulgate has Vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. [Right, I checked both quotations in my Biblia Vulgata.] There has always been a question about the parsing of this. Is it
A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”,
A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”.
Different translations differ. Of course the ancient Hebrew/Greek may be ambiguous, as they were not cursed with the quotation mark. I shall investigate further.
[Time passes]
OK I looked further. I always wondered if Matthew knew his scripture, but checking the Isa 40:3 in the Septuagint (the Jewish Alexandrian translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), it is identical, i.e. Matthew’s Greek accurately reflects the Greek translation of Isaiah.
However, at least according to Pentiuc, the Septuagint Greek is a mis-translation of the Hebrew.
According to the reading proposed by the Masoretes, this voice "cries" to the one called "to clear" the way in the wilderness (cf. Mal 3:1). Babylonian texts speak in similar terms of processional ways prepared for a god or a victorious king; this is the road by which Yahweh will lead his people through the desert in a new exodus. Quite contrary to this reading is the Septuagint's rendering, where the "voice is crying in the wilderness." This version indicates that the wilderness is the location of the mysterious voice, rather than the meeting place for God and his people returned from exile.
My emphasis. The Masoretes were the Jewish scribe-scholars who worked on the interpretation of the ancient texts.
BV: I am not competent to comment on the scholarly punctilios, , but I prefer the Septuagint reading for the (non)reason that I live in a desert. And I know Ed Abbey, the author of Vox Clamantis in Deserto, would agree for he too lived in the desert, in fact, in Oracle, Arizona, not far from here.
By the way, the preceding sentence is not good English by the lofty standards of MavPhil. Can you see why? Combox open.
A week or so and then I'll be through with Jacking off until next October. So bear with me, ragazzi.
Here is a NYT piece from 1988 by Richard Hill that gets at the truth of Jack. Excerpts:
He seemed uncertain of his friends from the 50's. Ginsberg was lost; he hadn't found the answers Jack had, in the Roman Catholic Church. Burroughs was a brilliant and heroic old devil, but Jack hadn't seen him since his trip to New York for William Buckley's Firing Line. ''I admire Buckley,'' he said. ''He stopped the show and took me into his office to give me hell about being drunk. Then we went back to do the show and I still gave those intellectuals the old raspberry.'' Burroughs was staying in the same hotel at the time, but didn't want to go out. ''Into those streets?'' said the man whose daring and decadence had become a legend, and Jack gave up on him.
But of Neal Cassady, Jack's companion on the road through many of the novels, he was more sure: ''Neal's not dead. He'll show up someday and we'll go someplace.'' Jack loved Cassady, who died on a railroad track in Mexico on one of the last trips of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. ''Turn your mind on,'' Jack said bitterly. ''I've been trying to turn mine off.''
Jack was also trying to get his affairs in order. He knew he was going to die soon; the doctor had told him his liver was nearly gone. He talked about his will, read and reread his genealogy and spoke much of the Kerouac family tradition and his boyhood home in Lowell. He worried that critics would fail to see his novels as he intended them to be read – not only as an ambitious chronicle of America, but also as a loving portrait of his family and his childhood home. In his later writings, he seemed more interested in capturing Lowell than in an America he no longer understood or liked. He asked about funeral homes and embalming: ''Do they treat you with dignity?'' He asserted his faith in the church he had abandoned years ago for Zen Buddhism.
[. . .]
People sometimes wrote or called me to ask what Jack had really been like, hoping I could confirm one romantic thesis or another. One man wanted to believe he died from the scuffle in the black bar. Ironic, but untrue. Nobody wanted to believe he died of drinking.
He did. Drinking was part of his pilgrimage. He was a sensitive soul who'd set his sights on nothing less than enlightenment. When the booze failed to take him there, it at least numbed the disappointment. It is a classic alcoholic pattern, which has produced statements as powerful as Under the Volcano as well as several Kerouac novels – from the sweetness of ''The Dharma Bums'' to the terrifying wine-soaked hallucination of the true cross over ''Big Sur.'' We may know the drinking wasn't necessary, but Jack didn't. And though he gave in to his drinking, he never completely abandoned his search. His record of that search reminds us why we value him so much. It was a sacrifice from which most of us shrink, a gift for which he paid the highest price. We can argue that his life was tragic or his talent misspent, but never doubt the passion that drove it. He showed us America through his innocent eyes, singing to us like the canary old-time coal miners took underground. When the bird died, they knew it as a warning that the air was deadly and that their own lives were no longer safe.
