FreeOwl

I wasn't aware of this.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's life was a study in destructive alcoholism | PBS NewsHour

SidV80

Such a sad story...a great talent lost to a terrible disease.

saoutchik

I get the impression that heavy drinking was almost expected of anyone involved in the arts in those days. There were some extraordinary wasted talents.

Venecia

Thanks, Free Owl.

I live in Fitzgerald's hometown. Local history is full of the Jazz Age tales of Scott and Zelda. Scratch beneath the surface and the glamour fades quickly. The Fitzgeralds were legendary for partying. And getting evicted. And indifference to their daughter. They lived their lives sloshed.

It is a testimony to Fitzgerald's talent that he created what he did. We're only left to wonder what could have been.

NewRomanMan

Hemingway. Kerouak. I'm sure there's more.

MarkTwain

Hemingway, Kerouak, William Faulkner, Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Edgar A. Poe, artists like Jackson Pollack and many other artists...the list is endless.

The romanticized notion of the "tortured artist" has been around for a very long time.

What no one wants to say is that not one single one of these people created anything worthwhile drunk or in the grips of alcoholism.

But it makes for a nice fairy tale if you're looking for a reason to drink.

taplow

I know that William Faulkner's talent for drinking was surpassed by his wonderful talent for writing. I read that he didn't drink while he was writing. The Sound and the Fury couldn't have been written by someone drunk surely. It's such a puzzle that I read it twice to get it.
I'm not so keen on Hemingway and Fitzgerald - maybe I might give Scott another go though.

MarkTwain

Faulkner wrote S&F at 29 years old and another good novel a couple of years later before he lost his creativity to alcoholism and basically wasted away the rest of his life, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, drinking and copying himself but never doing anything imaginative again.

Alcoholism and creativity do not mix.

NewRomanMan

I knew someone else would know more of them..lol

bunnezjp

Alot of historic talent is tied to alcohol.

~Bunnez

Andante

In the early part of the arc of my alcoholism's relentless progression, alcohol actually did serve to enhance both my creativity and cognition. It somehow unlocked pathways to creative expression (both in writing and otherwise) that had previously been blocked by inhibition. Examples of my writing from that period bear out this perception as being valid.

We all know how the story comes out, though -- alcohol may have worked for a while, but eventually it stopped working, and thanks to the magic of tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal kindling, there came a time when I was unable to create anything at all, drunk or sober.

However, that didn't stop my addicted brain from continuing to try desperately to re-create that initial experience of unblocked creative and cognitive pathways for years after the effect had been reversed.

Perhaps there are similarities between my experience and the experience of writers and artists (with vastly greater creative genius and eventual fame than mine, of course) whose careers were ruined by alcohol.