LIFE.com has a pretty entertaining gallery of the boozers and users of the literary world. Some are legendary - Poe, Hemingway - some are surprising - Ayn Rand, Louisa May Alcott.
Here's my favorite photo of the bunch:
William Faulkner (1897 - 1962): Alcohol
And my favorite caption:
"In his 2000 memoir, On Writing, [Stephen] King revealed that he'd been so shattered by his alcohol and drug abuse in the 1980s that, even today, he cannot remember working on many of the books he wrote back then. There were times when he'd been doing so much blow that he wrote with cotton wads stuffed in his nostrils, to prevent blood dripping on his typewriter."
Jeez.
Flip through the rest of the gallery here.
1 comments
In one of my english courses last year, it became necessary to dig up background information on the authors we studied, or risk disappointing our professor and being the victim of one of his terrifying death stares. It amazed me how many of these authors had lives filled with booze, drugs, and the shadiness that follows that lifestyle. It makes one wonder if their brilliance would exist without their bad habits.
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