d r i n k s t e r: COMIN IN ON A WING AND A PRAYER

“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”

DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)

03 February 2013

COMIN IN ON A WING AND A PRAYER

Luke Buckmaster, editor of the Crikey website and Cinetology columnist/blogger there, has written a fine piece about Denzel Washington's new movie, Flight. Buckmaster discusses the nature of alcoholism in a way I've never seen anyone in the wine/booze writing racket discuss it. Ever. Should we? Click on Denzel for the link and a look at the trailer, then let me know what you think.

2 comments:

Milt said...: I like ... Interesting take on it. I've known a few of those in my time!; February 5, 2013 at 12:43 AM
Red said...: Functional alcoholism is pretty standard in the wine industry from what I've seen, though as you suggest it is rarely discussed or acknowledged. The movie sounds very worth watching.; February 9, 2013 at 5:27 PM

CONFESSIONS

"After enough years newspapermen begin to pall on other newspapermen; they begin to take their good qualities for granted and wince at their shortcomings, of which the most common are a vanity that sometimes borders on the thespian and a sort of perpetual mental adolescence that I think stems from starting a fresh story every day or every week or month and never having time to get to the bottom of anything. They forget that newspapermen as a class have a yearning for truth as involuntary as a hophead’s addiction to junk. The question of whether the junkie really loves hop is academic; he can’t get along without it. A newspaperman may write a lie to hold his job, but he won’t believe it, and the necessity outrages him so that he craves truth all the more thereafter. A few newspapermen lie to get on in the world, but it outrages them, too, and I have never known a dishonest journalist who wasn’t patently an unhappy bastard."

A.J. Liebling,

war correspondent,

New Yorker,

Algiers,

January 1942.

“Ale, especially that made from barley, clogs the sinews, causes headache and congestion of the head, yet it overstimulates the action of the kidneys, and, when drunk to excess, lowers the temperature. That, however, which is brewed from wheat, and is flavoured with mint and parsley, is judged better for everybody. Still, in the case of persons exposed to the sun’s heat, in feverish conditions and sultry weather, its use is inadvisable.”

From The Science Of Dining – A Medieval Treatise on the Hygiene of the Table and the Laws of Health, translated from the Latin by Arthur S. Way D. Lit, MacMillan, 1936. Previous translation The Schoolmaster, 1583. Original text from Mohammed ibn Zakariya al Razi, Arabic medical writer (865-925AD).

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03 February 2013

COMIN IN ON A WING AND A PRAYER

2 comments:

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