From allysonk at mweb.co.za  Mon Nov 23 02:54:17 2015
From: allysonk at mweb.co.za (Allyson)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:54:17 +0200
Subject: [ilds] Durrell's misogyny
In-Reply-To: <4DBB746A-763F-408C-B6CC-C777B6DFB151@earthlink.net>
References: <W4891877193221448150648@atl4wm08pod3>
	<3A682828-8B38-430E-A942-50D9E777CB24@earthlink.net>
	<4DBB746A-763F-408C-B6CC-C777B6DFB151@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <5652F059.8070402@mweb.co.za>

I explored an aspect of this in my recent PhD thesis which I think has 
now come out of its embargo period and is available on the University of 
Amsterdam's e-thesis database. I specifically explored Durrell's 
representation of his female characters in The Quartet from a feminist 
theoretical perspective employing a Gothic lens.

Very few feminist approaches have been offered with regards to Durrell's 
work and where they were offered in the early 1990s, they always seemed 
to back peddle at the close of their argument.

Best regards,

Allyson Kreuiter



On 2015-11-22 11:05 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> Richard Pine?s comments on misogyny may be well-known among some in 
> the ILDS, possibly ?old hat,? but I have not seen them expressed 
> before, certainly not on this forum, where the topic seems to be 
> taboo.  From my perspective, however, I find them revolutionary.  They 
> open up a whole new way to study Lawrence Durrell, man and writer, 
> that is, a way to probe his hidden motives (conscious or not) for 
> composition and characterization.  I find this important and exciting. 
>  Others may not, of course.
>
> Right off the bat (the baseball idiom connotes violence), I have to 
> say I have not considered the women in the /Quartet/ as Pine describes 
> below.  But his view makes sense in terms of the /Quartet/ and the 
> other works.  What has always struck me instead is Durrell?s 
> persistent use of violence and suicide (or self-extinction) throughout 
> his oeuvre.  Misogyny and violence are clearly connected, as MacNiven 
> and Chamberlin indicate in their biographical material.  I recall that 
> in one interview he was asked about the prevalence of violence in his 
> work and that he avoided answering the question.  Durrell?s fluency 
> and eloquence were something of a defense mechanism.  I would add that 
> Durrell seems to indulge in a lot of self-loathing.  I would expect 
> that all these elements are in some way connected in his personality. 
>  As Pine has previously suggested, happiness eluded Durrell; as 
> Durrell himself suggested in the /Paris Review,/ he found it hard to 
> be a ?happy man.?
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On Nov 22, 2015, at 3:35 AM, Bruce Redwine 
>> <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net <mailto:bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Richard,
>>
>> Excellent comments, bold and sweeping.  They will take a while to 
>> digest.  You intimate a new way to understand the author and his 
>> works.  Thanks.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Nov 21, 2015, at 4:04 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org 
>>> <mailto:mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Durrell as a misogynist:
>>> I believe that misogyny - which we normally understand as "dislking" 
>>> or even "maltreating" women comes from fear. Men who fear women 
>>> become misogynists in that they conduct a love-hate realtionship 
>>> both with the gender as a whole and with specific women, starting 
>>> with the mother. If (to be very cautious) we acknowledge that most 
>>> (and I mean most) men are, indeed, fearful of woman as "the Other", 
>>> and if we go even further and accept that love and fear are 
>>> co-habitants of the marriage bed, we cannot paint any particular 
>>> man, or writer-man, in dishonourable colours SIMPLY on account of 
>>> their behaviour in or out of bed, the kitchen, or the novel.
>>> It's a hugely complex question in LD - partly because of the way he 
>>> wrote about women, but also due to the facts and imagined facts of 
>>> his life: Start with the birth scene in Pied Pipers, and D's own 
>>> assertion that he remembered the moment of his birth (highly 
>>> unlikely but there have been instances of others which have been 
>>> well documented). Move on to the characterisations of women in Dark 
>>> Labyrinth. Then the HUGE issue of what JUSTINE means as a person - a 
>>> sin-cushion? a sexual turnstile? and the general description of 
>>> Alexandria as a city where women cry out to be abused; MELISSA as a 
>>> whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, and her statement (twice, in variants) 
>>> "I no longer defend myself". CLEA as hetero- and homo-sexual. LIVIA 
>>> ditto. The character of BENEDICTA, seen from Felix's perspective. 
>>> The complexity of women in the QUINTET - where they amy or may not 
>>> be part of one another (as many of the men certainly are). The 
>>> central icon of CONSTANCE, whom I believe to have been D's 
>>> idealisation of CLAUDE.
>>> When I gave  a copy of JUDITH to a non-D-reader, her immediate 
>>> reaction was "I enjoyed the storyline, especially the tension over 
>>> the Jewish-Arab conflict, but D treated women very badly, didn't 
>>> he?" (a common complaint by women about D's writing generally about 
>>> women, and maybe one reason why there are far fewer women critics of 
>>> D than there are men).
>>> Some of the poems celebrate female beauty, especially in the 
>>> abstract, but there are instances when he addressed poems to 
>>> specific women that are, at the least, ambivalent.
>>> And the plays... And the unpublished novel Placebo, and the 
>>> unfinished novel version of Sappho, and the "Magnetic island",,,, 
>>> And "Chantal de Legumes"...
>>> The women in D's life: stories (some corroborated, others not) of 
>>> his treatment of, and attitude towards 1) Nancy (e.g. his disregard 
>>> for her as an artist, his neglect of her on their long visit to 
>>> Paris), 2) Eve, with whose psychiatric problems he was unable to (or 
>>> refused to) cope 3 ) Claude (especially the occasions, witnessed, 
>>> when he physically attacked her) but who, if anyone, captured his 
>>> admiration AS A WRITER and whom I think he genuinely mourned, 4) his 
>>> ambivalence about Ghislaine, 5) his love of (and dependence on) 
>>> Francoise, but whom (to my certain knowledge becaue I was there) he 
>>> could be painfully offensive, 6) Margaret McCall (again, I was 
>>> witness to his disdain for her except in professional terms).
>>> One woman who was his lover said to me "He was a very big part of my 
>>> life, but I was only a very small part of his, and I can accept 
>>> that" - maybe she got off lightly!
>>> Is that enough to be going on with?
>>> I would very much like to see a balanced, bisexual discussion - 
>>> maybe a conference, however much I dislike and distrust such events, 
>>> to explore these issues. Yes, there have been notable attempts to 
>>> address them: Jim Nichols' "The Stronger Sex" is a valuable 
>>> contribution to the topic - his exegesis of the poem "nemea" is very 
>>> important. And, as I said in that review, the essay on "harems" and 
>>> the unpublished "Gynococracy" are important, even if they are unknown.
>>> RP
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Mon Nov 23 12:09:54 2015
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:09:54 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Indian Mertaphysics
In-Reply-To: <BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <56537292.9040403@gmail.com>

Hello all,

These are helpful comments, Gulshan.  One small correction -- the 
"Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is 
online:

  http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm

I'm glad to hear it was of use!  For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied 
Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the 
various European Amazon sites via their lightning service.  I don't 
think that applies to India, but they're still very much in print.

I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert.  What you call 
touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism.  We have 
this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but 
it incurs costs too...  I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that 
point in its various complexities.

All best,
James

From frederick.schoff at gmail.com  Wed Nov 25 05:40:40 2015
From: frederick.schoff at gmail.com (Rick Schoff)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:40:40 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Indian Mertaphysics
In-Reply-To: <56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>

As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've
mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the
fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not
particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about
Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's
"Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.

In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell, and
seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom, violence in
fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help but recall
numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of alcohol. I often
hesitate to read biographical material about artists whose work I greatly
admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's life, I couldn't help
wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady drinking might have had on
his life and work. I understand he was a ferociously intelligent man with
boundless energy, who led a fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by
someone who knew him (I don't recall who) that relayed that when writing
Durrell lived on the 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about
the psycholgocal aspects.

For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest
and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is
almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was an
original.

- Rick Schoff

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:09 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> These are helpful comments, Gulshan.  One small correction -- the
> "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is
> online:
>
>  http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm
>
> I'm glad to hear it was of use!  For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied
> Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the various
> European Amazon sites via their lightning service.  I don't think that
> applies to India, but they're still very much in print.
>
> I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert.  What you call
> touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism.  We have
> this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but it
> incurs costs too...  I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that point
> in its various complexities.
>
> All best,
> James
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Wed Nov 25 07:48:57 2015
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:48:57 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>

Welcome to the listserv Rick!

The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many 
ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). 
Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance 
(self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds 
of conversations with dead people.  I've never been sure how to read the 
matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" 
carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious 
part of the construction of the text.  I don't really see the same in 
Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.

There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well.  In /Pied 
Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a 
peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile 
indulgence.  By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, 
but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh.  From around the same time 
biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller 
discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great 
satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).

After that, all bets are off...  Biographically, MacNiven presents the 
mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for 
different reasons.

All best,
James

On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:
> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've
> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the
> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not
> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about
> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's
> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.
>
> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,
> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,
> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help
> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of
> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists
> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's
> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady
> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a
> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a
> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I
> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the
> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal
> aspects.
>
> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest
> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is
> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was
> an original.
>
> - Rick Schoff

From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Wed Nov 25 09:18:34 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:18:34 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>

In his latter years, alcoholism became a big problem for Durrell.  Read his memoir A Smile in the Mind?s Eye (1980) and you?ll see his own account of much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis.  I seem to recall it was in excess of 2 1/2 bottles of wine a day.  Living "on the edge of madness? is Sappho Jane Durrell?s expression.  She also calls her father  a ?demonic and aggressive drunkard? (Granta 37 [1991]) and says he used his liver ?like a punching bag.?  I don?t recall alcohol becoming a fixture of Durrell?s writings until Bitter Lemons (1957), where I first learned the British term toper.  A critic at the time pointed out its prominent use.  Durrell and alcohol make me think of Lytton Strachey?s End of General Gordon (1918).  The general had two obsessions:  the Old Testament and the whiskey bottle.  He would periodically go off on his binges.  Strachey comments that ?the true drunkenness lay elsewhere.?  ?Elsewhere? was not a matter of religiosity, rather some undefined personal ?demon.?  Same with Durrell, in my opinion.

Bruce





> On Nov 25, 2015, at 7:48 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Welcome to the listserv Rick!
> 
> The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people.  I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text.  I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.
> 
> There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well.  In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence.  By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh.  From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).
> 
> After that, all bets are off...  Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.
> 
> All best,
> James
> 
> On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:
>> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've
>> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the
>> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not
>> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about
>> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's
>> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.
>> 
>> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,
>> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,
>> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help
>> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of
>> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists
>> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's
>> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady
>> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a
>> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a
>> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I
>> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the
>> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal
>> aspects.
>> 
>> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest
>> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is
>> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was
>> an original.
>> 
>> - Rick Schoff

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From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org  Wed Nov 25 15:02:20 2015
From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 23:02:20 +0000
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18
Message-ID: <W920141953745751448492540@atl4wm08pod3>

 Looking through my MINDSCAPE (revised edition) I am struck by the frequency of the references to, and dicussion of, madness. Especially the chapter devoted to TUNC and NUNQUAM. But LD's own ideas about madness can be found in a notebook which may date as early as 1939: ?madnessis merely a revolution in behaviour, not an interior schism or disease?. Also, in my discussion of the QUINTET, I pay much attention to the characters of Livia and Sylvie: ?frozeninto the total madness of insight?.: ?though she has very distinct marks of madness in her look one alwaysfeels that to call her insane would be to put all ontology to the question?. Sobering words. LD himself, as I say in the book, was, while writing TUNC and NUNQUAM, afraid that he himself was not merely "on the edge of madness" but about to topple in. His very clearly drunken notes from that period, and from his very last notebook, make it clear to me that he was quite frightened by this, exarcebated as it was by the theme running through TUNC/NUNQUAM, that civilisation itself was enetring a period of madness.
RP

-----Original Message-----
From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 03:00 PM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18

Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Indian Mertaphysics (Rick Schoff) 2. Alcoholism (James Gifford) 3. Re: Alcoholism (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:40:40 -0500From: Rick Schoff To: james.d.gifford at gmail.com, ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Indian MertaphysicsMessage-ID:	Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I'vementioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread thefiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but notparticularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles aboutDurrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's"Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell, andseeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom, violence infiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help but recallnumerous references over the years to Durrell's use of alcohol. I oftenhesitate to read biographical material about artists whose work I greatlyadmire, but having delved a little into Durrell's life, I couldn't helpwondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady drinking might have had onhis life and work. I understand he was a ferociously intelligent man withboundless energy, who led a fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment bysomeone who knew him (I don't recall who) that relayed that when writingDurrell lived on the 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder aboutthe psycholgocal aspects.For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interestand curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' isalmost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was anoriginal.- Rick SchoffOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:09 PM, James Gifford wrote:> Hello all,>> These are helpful comments, Gulshan. One small correction -- the> "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is> online:>> http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm>> I'm glad to hear it was of use! For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied> Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the various> European Amazon sites via their lightning service. I don't think that> applies to India, but they're still very much in print.>> I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert. What you call> touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism. We have> this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but it> incurs costs too... I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that point> in its various complexities.>> All best,> James> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:48:57 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <5655D869.5040800 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedWelcome to the listserv Rick!The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.All best,JamesOn 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal> aspects.>> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was> an original.>> - Rick Schoff------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:18:34 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"In his latter years, alcoholism became a big problem for Durrell. Read his memoir A Smile in the Mind?s Eye (1980) and you?ll see his own account of much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis. I seem to recall it was in excess of 2 1/2 bottles of wine a day. Living "on the edge of madness? is Sappho Jane Durrell?s expression. She also calls her father a ?demonic and aggressive drunkard? (Granta 37 [1991]) and says he used his liver ?like a punching bag.? I don?t recall alcohol becoming a fixture of Durrell?s writings until Bitter Lemons (1957), where I first learned the British term toper. A critic at the time pointed out its prominent use. Durrell and alcohol make me think of Lytton Strachey?s End of General Gordon (1918). The general had two obsessions: the Old Testament and the whiskey bottle. He would periodically go off on his binges. Strachey comments that ?the true drunkenness lay elsewhere.? ?Elsewhere? was not a matter of religiosity, rather some un! defined personal ?demon.? Same with Durrell, in my opinion.Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 7:48 AM, James Gifford  wrote:> > Welcome to the listserv Rick!> > The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.> > There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).> > After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.> > All best,> James> > On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:>> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've>> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the>> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not>> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about>> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's>> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> >> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,>> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,>> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help>> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of>> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists>> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's>> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady>> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a>> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a>> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I>> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the>> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal>> aspects.>> >> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest>> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is>> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was>> an original.>> >> - Rick Schoff-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18*************************************
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Wed Nov 25 16:18:33 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 16:18:33 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Madness
In-Reply-To: <W920141953745751448492540@atl4wm08pod3>
References: <W920141953745751448492540@atl4wm08pod3>
Message-ID: <32654BC5-5625-412A-9B6E-AD7CD23E2217@earthlink.net>

As Richard rightly suggests, Lawrence Durrell may have been too much in tuned with the ?madness? of modern civilization.  From the perspective of German literature, Romantic through Modern, Erich Heller has written about this in his Disinherited Mind (1959) and other works of criticism.  Friedrich H?lderlin had mental illness, and Nietzsche went mad (although probably due to syphilis).  As Lady Caroline Lamb said, Lord Byron was of course ?mad, bad, and dangerous to know.?  Sappho Jane says pretty much the same thing about her father.  Who can read today?s newspapers and not conclude that our times are indeed ?mad??

Bruce



> On Nov 25, 2015, at 3:02 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:
> 
>  Looking through my MINDSCAPE (revised edition) I am struck by the frequency of the references to, and dicussion of, madness. Especially the chapter devoted to TUNC and NUNQUAM. But LD's own ideas about madness can be found in a notebook which may date as early as 1939: ?madness is merely a revolution in behaviour, not an interior schism or disease?. Also, in my discussion of the QUINTET, I pay much attention to the characters of Livia and Sylvie: ?frozen into the total madness of insight?.: ?though she has very distinct marks of madness in her look one always feels that to call her insane would be to put all ontology to the question?. Sobering words. LD himself, as I say in the book, was, while writing TUNC and NUNQUAM, afraid that he himself was  not merely "on the edge of madness" but about to topple in. His very clearly drunken notes from that period, and from his very last notebook, make it clear to me that he was quite frightened by this, exarcebated as it was by the theme running through TUNC/NUNQUAM, that civilisation itself was enetring a period of madness.
> RP
>  

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From marc at marcpiel.fr  Wed Nov 25 17:11:16 2015
From: marc at marcpiel.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 02:11:16 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
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Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
Marc

Envoy? de mon iPad

> Le 25 nov. 2015 ? 18:18, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> a ?crit :
> 
> 
> 
> 


From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Wed Nov 25 18:06:59 2015
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:06:59 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <56566943.10604@gmail.com>

I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. 
Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people 
will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the 
addiction itself is ethically neutral.

Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, 
it's not really a thing unto itself.  Someone like Lowry made alcoholism 
an integral part of the work.  Hemingway made drink figure in the text 
as a marker for self-censorship.  Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't 
strike me in the same way.

Cheers,
James

On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
> Marc


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Wed Nov 25 19:17:46 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:17:46 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <56566943.10604@gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
	<8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>
	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>

James,

I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?  That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism.  The cause is what interests me.  On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue.  (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?)  My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.?  Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.?  That is, a kind of ?manliness.?  Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River.  I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.

Bruce





> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.
> 
> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself.  Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work.  Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship.  Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.
> 
> Cheers,
> James
> 
> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
>> Marc
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Wed Nov 25 22:33:09 2015
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 17:33:09 +1100
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
	<8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>
	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>
	<D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <E66A104D-8BE9-4E4D-BCA3-473DA866017D@bigpond.net.au>

Ah, alcohol, my favourite subject. Well, one of them. Marc Piel  is right. There is big difference between sipping on the wine and hitting the whiskey. Two and a half bottles of wine taken over a long day - Durrell started about 10am - will not cause drunkenness in a seasoned drinker as Durrell was and was a level of daily consumption not uncommon in Provence then and indeed now. But if you put the Vieux Marc, a strong spirit, on top of this things get ugly and from my research, this is when lord Larry could become an ugly drunk as Sappho and others attest. Durrell lived in age of heavy drinking and smoking which in our increasingly sanitised, health conscious world is hard to imagine. It may be he did not stand out all that much among his own set. Ok, a toper is a big drinker, not necessarily a drunkard. There an element of the heroic about it with the Viking God Thor described as a mighty eater and toper. As to the cliche of the alcoholic writer; many are alcoholics, some are writers, others builders labourers, some academics or school teachers and others even leaders of nations. What makes people alcoholics, and I think Durrell was one all his adult life, is not easy to answer but in terra Australis we have a few sayings: beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer, I drink to make other people interesting, a day without wine is a day without sunshine, the purpose of wine is to bring happiness to man - and so on. Durrell was a pisspot, his brother was worse but not violent. Larry was ok on the wine but when got seriously onto to hard stuff there was often, as the Irish say, a fight in every bottle.

David Whitewine - Richmond Grove Chardonnay.

Sent from my iPad

> On 26 Nov 2015, at 2:17 pm, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> James,
> 
> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?  That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism.  The cause is what interests me.  On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue.  (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?)  My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.?  Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.?  That is, a kind of ?manliness.?  Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River.  I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.
>> 
>> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself.  Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work.  Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship.  Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> James
>> 
>>> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
>>> Marc
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Thu Nov 26 08:02:52 2015
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:02:52 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
	<8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>
	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>
	<D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <56572D2C.9070606@gmail.com>

Hi Bruce,

> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?

I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's 
probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of 
the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it 
deliberate on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still 
often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing 
-- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone 
that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time 
I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on 
alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be 
more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, 
but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but 
not that much!).

> That is not what I?m
> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.

That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those 
speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and 
Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating 
those personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" 
India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as 
David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and 
place.  There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his 
life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle 
under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, 
etc...  There are an abundance of reasons.

We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell 
gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to 
resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.

> That is, a kind of
> ?manliness.?

The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but 
like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell 
makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially 
Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a 
masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men 
(Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there 
are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa 
cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the 
first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.

In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's 
works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the 
others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded 
in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways 
that just don't work well.

> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....

I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol 
across /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. 
"Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're 
feeling."  Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett 
does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they 
don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't 
possible).  I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 
10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and 
where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded 
masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so 
contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such 
"manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with... 
  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even 
then such a position limits the subject position in important ways.  But 
how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see Durrell subverting 
the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.

I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to 
see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's 
Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in 
Ottawa?).  I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never 
felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly 
in many respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in 
any way that calls out as desirable.

A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French 
Brothels" might be productive for this.

All best,
James

From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org  Thu Nov 26 00:41:32 2015
From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:41:32 +0000
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18
Message-ID: <W2714218129265261448527292@atl4wm01pod3>

As a postscript to my message about LD, alcohol and madness, here's the opening of my chapter on TUNC /NUNQUAM, entitled 'SPERECTOMY', for those who don't have access to a copy of the 2nd edition.
The entire book will be available in the New Year online on the soon-to-be-completed new website of the Durrell Library of Corfu, along with Brewster Chamberlin's CHRONOLOGY and other texts
RP 


Sperectomy


After the completion of The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell wassilent as a novelist for eight years. Tuncand Nunquam mark a caesura in the thought patterns whichcharacterise both the Quartet and theQuintet, because Durrell?s mindscapehad deepened and darkened as he came closer to knowing the real nature ofmadness. In these books there is an edge to Durrell?s voice which we do notencounter elsewhere in his work, and which fuels the madness, the rage and thecapacity for revolt which culminates in this Irish refusal. His disillusionwith the modern world led him towards a great act of refusal and, as we haveseen, his notebooks indicate the extent to which he had canvassed despair.Madness pervades Tunc and Nunquam as surely and as thoroughly aspassion invests the Quartet, markingDurrell?s return to the central problem of Hamlet and thus the need tounderstand history as the record of man?s intercourse with woman, the lexiconof culture. Together, these novels constitute a statement about writing which marksa turning-point in the relationship of literature to life. 
This chapter is concerned primarilywith Durrell?s methods in approaching the nature of the despair which heexperienced in the face of the collapse of culture and, with it, the collapseor excision of hope.[1]Partly Durrell knew this to be inevitable, and partly he still believed in the?miracle?: in Nunquam Julian insists,like any Irishman, ?If one does not live on hopes in this life what else isthere to live on?? (Nunquam 142);whereas in Quinx we will be told ?byhoping, wishing and foreseeing we are doing something contrary to nature. Cogito is okay but spero makes man out of the featureless animal of Aristotle: goneastray in the forebrain? (Quintet1195). When, however, in the ?Postface? to Nunquam,he said that the book was an attempt to place a signpost in ?the notion ofculture? (Nunquam 285), Durrellintended to encapsulate the perhaps greater notion of the metaphor <man =woman> as the fons et origo ofculture: 

You can touch the quiddity, the nub ofthe idea of a culture only if you realise that it comes out of an act ofassociation of which the primal genetic blueprint in the strictest biologicalsense is the uniting of the couple, man and woman. In the compact and the seed(Nunquam 87). 

?Woman? is thus the question to which the answer,in theory, is ?man? and vice versa,but despite Durrell?s pursuit of Blake?s ?lineaments of gratified desire? inthe Quartet, it is only in The Revolt that this becomesself-evident. 
The ?revolt? or ?refusal? is predicatedin the idea of a culture which has degenerated into mere civilisation.Association, which we have seen as the essential condition of the field, beginsin the copula of the verb ?to be? and is proven in the courts of love. For Durrell,this represented the key to all human endeavour, and in particular to that ofwriting, to the imagination. Without the twin elements of ?the seed? (sexualignition) and ?the compact? (mutual intellection), man would hang as theimpotent conjunction between principles. As the world-expression of theprinciple of association, the ubiquitous ?Firm? of Merlins embodies anuxorious, voracious impotence masquerading as the svelte efficiency of an artform. Against it, the man-principle, ?Felix? (happy), and the woman-principle,?Benedicta? (blessed), exercise their refusal, and in the face of it theyplunge into madness. 


------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Cf. S. Rushdie, Midnight?s Children (London: Cape, 1981) p. 437.


-----Original Message-----
From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 03:00 PM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18

Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Indian Mertaphysics (Rick Schoff) 2. Alcoholism (James Gifford) 3. Re: Alcoholism (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:40:40 -0500From: Rick Schoff To: james.d.gifford at gmail.com, ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Indian MertaphysicsMessage-ID:	Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I'vementioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread thefiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but notparticularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles aboutDurrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's"Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell, andseeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom, violence infiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help but recallnumerous references over the years to Durrell's use of alcohol. I oftenhesitate to read biographical material about artists whose work I greatlyadmire, but having delved a little into Durrell's life, I couldn't helpwondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady drinking might have had onhis life and work. I understand he was a ferociously intelligent man withboundless energy, who led a fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment bysomeone who knew him (I don't recall who) that relayed that when writingDurrell lived on the 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder aboutthe psycholgocal aspects.For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interestand curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' isalmost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was anoriginal.- Rick SchoffOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:09 PM, James Gifford wrote:> Hello all,>> These are helpful comments, Gulshan. One small correction -- the> "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is> online:>> http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm>> I'm glad to hear it was of use! For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied> Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the various> European Amazon sites via their lightning service. I don't think that> applies to India, but they're still very much in print.>> I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert. What you call> touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism. We have> this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but it> incurs costs too... I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that point> in its various complexities.>> All best,> James> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:48:57 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <5655D869.5040800 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedWelcome to the listserv Rick!The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.All best,JamesOn 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal> aspects.>> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was> an original.>> - Rick Schoff------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:18:34 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"In his latter years, alcoholism became a big problem for Durrell. Read his memoir A Smile in the Mind?s Eye (1980) and you?ll see his own account of much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis. I seem to recall it was in excess of 2 1/2 bottles of wine a day. Living "on the edge of madness? is Sappho Jane Durrell?s expression. She also calls her father a ?demonic and aggressive drunkard? (Granta 37 [1991]) and says he used his liver ?like a punching bag.? I don?t recall alcohol becoming a fixture of Durrell?s writings until Bitter Lemons (1957), where I first learned the British term toper. A critic at the time pointed out its prominent use. Durrell and alcohol make me think of Lytton Strachey?s End of General Gordon (1918). The general had two obsessions: the Old Testament and the whiskey bottle. He would periodically go off on his binges. Strachey comments that ?the true drunkenness lay elsewhere.? ?Elsewhere? was not a matter of religiosity, rather some un! defined personal ?demon.? Same with Durrell, in my opinion.Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 7:48 AM, James Gifford  wrote:> > Welcome to the listserv Rick!> > The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.> > There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).> > After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.> > All best,> James> > On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:>> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've>> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the>> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not>> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about>> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's>> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> >> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,>> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,>> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help>> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of>> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists>> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's>> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady>> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a>> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a>> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I>> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the>> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal>> aspects.>> >> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest>> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is>> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was>> an original.>> >> - Rick Schoff-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18*************************************
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From billyapt at gmail.com  Thu Nov 26 08:06:58 2015
From: billyapt at gmail.com (William Apt)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 10:06:58 -0600
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <E66A104D-8BE9-4E4D-BCA3-473DA866017D@bigpond.net.au>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
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	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
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Message-ID: <B96B5E9A-D38A-41D6-B386-8787A415A95A@gmail.com>

"I drink to make other people interesting." Now that's some high level stuff! 

WILLIAM APT
Attorney at Law
812 San Antonio St, Ste 401
Austin TX 78701
512/708-8300
512/708-8011 FAX

> On Nov 26, 2015, at 12:33 AM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> Ah, alcohol, my favourite subject. Well, one of them. Marc Piel  is right. There is big difference between sipping on the wine and hitting the whiskey. Two and a half bottles of wine taken over a long day - Durrell started about 10am - will not cause drunkenness in a seasoned drinker as Durrell was and was a level of daily consumption not uncommon in Provence then and indeed now. But if you put the Vieux Marc, a strong spirit, on top of this things get ugly and from my research, this is when lord Larry could become an ugly drunk as Sappho and others attest. Durrell lived in age of heavy drinking and smoking which in our increasingly sanitised, health conscious world is hard to imagine. It may be he did not stand out all that much among his own set. Ok, a toper is a big drinker, not necessarily a drunkard. There an element of the heroic about it with the Viking God Thor described as a mighty eater and toper. As to the cliche of the alcoholic writer; many are alcoholics, some are writers, others builders labourers, some academics or school teachers and others even leaders of nations. What makes people alcoholics, and I think Durrell was one all his adult life, is not easy to answer but in terra Australis we have a few sayings: beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer, I drink to make other people interesting, a day without wine is a day without sunshine, the purpose of wine is to bring happiness to man - and so on. Durrell was a pisspot, his brother was worse but not violent. Larry was ok on the wine but when got seriously onto to hard stuff there was often, as the Irish say, a fight in every bottle.
> 
> David Whitewine - Richmond Grove Chardonnay.
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On 26 Nov 2015, at 2:17 pm, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>> James,
>> 
>> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?  That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism.  The cause is what interests me.  On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue.  (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?)  My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.?  Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.?  That is, a kind of ?manliness.?  Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River.  I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.
>> 
>> Bruce
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.
>>> 
>>> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself.  Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work.  Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship.  Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> James
>>> 
>>>> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>>>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
>>>> Marc
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ILDS mailing list
>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Nov 26 12:11:06 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 12:11:06 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <56572D2C.9070606@gmail.com>
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James,

You make good points.  I especially like the ones on Hemingway.  I?d forgotten the references in the early short stories and The Sun Also Rises.  So I think you?re right about those examples of drinking as concealment or substitutes for openness.

Those examples, however, led to excess in real life, and there?s not much argument about the dangers of excessive drinking and its consequences.  The latter half of Hemingway?s life proves that.  A. E. Hotchner describes that sad state quite well in Papa (1966).  So too Lillian Ross?s famous profile of EH in the New Yorker (1950).  David Green describes the convivial aspects of drinking.  I don?t think this is what is at the root(s) of Hemingway?s or Durrell?s drinking problems, each for similar and different reasons, of course.  Re Durrell, I lean towards Richard Pine?s analysis of the author?s ?madness.?  Sexuality has something to do with this, perhaps ambiguous sexuality, which was probably EH?s problem.  A lot has been written about Papa?s dubious ?sexuality.?  Re Durrell?s sexuality, just what does it mean to be ?deeply wounded in [one?s] sex??  Incest may also have something to do with all of this.

Masculinity in the Quartet, as you point out, is a troubling affair and perhaps a source of anxiety for Durrell.  So, women get the titles of two novels, a homosexual gets one, and a man, of sorts, has one.  Mannish Justine is a dominant figure, so too bisexual Clea.  Darley is ineffectual.  Pursewarden is assertive but suicidal.  Mountolive is used.  Nessim is as blurred as the image he projects on frosted glass.  His brother Narouz is muscular, hairy, and malformed.  Men just don?t come off very well in the Quartet.  Women are the real power-brokers, Melissa the honeybee the most appealing (because she?s a clich??).  If this is how Durrell saw the world, then he had problems.  No wonder he had to beat them down in his private life.  He felt threatened (Eve gave him a black eye).  Perhaps this is why fictional Leila gets smallpox.

As to Edward Said, I haven?t come across any of his commentary on Durrell?s Alexandria, but what you say he said certainly sounds like his view of Western Orientalism and its sexual fantasies about the East.  Was that the main attraction for Durrell?s readership in the late 50s?  Maybe.  A reviewer saw Justine as ?sex hot.?  But sex in the Quartet is a very nebulous affair done in soft focus.  It?s not explicit like Mailer?s ?Time of Her Time? (1959).  What got me drunk as an adolescent was Durrell?s language (the soft focus) and the experience it evoked.  I guess Said would say this proves his point.  Well, Durrell had his fantasy about Alexandria and allowed me to share it.  So what?  He could have done the same if he?d situated the novels in Athens, as he once planned.  To repeat myself, I am not fond of Edward Said?s notion of ?Orientalism.?

Bruce




> On Nov 26, 2015, at 8:02 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bruce,
> 
>> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?
> 
> I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).
> 
>> That is not what I?m
>> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.
> 
> That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place.  There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc...  There are an abundance of reasons.
> 
> We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.
> 
>> That is, a kind of
>> ?manliness.?
> 
> The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.
> 
> In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just don't work well.
> 
>> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....
> 
> I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling."  Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible).  I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with...  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in important ways.  But how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.
> 
> I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?).  I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that calls out as desirable.
> 
> A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels" might be productive for this.
> 
> All best,
> James

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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Thu Nov 26 12:25:05 2015
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 07:25:05 +1100
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <B96B5E9A-D38A-41D6-B386-8787A415A95A@gmail.com>
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	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
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Message-ID: <94BD9EB0-2EB1-4FB6-95B2-EB52B85B2061@bigpond.net.au>

I am pleased you think so, William. None of those sayings were included to be glib.
Highly intelligent and creative people, eg Durrell , can often find life disappointing, boring and most people dull. Tedium vitae, ennui - call it what you will. I believe Durrell drank for this reason and for all the usual reasons. But there was with him a deliberate drunkenness, perhaps a revolt against modern times as well a the desire for 'creative madness'. After the second war, the old order changeth, giving place to knew: by breakfast serials and soft drinks appeared, car driven urbanisation began destroying old landscapes. In Reflections, Gideon rants against Coca Cola. A new Puritanism flowed out of America like a vast river, the effects of which continue to be felt today. Durrell's Proven?al drinking style was in part a revolt against this. Look too at how his last great set of novels Q5 hearkens back to an older world just as Caesars Vast Ghost is a tribute to the old south. I think for Larry, happiness, the right way of living were in a literal and metaphysical sense in the past. Alcohol helped him cope with present and maybe too, the future. 

David

Sent from my iPad

> On 27 Nov 2015, at 3:06 am, William Apt <billyapt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> "I drink to make other people interesting." Now that's some high level stuff! 
> 
> WILLIAM APT
> Attorney at Law
> 812 San Antonio St, Ste 401
> Austin TX 78701
> 512/708-8300
> 512/708-8011 FAX
> 
>> On Nov 26, 2015, at 12:33 AM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>> 
>> Ah, alcohol, my favourite subject. Well, one of them. Marc Piel  is right. There is big difference between sipping on the wine and hitting the whiskey. Two and a half bottles of wine taken over a long day - Durrell started about 10am - will not cause drunkenness in a seasoned drinker as Durrell was and was a level of daily consumption not uncommon in Provence then and indeed now. But if you put the Vieux Marc, a strong spirit, on top of this things get ugly and from my research, this is when lord Larry could become an ugly drunk as Sappho and others attest. Durrell lived in age of heavy drinking and smoking which in our increasingly sanitised, health conscious world is hard to imagine. It may be he did not stand out all that much among his own set. Ok, a toper is a big drinker, not necessarily a drunkard. There an element of the heroic about it with the Viking God Thor described as a mighty eater and toper. As to the cliche of the alcoholic writer; many are alcoholics, some are writers, others builders labourers, some academics or school teachers and others even leaders of nations. What makes people alcoholics, and I think Durrell was one all his adult life, is not easy to answer but in terra Australis we have a few sayings: beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer, I drink to make other people interesting, a day without wine is a day without sunshine, the purpose of wine is to bring happiness to man - and so on. Durrell was a pisspot, his brother was worse but not violent. Larry was ok on the wine but when got seriously onto to hard stuff there was often, as the Irish say, a fight in every bottle.
>> 
>> David Whitewine - Richmond Grove Chardonnay.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On 26 Nov 2015, at 2:17 pm, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> James,
>>> 
>>> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?  That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism.  The cause is what interests me.  On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue.  (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?)  My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.?  Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.?  That is, a kind of ?manliness.?  Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River.  I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.
>>> 
>>> Bruce
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.
>>>> 
>>>> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself.  Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work.  Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship.  Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> James
>>>> 
>>>>> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>>>>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)
>>>>> Marc
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org  Thu Nov 26 13:55:19 2015
From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 21:55:19 +0000
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 19
Message-ID: <W7433413851313241448574919@atl4wm05pod3>

A couple of points:
1) I don't understand what is meant by "an ethical issue" in relation to alcohol and alcoholism - is someone trying to be moralistic about drinking? 
2) LD was not an alcoholic. He was a heavy drinker, almost entirely devoted to wine - in his later years, a light petillant white which his companion more or less imposed on him rather than his favourite red. An alcoholic is someone who cannot go a day without a serious quantity of drink - of whatever kind - whatever is available. D wasn't like that. Yes, his brother suffered more from heavy drinking. Liver failure killed him. It didn;'t kill LD. Liver failure can happen to a bishop, and frequently does.
3) If Dr GiffoRd does not wish to "be a Darley" - that is, have "exciting sexual adventures" well who are we to either approve or disapprove of his self-denial?
There is something seriously worrying about people pontificating about other people's predilections and their behaviour. We will worry next about novels in which pedestrians are sentenced to death for J-walking - what does that tell us about the novelist?
RP
-----Original Message-----
From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 03:00 PM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 19

Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18 (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) 2. Madness (Bruce Redwine) 3. Re: Alcoholism (Marc Piel) 4. Re: Alcoholism (James Gifford) 5. Re: Alcoholism (Bruce Redwine) 6. Re: Alcoholism (Denise Tart & David Green) 7. Re: Alcoholism (James Gifford) 8. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18 (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) 9. Re: Alcoholism (William Apt)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 23:02:20 +0000From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.orgTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Looking through my MINDSCAPE (revised edition) I am struck by the frequency of the references to, and dicussion of, madness. Especially the chapter devoted to TUNC and NUNQUAM. But LD's own ideas about madness can be found in a notebook which may date as early as 1939: ?madnessis merely a revolution in behaviour, not an interior schism or disease?. Also, in my discussion of the QUINTET, I pay much attention to the characters of Livia and Sylvie: ?frozeninto the total madness of insight?.: ?though she has very distinct marks of madness in her look one alwaysfeels that to call her insane would be to put all ontology to the question?. Sobering words. LD himself, as I say in the book, was, while writing TUNC and NUNQUAM, afraid that he himself was not merely "on the edge of madness" but about to topple in. His very clearly drunken notes from that period, and from his very last notebook, make it clear to me that he was quite frightened by this, exarcebated as it was by the theme! running through TUNC/NUNQUAM, that civilisation itself was enetring a period of madness.RP-----Original Message-----From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 03:00 PMTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Indian Mertaphysics (Rick Schoff) 2. Alcoholism (James Gifford) 3. Re: Alcoholism (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:40:40 -0500From: Rick Schoff To: james.d.gifford at gmail.com, ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Indian MertaphysicsMessage-ID:	Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I'vementioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread thefiction in particular many times. I've re! ad one informative but notparticularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles aboutDurrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's"Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell, andseeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom, violence infiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help but recallnumerous references over the years to Durrell's use of alcohol. I oftenhesitate to read biographical material about artists whose work I greatlyadmire, but having delved a little into Durrell's life, I couldn't helpwondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady drinking might have had onhis life and work. I understand he was a ferociously intelligent man withboundless energy, who led a fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment bysomeone who knew him (I don't recall who) that relayed that when writingDurrell lived on the 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but w! onder aboutthe psycholgocal aspects.For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interestand curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' isalmost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was anoriginal.- Rick SchoffOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:09 PM, James Gifford wrote:> Hello all,>> These are helpful comments, Gulshan. One small correction -- the> "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is> online:>> http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm>> I'm glad to hear it was of use! For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied> Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the various> European Amazon sites via their lightning service. I don't think that> applies to India, but they're still very much in print.>> I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert. What you call> touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism. We have> this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but it> incurs costs to! o... I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that point> in its various complexities.>> All best,> James> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:48:57 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <5655D869.5040800 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedWelcome to the listserv Rick!The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway! , "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.All best,JamesOn 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've> mentioned, I am ! simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone wh! o knew him (I> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal> aspects.>> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was> an original.>> - Rick Schoff------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:18:34 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"In his latter years, alcoholism became a big problem for Durrell. Read his memoir A Smile in the Mind?s Eye (1980) and you?ll see his own account of much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis. I seem to recall it was in excess of 2 1/2 bottles of wine a day. Living "on the edge of madness? is Sappho Jane Durrell?s expression. She also calls her father a ! ?demonic and aggressive drunkard? (Granta 37 [1991]) and says he used his liver ?like a punching bag.? I don?t recall alcohol becoming a fixture of Durrell?s writings until Bitter Lemons (1957), where I first learned the British term toper. A critic at the time pointed out its prominent use. Durrell and alcohol make me think of Lytton Strachey?s End of General Gordon (1918). The general had two obsessions: the Old Testament and the whiskey bottle. He would periodically go off on his binges. Strachey comments that ?the true drunkenness lay elsewhere.? ?Elsewhere? was not a matter of religiosity, rather some un! defined personal ?demon.? Same with Durrell, in my opinion.Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 7:48 AM, James Gifford wrote:> > Welcome to the listserv Rick!> > The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating f! or depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.> > There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).> > After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 19! 80s as especially so, for different reasons.> > All best,> James> > On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:>> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've>> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the>> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not>> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about>> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's>> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> >> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,>> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,>> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help>> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of>> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists>> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's>> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrel! l's alleged steady>> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a>> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a>> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I>> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the>> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal>> aspects.>> >> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest>> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is>> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was>> an original.>> >> - Rick Schoff-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18*************************************-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 16:18:33 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: [ilds] MadnessMessage-ID: <32654BC5-5625-412A-9B6E-AD7CD23E2217 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As Richard rightly suggests, Lawrence Durrell may have been too much in tuned with the ?madness? of modern civilization. From the perspective of German literature, Romantic through Modern, Erich Heller has written about this in his Disinherited Mind (1959) and other works of criticism. Friedrich H?lderlin had mental illness, and Nietzsche went mad (although probably due to syphilis). As Lady Caroline Lamb said, Lord Byron was of course ?mad, bad, and dangerous to know.? Sappho Jane says pretty much the same thing about her father. Who can read today?s newspapers and not conclude that our times are indeed ?mad??Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 3:02 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:> > Looking through my MINDSCAPE (revised edition) I am struck by the frequency of the references to, and dicussion of, madness. Especially the chapter devoted to TUNC and NUNQUAM. But LD's own ideas about madness can be found in a notebook which may date as early as 1939: ?madness is merely a revolution in behaviour, not an interior schism or disease?. Also, in my discussion of the QUINTET, I pay much attention to the characters of Livia and Sylvie: ?frozen into the total madness of insight?.: ?though she has very distinct marks of madness in her look one always feels that to call her insane would be to put all ontology to the question?. Sobering words. LD himself, as I say in the book, was, while writing TUNC and NUNQUAM, afraid that he himself was not merely "on the edge of madness" but about to topple in. His very clearly drunken notes from that period, and from his very last notebook, make it clear to me that he was quite frightened by this, exarcebated as it was by the! theme running through TUNC/NUNQUAM, that civilisation itself was enetring a period of madness.> RP> -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 3Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 02:11:16 +0100From: Marc Piel To: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3 at marcpiel.fr>Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)MarcEnvoy? de mon iPad> Le 25 nov. 2015 ? 18:18, Bruce Redwine  a ?crit :> > > > ------------------------------Message: 4Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:06:59 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <56566943.10604 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowedI wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself. Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work. Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship. Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.Cheers,JamesOn 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)> Marc------------------------------Message: 5Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:17:46 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"James,I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.? That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism. The cause is what interests me. On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue. (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?) My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.? Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.? That is, a kind of ?manliness.? Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River. I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford  wrote:> > I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.> > Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself. Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work. Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship. Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.> > Cheers,> James> > On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)>> Marc> > _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 6Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 17:33:09 +1100From: Denise Tart & David Green To: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"Ah, alcohol, my favourite subject. Well, one of them. Marc Piel is right. There is big difference between sipping on the wine and hitting the whiskey. Two and a half bottles of wine taken over a long day - Durrell started about 10am - will not cause drunkenness in a seasoned drinker as Durrell was and was a level of daily consumption not uncommon in Provence then and indeed now. But if you put the Vieux Marc, a strong spirit, on top of this things get ugly and from my research, this is when lord Larry could become an ugly drunk as Sappho and others attest. Durrell lived in age of heavy drinking and smoking which in our increasingly sanitised, health conscious world is hard to imagine. It may be he did not stand out all that much among his own set. Ok, a toper is a big drinker, not necessarily a drunkard. There an element of the heroic about it with the Viking God Thor described as a mighty eater and toper. As to the cliche of the alcoholic writer; many are alcoholics, some ! are writers, others builders labourers, some academics or school teachers and others even leaders of nations. What makes people alcoholics, and I think Durrell was one all his adult life, is not easy to answer but in terra Australis we have a few sayings: beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer, I drink to make other people interesting, a day without wine is a day without sunshine, the purpose of wine is to bring happiness to man - and so on. Durrell was a pisspot, his brother was worse but not violent. Larry was ok on the wine but when got seriously onto to hard stuff there was often, as the Irish say, a fight in every bottle.David Whitewine - Richmond Grove Chardonnay.Sent from my iPad> On 26 Nov 2015, at 2:17 pm, Bruce Redwine  wrote:> > James,> > I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.? That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism. The cause is what interests me. On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue. (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?) My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.? Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.? That is, a kind of ?manliness.? Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River. I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.> > Bruce> > > > > >> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford  wrote:>> >> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.>> >> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself. Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work. Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship. Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.>> >> Cheers,>> James>> >>> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:>>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)>>> Marc>> >> _______________________________________________>> ILDS mailing list>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds> > _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 7Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:02:52 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds Listserv Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <56572D2C.9070606 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowedHi Bruce,> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's probably shaping my thoughts. He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate on his part). However, in the critical work, there's still often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues. The last time I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread. There might be more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).> That is not what I?m> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.That is, indeed, a different matter. I tend to hesitate over those speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those personal demons. He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place. There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc... There are an abundance of reasons.We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden. Durrell gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.> That is, a kind of> ?manliness.?The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical. Durrell makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself). There's also a masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's works? Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink. Most of the others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just don't work well.> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across /in our time/. Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling." Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible). I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea. The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with... After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in important ways. But how to talk about that in his time and place? I see Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?). I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many respects... I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that calls out as desirable.A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels" might be productive for this.All best,James------------------------------Message: 8Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:41:32 +0000From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.orgTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"As a postscript to my message about LD, alcohol and madness, here's the opening of my chapter on TUNC /NUNQUAM, entitled 'SPERECTOMY', for those who don't have access to a copy of the 2nd edition.The entire book will be available in the New Year online on the soon-to-be-completed new website of the Durrell Library of Corfu, along with Brewster Chamberlin's CHRONOLOGY and other textsRP SperectomyAfter the completion of The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell wassilent as a novelist for eight years. Tuncand Nunquam mark a caesura in the thought patterns whichcharacterise both the Quartet and theQuintet, because Durrell?s mindscapehad deepened and darkened as he came closer to knowing the real nature ofmadness. In these books there is an edge to Durrell?s voice which we do notencounter elsewhere in his work, and which fuels the madness, the rage and thecapacity for revolt which culminates in this Irish refusal. His disillusionwith the modern world led him towards a great act of refusal and, as we haveseen, his notebooks indicate the extent to which he had canvassed despair.Madness pervades Tunc and Nunquam as surely and as thoroughly aspassion invests the Quartet, markingDurrell?s return to the central problem of Hamlet and thus the need tounderstand history as the record of man?s intercourse with woman, the lexiconof culture. Together, these novels constitute a statement abo! ut writing which marksa turning-point in the relationship of literature to life. This chapter is concerned primarilywith Durrell?s methods in approaching the nature of the despair which heexperienced in the face of the collapse of culture and, with it, the collapseor excision of hope.[1]Partly Durrell knew this to be inevitable, and partly he still believed in the?miracle?: in Nunquam Julian insists,like any Irishman, ?If one does not live on hopes in this life what else isthere to live on?? (Nunquam 142);whereas in Quinx we will be told ?byhoping, wishing and foreseeing we are doing something contrary to nature. Cogito is okay but spero makes man out of the featureless animal of Aristotle: goneastray in the forebrain? (Quintet1195). When, however, in the ?Postface? to Nunquam,he said that the book was an attempt to place a signpost in ?the notion ofculture? (Nunquam 285), Durrellintended to encapsulate the perhaps greater notion of the metaphor  as the fons et origo ofculture: You can touch the quiddity, the nub ofthe idea of a culture only if you realise that it comes out of an act ofassociation of which the primal genetic blueprint in the strictest biologicalsense is the uniting of the couple, man and woman. In the compact and the seed(Nunquam 87). ?Woman? is thus the question to which the answer,in theory, is ?man? and vice versa,but despite Durrell?s pursuit of Blake?s ?lineaments of gratified desire? inthe Quartet, it is only in The Revolt that this becomesself-evident. The ?revolt? or ?refusal? is predicatedin the idea of a culture which has degenerated into mere civilisation.Association, which we have seen as the essential condition of the field, beginsin the copula of the verb ?to be? and is proven in the courts of love. For Durrell,this represented the key to all human endeavour, and in particular to that ofwriting, to the imagination. Without the twin elements of ?the seed? (sexualignition) and ?the compact? (mutual intellection), man would hang as theimpotent conjunction between principles. As the world-expression of theprinciple of association, the ubiquitous ?Firm? of Merlins embodies anuxorious, voracious impotence masquerading as the svelte efficiency of an artform. Against it, the man-principle, ?Felix? (happy), and the woman-principle,?Benedicta? (blessed), exercise their refusal, and in the face of it theyplunge into madness. ------------------------------------------------------------[1] Cf. S. Rushdie, Midnight?s Children (London: Cape, 1981) p. 437.-----Original Message-----From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 03:00 PMTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Indian Mertaphysics (Rick Schoff) 2. Alcoholism (James Gifford) 3. Re: Alcoholism (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:40:40 -0500From: Rick Schoff To: james.d.gifford at gmail.com, ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Indian MertaphysicsMessage-ID:	Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I'vementioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread thefiction in particular many times. I've re! ad one informative but notparticularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles aboutDurrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's"Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell, andseeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom, violence infiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help but recallnumerous references over the years to Durrell's use of alcohol. I oftenhesitate to read biographical material about artists whose work I greatlyadmire, but having delved a little into Durrell's life, I couldn't helpwondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady drinking might have had onhis life and work. I understand he was a ferociously intelligent man withboundless energy, who led a fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment bysomeone who knew him (I don't recall who) that relayed that when writingDurrell lived on the 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but w! onder aboutthe psycholgocal aspects.For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interestand curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' isalmost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was anoriginal.- Rick SchoffOn Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:09 PM, James Gifford wrote:> Hello all,>> These are helpful comments, Gulshan. One small correction -- the> "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial" is my own piece in /jouvert/, which is> online:>> http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm>> I'm glad to hear it was of use! For anyone who doesn't know, the /Pied> Piper of Lovers/ and /Panic Spring/ editions are in stock for the various> European Amazon sites via their lightning service. I don't think that> applies to India, but they're still very much in print.>> I'm also glad for your comments on Elizabeth Gilbert. What you call> touching innocence is really a material legacy of colonialism. We have> this in Canada as well, and it's at least good for tourism revenues, but it> incurs costs to! o... I tend to see Durrell as very clear eyed on that point> in its various complexities.>> All best,> James> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:48:57 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <5655D869.5040800 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedWelcome to the listserv Rick!The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating for depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway! , "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 1980s as especially so, for different reasons.All best,JamesOn 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've> mentioned, I am ! simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrell's alleged steady> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone wh! o knew him (I> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal> aspects.>> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was> an original.>> - Rick Schoff------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:18:34 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: <8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"In his latter years, alcoholism became a big problem for Durrell. Read his memoir A Smile in the Mind?s Eye (1980) and you?ll see his own account of much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis. I seem to recall it was in excess of 2 1/2 bottles of wine a day. Living "on the edge of madness? is Sappho Jane Durrell?s expression. She also calls her father a ! ?demonic and aggressive drunkard? (Granta 37 [1991]) and says he used his liver ?like a punching bag.? I don?t recall alcohol becoming a fixture of Durrell?s writings until Bitter Lemons (1957), where I first learned the British term toper. A critic at the time pointed out its prominent use. Durrell and alcohol make me think of Lytton Strachey?s End of General Gordon (1918). The general had two obsessions: the Old Testament and the whiskey bottle. He would periodically go off on his binges. Strachey comments that ?the true drunkenness lay elsewhere.? ?Elsewhere? was not a matter of religiosity, rather some un! defined personal ?demon.? Same with Durrell, in my opinion.Bruce> On Nov 25, 2015, at 7:48 AM, James Gifford wrote:> > Welcome to the listserv Rick!> > The alcoholic writer can be a cliche mainly because there are so many ready examples (Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Lowry, &c.). Often there can be a tendency to diagnose from a distance (self-medicating f! or depression & such), but I'm dubious of those kinds of conversations with dead people. I've never been sure how to read the matter in the fiction for Durrell -- for Hemingway, "drunk" or "tight" carry broader meanings, almost allegorical, and certainly a conscious part of the construction of the text. I don't really see the same in Durrell, although it could be interesting to be convinced otherwise.> > There is a bit of shift in alcohol across the works as well. In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ (1935) there isn't much alcohol at all, apart from a peculiar cocktail at a party (bunny hug) and a first juvenile indulgence. By /Panic Spring/ (1937), there's an empty bottle of gin, but not for Durrell's alter ego Walsh. From around the same time biographically, Theodore Stephanides recounts Durrell and Miller discovering a Corfiot cafe with much English gin, to their great satisfaction (in Stephanides' memoirs from James Brigham's papers).> > After that, all bets are off... Biographically, MacNiven presents the mid-1950s as particularly liquid and the 19! 80s as especially so, for different reasons.> > All best,> James> > On 2015-11-25 5:40 AM, Rick Schoff wrote:>> As new to the list, I find these discussions fascinating. As I've>> mentioned, I am simply an avid reader of Durrell, and have reread the>> fiction in particular many times. I've read one informative but not>> particularly interesting bigraphy, as well as numerous articles about>> Durrell over the years. I recently found a copy of Richard Pine's>> "Mindscape" and look forward to reading that.>> >> In reading comments by scholars, some of whom spent ime with Durrell,>> and seeing issues raised such as professed unhappiness, boredom,>> violence in fiction and real life, and self-loathing - I couldn't help>> but recall numerous references over the years to Durrell's use of>> alcohol. I often hesitate to read biographical material about artists>> whose work I greatly admire, but having delved a little into Durrell's>> life, I couldn't help wondering what effect Durrel! l's alleged steady>> drinking might have had on his life and work. I understand he was a>> ferociously intelligent man with boundless energy, who led a>> fascinatingly exotic life. I saw one comment by someone who knew him (I>> don't recall who) that relayed that when writing Durrell lived on the>> 'edge of madness'. I couldn't help but wonder about the psycholgocal>> aspects.>> >> For many reasons, I proffer this issue very tentatively, but my interest>> and curiosity have gotten the better of me. 'Alcohol and the writer' is>> almost a cliche, but I don't find anything of Durrell's cliched. He was>> an original.>> >> - Rick Schoff-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 18*************************************-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 9Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 10:06:58 -0600From: William Apt To: ilds at lists.uvic.caCc: Denise Tart & David Green Subject: Re: [ilds] AlcoholismMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8""I drink to make other people interesting." Now that's some high level stuff! WILLIAM APTAttorney at Law812 San Antonio St, Ste 401Austin TX 78701512/708-8300512/708-8011 FAX> On Nov 26, 2015, at 12:33 AM, Denise Tart & David Green  wrote:> > Ah, alcohol, my favourite subject. Well, one of them. Marc Piel is right. There is big difference between sipping on the wine and hitting the whiskey. Two and a half bottles of wine taken over a long day - Durrell started about 10am - will not cause drunkenness in a seasoned drinker as Durrell was and was a level of daily consumption not uncommon in Provence then and indeed now. But if you put the Vieux Marc, a strong spirit, on top of this things get ugly and from my research, this is when lord Larry could become an ugly drunk as Sappho and others attest. Durrell lived in age of heavy drinking and smoking which in our increasingly sanitised, health conscious world is hard to imagine. It may be he did not stand out all that much among his own set. Ok, a toper is a big drinker, not necessarily a drunkard. There an element of the heroic about it with the Viking God Thor described as a mighty eater and toper. As to the cliche of the alcoholic writer; many are alcoholics, som! e are writers, others builders labourers, some academics or school teachers and others even leaders of nations. What makes people alcoholics, and I think Durrell was one all his adult life, is not easy to answer but in terra Australis we have a few sayings: beer makes you feel the way you should feel without beer, I drink to make other people interesting, a day without wine is a day without sunshine, the purpose of wine is to bring happiness to man - and so on. Durrell was a pisspot, his brother was worse but not violent. Larry was ok on the wine but when got seriously onto to hard stuff there was often, as the Irish say, a fight in every bottle.> > David Whitewine - Richmond Grove Chardonnay.> > Sent from my iPad> >> On 26 Nov 2015, at 2:17 pm, Bruce Redwine  wrote:>> >> James,>> >> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.? That is not what I?m talking about, rather what drove Durrell to alcoholism. The cause is what interests me. On the other hand, as a critic pointed out long ago, Durrell?s ?toper? in Bitter Lemons is espoused as a big virtue. (I'm relying on memory here and could have it wrong.?) My understanding of British toper is that it refers to a ?drunkard.? Maybe the British sense also connotes being able to ?hold one?s own.? That is, a kind of ?manliness.? Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit, Colonel Cantrell?s drinking problems in Across the River. I don?t see any ?self-censorship? involved, although the colonel?s heart disease may be mitigating factor.>> >> Bruce>> >> >> >> >> >>> On Nov 25, 2015, at 6:06 PM, James Gifford  wrote:>>> >>> I wonder if it's worth considering the ethical element here as well. Surely alcoholism is not an ethical issue in itself -- very often people will act out in ethically dubious ways due to their addictions, but the addiction itself is ethically neutral.>>> >>> Durrell drank, and while that certainly shaped some of his bad behavior, it's not really a thing unto itself. Someone like Lowry made alcoholism an integral part of the work. Hemingway made drink figure in the text as a marker for self-censorship. Durrell, Joyce, Barnes, et al. don't strike me in the same way.>>> >>> Cheers,>>> James>>> >>>> On 2015-11-25 5:11 PM, Marc Piel wrote:>>>> Surely you cannot compare wine (11?) and whisky(>45?)>>>> Marc>>> >>> _______________________________________________>>> ILDS mailing list>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>> >> _______________________________________________>> ILDS mailing list>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 19*************************************
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Nov 26 15:15:38 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 15:15:38 -0800
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 103, Issue 19
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I don?t think this discussion has been pontificating about authors and their heavy drinking or alcoholism.  The examples of great writers with his disposition are far too numerous to itemize.  In fact, it?s probably easier to list the teetotalers.  I see alcoholism (my preference) as symptomatic of some other problem.  No moralizing involved.  I like to explore underlying causes.

Bruce




> On Nov 26, 2015, at 1:55 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:
> 
> A couple of points:
> 1) I don't understand what is meant by "an ethical issue" in relation to alcohol and alcoholism - is someone trying to be moralistic about drinking? 
> 2) LD was not an alcoholic. He was a heavy drinker, almost entirely devoted to wine - in his later years, a light petillant white which his companion more or less imposed on him rather than his favourite red. An alcoholic is someone who cannot go a day without a serious quantity of drink - of whatever kind - whatever is available. D wasn't like that. Yes, his brother suffered more from heavy drinking. Liver failure killed him. It didn;'t kill LD. Liver failure can happen to a bishop, and frequently does.
> 3) If Dr GiffoRd does not wish to "be a Darley" - that is, have "exciting  sexual adventures" well who are we to either approve or disapprove of his self-denial?
> There is something seriously worrying about people pontificating about other people's predilections and their behaviour. We will worry next about novels in which pedestrians are sentenced to death for J-walking - what does that tell us about the novelist?
> RP

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From frederick.schoff at gmail.com  Fri Nov 27 13:20:49 2015
From: frederick.schoff at gmail.com (Rick Schoff)
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 16:20:49 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
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I too have often wondered about the striking phrase "deeply wounded in
one's sex." Before drawing any conclusion, I chalked its inscrutability in
part to the limits of what one could say in print back in that era.

My original curiosity about the use of alcohol - I had in mind its property
of being a depressant, and also its tendency to potentially set fire to the
more primitive aspects of personality. Someone's comment about it being an
antidote to the boredom LD professed made sense. Thinking back to Darley's
(and Blanford's) ineffectuality, in my own reads I had made the assumption
LD was making fun of himself and a certain Britishness. As always, this
begs the question of an author's intent versus the effects his writing
creates, the conscious versus the unconscious aspects, where in lies the
mystery and the magic.

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> James,
>
> You make good points.  I especially like the ones on Hemingway.  I?d
> forgotten the references in the early short stories and *The Sun Also
> Rises.*  So I think you?re right about those examples of drinking as
> concealment or substitutes for openness.
>
> Those examples, however, led to excess in real life, and there?s not much
> argument about the dangers of excessive drinking and its consequences.  The
> latter half of Hemingway?s life proves that.  A. E. Hotchner describes that
> sad state quite well in *Papa* (1966).  So too Lillian Ross?s famous
> profile of EH in the *New Yorker* (1950).  David Green describes the
> convivial aspects of drinking.  I don?t think this is what is at the
> root(s) of Hemingway?s or Durrell?s drinking problems, each for similar and
> different reasons, of course.  Re Durrell, I lean towards Richard Pine?s
> analysis of the author?s ?madness.?  Sexuality has something to do with
> this, perhaps ambiguous sexuality, which was probably EH?s problem.  A lot
> has been written about Papa?s dubious ?sexuality.?  Re Durrell?s sexuality,
> just what does it mean to be ?deeply wounded in [one?s] sex??  Incest may
> also have something to do with all of this.
>
> Masculinity in the *Quartet,* as you point out, is a troubling affair and
> perhaps a source of anxiety for Durrell.  So, women get the titles of two
> novels, a homosexual gets one, and a man, of sorts, has one.  Mannish
> Justine is a dominant figure, so too bisexual Clea.  Darley is
> ineffectual.  Pursewarden is assertive but suicidal.  Mountolive is used.
> Nessim is as blurred as the image he projects on frosted glass.  His
> brother Narouz is muscular, hairy, and malformed.  Men just don?t come off
> very well in the *Quartet.*  Women are the real power-brokers, Melissa
> the honeybee the most appealing (because she?s a clich??).  If this is how
> Durrell saw the world, then he had problems.  No wonder he had to beat them
> down in his private life.  He felt threatened (Eve gave him a black eye).
> Perhaps this is why fictional Leila gets smallpox.
>
> As to Edward Said, I haven?t come across any of his commentary on
> Durrell?s Alexandria, but what you say he said certainly sounds like his
> view of Western Orientalism and its sexual fantasies about the East.  Was
> that the main attraction for Durrell?s readership in the late 50s?  Maybe.
> A reviewer saw *Justine* as ?sex hot.?  But sex in the *Quartet* is a
> very nebulous affair done in soft focus.  It?s not explicit like Mailer?s
> ?Time of Her Time? (1959).  What got me drunk as an adolescent was
> Durrell?s language (the soft focus) and the experience it evoked.  I guess
> Said would say this proves his point.  Well, Durrell had his fantasy about
> Alexandria and allowed me to share it.  So what?  He could have done the
> same if he?d situated the novels in Athens, as he once planned.  To repeat
> myself, I am not fond of Edward Said?s notion of ?Orientalism.?
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 26, 2015, at 8:02 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Bruce,
>
> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?
>
>
> I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's
> probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the
> first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate
> on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still often a
> tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a
> failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that
> comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time I taught
> /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and
> literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be more recent work
> that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked
> carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).
>
> That is not what I?m
> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.
>
>
> That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those
> speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and
> Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those
> personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and
> "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points
> out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place.  There
> are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939
> through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later
> Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc...  There are an
> abundance of reasons.
>
> We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell
> gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to
> resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.
>
> That is, a kind of
> ?manliness.?
>
>
> The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like
> Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell makes his
> alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term
> he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a masculine economy at
> work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via
> Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that
> masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen,
> Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim),
> and so forth.
>
> In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's
> works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the
> others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in
> their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just
> don't work well.
>
> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....
>
>
> I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across
> /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a
> drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling."  Jake
> drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather
> than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink
> anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible).  I think of
> drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition)
> where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so
> much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on
> a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think,
> for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor
> the women they're with...  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be
> patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in
> important ways.  But how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see
> Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more
> anxiety.
>
> I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to
> see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's
> Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?).
> I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire
> to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many
> respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that
> calls out as desirable.
>
> A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French
> Brothels" might be productive for this.
>
> All best,
> James
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Nov 27 15:09:41 2015
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:09:41 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>
	<8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>
	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>
	<D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>
	<56572D2C.9070606@gmail.com>
	<D75BE08E-65D6-45F1-A5A4-DF3D3BD0B840@earthlink.net>
	<CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <47445DC6-E679-431E-88C3-2D6AD122F05D@earthlink.net>

David Green mentioned the possibility of drinking as an antidote to boredom.  Cf. how Sherlock Holmes takes opium to cure his boredom.

Re ?wounded in [one?s] sex,? it pays to look closely at Durrell?s diction.  (He?s a poet, after all, and chooses his words carefully.)  As many have observed (and never adequately explained by the author himself, in my opinion), ?wounding? and violence figure prominently throughout the Quartet:   Clea?s loss of her right hand, first and foremost, then the numerous references to Arab circumcision, the butchering of camels in the open, Narouz and his hippo whip, congenital mutilations (Narouz?s harelip, Semira?s nose), Toto impaled by a hatpin, etc..  Durrell?s Alexandria is a very violent place.  Why?

Re ?sex," what does this refer to?  Sexual organ, sexuality, gender?  Not at all clear.  It seems to me that Durrell is describing, or alluding to, some kind of severe sexual trauma, highly personal in nature and possibly foreshadowed, as Richard Pine has pointed out, by the author?s claim that he could remember his own bloody birth.  This, however, is highly unlikely (to say the least) and seems closer to some morbid fantasy?a fantasy concealed or beautified by Durrell?s bewitching prose and poetry.

I?ll make the extreme statement that Durrell?s world, viewed internally from the author?s perspective (if we may), seems nightmarish.  In which case, having a few glasses of wine, chased down with a marc or two, might be welcome relief.

Bruce





> On Nov 27, 2015, at 1:20 PM, Rick Schoff <frederick.schoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I too have often wondered about the striking phrase "deeply wounded in one's sex." Before drawing any conclusion, I chalked its inscrutability in part to the limits of what one could say in print back in that era.
> 
> My original curiosity about the use of alcohol - I had in mind its property of being a depressant, and also its tendency to potentially set fire to the more primitive aspects of personality. Someone's comment about it being an antidote to the boredom LD professed made sense. Thinking back to Darley's (and Blanford's) ineffectuality, in my own reads I had made the assumption LD was making fun of himself and a certain Britishness. As always, this begs the question of an author's intent versus the effects his writing creates, the conscious versus the unconscious aspects, where in lies the mystery and the magic.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net <mailto:bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>> wrote:
> James,
> 
> You make good points.  I especially like the ones on Hemingway.  I?d forgotten the references in the early short stories and The Sun Also Rises.  So I think you?re right about those examples of drinking as concealment or substitutes for openness.
> 
> Those examples, however, led to excess in real life, and there?s not much argument about the dangers of excessive drinking and its consequences.  The latter half of Hemingway?s life proves that.  A. E. Hotchner describes that sad state quite well in Papa (1966).  So too Lillian Ross?s famous profile of EH in the New Yorker (1950).  David Green describes the convivial aspects of drinking.  I don?t think this is what is at the root(s) of Hemingway?s or Durrell?s drinking problems, each for similar and different reasons, of course.  Re Durrell, I lean towards Richard Pine?s analysis of the author?s ?madness.?  Sexuality has something to do with this, perhaps ambiguous sexuality, which was probably EH?s problem.  A lot has been written about Papa?s dubious ?sexuality.?  Re Durrell?s sexuality, just what does it mean to be ?deeply wounded in [one?s] sex??  Incest may also have something to do with all of this.
> 
> Masculinity in the Quartet, as you point out, is a troubling affair and perhaps a source of anxiety for Durrell.  So, women get the titles of two novels, a homosexual gets one, and a man, of sorts, has one.  Mannish Justine is a dominant figure, so too bisexual Clea.  Darley is ineffectual.  Pursewarden is assertive but suicidal.  Mountolive is used.  Nessim is as blurred as the image he projects on frosted glass.  His brother Narouz is muscular, hairy, and malformed.  Men just don?t come off very well in the Quartet.  Women are the real power-brokers, Melissa the honeybee the most appealing (because she?s a clich??).  If this is how Durrell saw the world, then he had problems.  No wonder he had to beat them down in his private life.  He felt threatened (Eve gave him a black eye).  Perhaps this is why fictional Leila gets smallpox.
> 
> As to Edward Said, I haven?t come across any of his commentary on Durrell?s Alexandria, but what you say he said certainly sounds like his view of Western Orientalism and its sexual fantasies about the East.  Was that the main attraction for Durrell?s readership in the late 50s?  Maybe.  A reviewer saw Justine as ?sex hot.?  But sex in the Quartet is a very nebulous affair done in soft focus.  It?s not explicit like Mailer?s ?Time of Her Time? (1959).  What got me drunk as an adolescent was Durrell?s language (the soft focus) and the experience it evoked.  I guess Said would say this proves his point.  Well, Durrell had his fantasy about Alexandria and allowed me to share it.  So what?  He could have done the same if he?d situated the novels in Athens, as he once planned.  To repeat myself, I am not fond of Edward Said?s notion of ?Orientalism.?
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 26, 2015, at 8:02 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com <mailto:james.d.gifford at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Bruce,
>> 
>>> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?
>> 
>> I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).
>> 
>>> That is not what I?m
>>> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.
>> 
>> That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place.  There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc...  There are an abundance of reasons.
>> 
>> We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.
>> 
>>> That is, a kind of
>>> ?manliness.?
>> 
>> The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.
>> 
>> In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just don't work well.
>> 
>>> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....
>> 
>> I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling."  Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible).  I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with...  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in important ways.  But how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.
>> 
>> I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?).  I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that calls out as desirable.
>> 
>> A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels" might be productive for this.
>> 
>> All best,
>> James

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From wilded at hotmail.com  Sat Nov 28 11:28:39 2015
From: wilded at hotmail.com (david wilde)
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 12:28:39 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>,
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>,
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>,
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>,
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>,
	<5655D869.5040800@gmail.com>,
	<8DA02DE7-300C-4C9C-8468-909E42C276A1@earthlink.net>,
	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>,
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>,
	<D45DC669-36CF-4DB2-816A-48E796198980@earthlink.net>,
	<56572D2C.9070606@gmail.com>,
	<D75BE08E-65D6-45F1-A5A4-DF3D3BD0B840@earthlink.net>,
	<CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BAY175-W1469D19B524766E5E02A19D8020@phx.gbl>

I understood/understand this remark refers to the well-known story of Parsifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal).  David Wilde

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003FP9HTCDate: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 16:20:49 -0500
From: frederick.schoff at gmail.com
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] Alcoholism


I too have often wondered about the striking phrase "deeply wounded in one's sex." Before drawing any conclusion, I chalked its inscrutability in part to the limits of what one could say in print back in that era.
My original curiosity about the use of alcohol - I had in mind its property of being a depressant, and also its tendency to potentially set fire to the more primitive aspects of personality. Someone's comment about it being an antidote to the boredom LD professed made sense. Thinking back to Darley's (and Blanford's) ineffectuality, in my own reads I had made the assumption LD was making fun of himself and a certain Britishness. As always, this begs the question of an author's intent versus the effects his writing creates, the conscious versus the unconscious aspects, where in lies the mystery and the magic.
On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
James,
You make good points.  I especially like the ones on Hemingway.  I?d forgotten the references in the early short stories and The Sun Also Rises.  So I think you?re right about those examples of drinking as concealment or substitutes for openness.
Those examples, however, led to excess in real life, and there?s not much argument about the dangers of excessive drinking and its consequences.  The latter half of Hemingway?s life proves that.  A. E. Hotchner describes that sad state quite well in Papa (1966).  So too Lillian Ross?s famous profile of EH in the New Yorker (1950).  David Green describes the convivial aspects of drinking.  I don?t think this is what is at the root(s) of Hemingway?s or Durrell?s drinking problems, each for similar and different reasons, of course.  Re Durrell, I lean towards Richard Pine?s analysis of the author?s ?madness.?  Sexuality has something to do with this, perhaps ambiguous sexuality, which was probably EH?s problem.  A lot has been written about Papa?s dubious ?sexuality.?  Re Durrell?s sexuality, just what does it mean to be ?deeply wounded in [one?s] sex??  Incest may also have something to do with all of this.
Masculinity in the Quartet, as you point out, is a troubling affair and perhaps a source of anxiety for Durrell.  So, women get the titles of two novels, a homosexual gets one, and a man, of sorts, has one.  Mannish Justine is a dominant figure, so too bisexual Clea.  Darley is ineffectual.  Pursewarden is assertive but suicidal.  Mountolive is used.  Nessim is as blurred as the image he projects on frosted glass.  His brother Narouz is muscular, hairy, and malformed.  Men just don?t come off very well in the Quartet.  Women are the real power-brokers, Melissa the honeybee the most appealing (because she?s a clich??).  If this is how Durrell saw the world, then he had problems.  No wonder he had to beat them down in his private life.  He felt threatened (Eve gave him a black eye).  Perhaps this is why fictional Leila gets smallpox.
As to Edward Said, I haven?t come across any of his commentary on Durrell?s Alexandria, but what you say he said certainly sounds like his view of Western Orientalism and its sexual fantasies about the East.  Was that the main attraction for Durrell?s readership in the late 50s?  Maybe.  A reviewer saw Justine as ?sex hot.?  But sex in the Quartet is a very nebulous affair done in soft focus.  It?s not explicit like Mailer?s ?Time of Her Time? (1959).  What got me drunk as an adolescent was Durrell?s language (the soft focus) and the experience it evoked.  I guess Said would say this proves his point.  Well, Durrell had his fantasy about Alexandria and allowed me to share it.  So what?  He could have done the same if he?d situated the novels in Athens, as he once planned.  To repeat myself, I am not fond of Edward Said?s notion of ?Orientalism.?
Bruce



On Nov 26, 2015, at 8:02 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bruce,

I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?

I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).

That is not what I?m
talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.

That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place.  There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc...  There are an abundance of reasons.

We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.

That is, a kind of
?manliness.?

The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.

In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just don't work well.

Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....

I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling."  Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible).  I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with...  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in important ways.  But how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.

I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?).  I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that calls out as desirable.

A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels" might be productive for this.

All best,
James


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From frederick.schoff at gmail.com  Sun Nov 29 06:19:46 2015
From: frederick.schoff at gmail.com (Frederick Schoff)
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2015 09:19:46 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
In-Reply-To: <BAY175-W1469D19B524766E5E02A19D8020@phx.gbl>
References: <W362199153158091447836311@atl4wm05pod3>
	<5C8804EA-CE97-4594-A51B-65C2368288A3@earthlink.net>
	<BLU182-W9467676B8CA8C80BAE76FFCC180@phx.gbl>
	<56537292.9040403@gmail.com>
	<CAByv6Tdbw8uOzW3MKGWWejTJo_f-2qcTmG16P8QYuc1uNsjHeA@mail.gmail.com>
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	<82A5BFEB-65CF-4FD3-8141-D7446C41E4B3@marcpiel.fr>
	<56566943.10604@gmail.com>
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	<56572D2C.9070606@gmail.com>
	<D75BE08E-65D6-45F1-A5A4-DF3D3BD0B840@earthlink.net>
	<CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
	<BAY175-W1469D19B524766E5E02A19D8020@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <9B59A216-A139-4E55-9A9A-C84A8947FB8B@gmail.com>


Thanks, David! 

A quick relook into the beginning of 'Justine' reminded me that the same phrase is used to describe Melissa....


> On Nov 28, 2015, at 2:28 PM, david wilde <wilded at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I understood/understand this remark refers to the well-known story of Parsifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal).  David Wilde
> 
> Amazon
> http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003FP9HTC
> Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 16:20:49 -0500
> From: frederick.schoff at gmail.com
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Alcoholism
> 
> 
> I too have often wondered about the striking phrase "deeply wounded in one's sex." Before drawing any conclusion, I chalked its inscrutability in part to the limits of what one could say in print back in that era.
> 
> My original curiosity about the use of alcohol - I had in mind its property of being a depressant, and also its tendency to potentially set fire to the more primitive aspects of personality. Someone's comment about it being an antidote to the boredom LD professed made sense. Thinking back to Darley's (and Blanford's) ineffectuality, in my own reads I had made the assumption LD was making fun of himself and a certain Britishness. As always, this begs the question of an author's intent versus the effects his writing creates, the conscious versus the unconscious aspects, where in lies the mystery and the magic.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> James,
> 
> You make good points.  I especially like the ones on Hemingway.  I?d forgotten the references in the early short stories and The Sun Also Rises.  So I think you?re right about those examples of drinking as concealment or substitutes for openness.
> 
> Those examples, however, led to excess in real life, and there?s not much argument about the dangers of excessive drinking and its consequences.  The latter half of Hemingway?s life proves that.  A. E. Hotchner describes that sad state quite well in Papa (1966).  So too Lillian Ross?s famous profile of EH in the New Yorker (1950).  David Green describes the convivial aspects of drinking.  I don?t think this is what is at the root(s) of Hemingway?s or Durrell?s drinking problems, each for similar and different reasons, of course.  Re Durrell, I lean towards Richard Pine?s analysis of the author?s ?madness.?  Sexuality has something to do with this, perhaps ambiguous sexuality, which was probably EH?s problem.  A lot has been written about Papa?s dubious ?sexuality.?  Re Durrell?s sexuality, just what does it mean to be ?deeply wounded in [one?s] sex??  Incest may also have something to do with all of this.
> 
> Masculinity in the Quartet, as you point out, is a troubling affair and perhaps a source of anxiety for Durrell.  So, women get the titles of two novels, a homosexual gets one, and a man, of sorts, has one.  Mannish Justine is a dominant figure, so too bisexual Clea.  Darley is ineffectual.  Pursewarden is assertive but suicidal.  Mountolive is used.  Nessim is as blurred as the image he projects on frosted glass.  His brother Narouz is muscular, hairy, and malformed.  Men just don?t come off very well in the Quartet.  Women are the real power-brokers, Melissa the honeybee the most appealing (because she?s a clich??).  If this is how Durrell saw the world, then he had problems.  No wonder he had to beat them down in his private life.  He felt threatened (Eve gave him a black eye).  Perhaps this is why fictional Leila gets smallpox.
> 
> As to Edward Said, I haven?t come across any of his commentary on Durrell?s Alexandria, but what you say he said certainly sounds like his view of Western Orientalism and its sexual fantasies about the East.  Was that the main attraction for Durrell?s readership in the late 50s?  Maybe.  A reviewer saw Justine as ?sex hot.?  But sex in the Quartet is a very nebulous affair done in soft focus.  It?s not explicit like Mailer?s ?Time of Her Time? (1959).  What got me drunk as an adolescent was Durrell?s language (the soft focus) and the experience it evoked.  I guess Said would say this proves his point.  Well, Durrell had his fantasy about Alexandria and allowed me to share it.  So what?  He could have done the same if he?d situated the novels in Athens, as he once planned.  To repeat myself, I am not fond of Edward Said?s notion of ?Orientalism.?
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 26, 2015, at 8:02 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bruce,
> 
> I?m not sure what you mean by ?an ethical issue.?
> 
> I'm writing a small piece on Malcolm Lowry at the moment, and that's probably shaping my thoughts.  He was, by all accounts, an alcoholic of the first order, and this shapes the works in many ways (much of it deliberate on his part).  However, in the critical work, there's still often a tendency to look on his drinking as if it were a moral failing -- a failing, certainly, but I'm skeptical of the ethical or moral tone that comes up, even if it prompted other ethical issues.  The last time I taught /Under the Volcano/ I looked through a handful of books on alcoholism and literature, and this seemed widespread.  There might be more recent work that defies this high proof "puritan" spirit {sorry}, but I haven't looked carefully enough to really say (I like booze, but not that much!).
> 
> That is not what I?m
> talking about, rather /what/ drove Durrell to alcoholism.
> 
> That is, indeed, a different matter.  I tend to hesitate over those speculations since it's all too easy to say "an unhappy childhood, and Durrell didn't undergo psychoanalysis or other ways of interrogating those personal demons.  He did write of the fracture between "mother" India and "father" England as motivating some of his concerns, but as David points out, the drinking was also very much a part of his time and place.  There are the geo-political and personal stresses too of his life from 1939 through 1957 that I'd suspect anyone would struggle under, and later Claude's death, failed relationships, Sappho's death, etc...  There are an abundance of reasons.
> 
> We might look to Durrell's biggest "toper" though: Pursewarden.  Durrell gives him personal and professional reasons to drink, but I'd tend to resist easy biographical essentialisms there too.
> 
> That is, a kind of
> ?manliness.?
> 
> The issue of masculinity hasn't really been explored in Durrell, but like Hemingway or Henry Miller, I tend to see it as ironical.  Durrell makes his alter ego in /Pied Piper of Lovers/ tall (and racially Anglo-Indian, a term he applied culturally to himself).  There's also a masculine economy at work with women as currency of exchange between men (Darley - Nessim [via Melissa & Justine]), but at the same time there are the disruptions of that masculine heteronormativity with Melissa cast as the bee carrying pollen, Justine as the active agent in the first book of the Quartet (not Nessim), and so forth.
> 
> In contrast, what of "manliness" and the most manly fellows in Durrell's works?  Keats comes to mind, but not in relation to drink.  Most of the others, much like Hemingway in some respects, prove to be deeply wounded in their masculine identity and out to recuperate themselves in ways that just don't work well.
> 
> Drink in Hemingway is excess, to wit....
> 
> I'm thinking of things like Jake in /The Sun Also Rises/ or alcohol across /in our time/.  Getting "tight" stands in for what's unspoken. "Have a drink" fairly explicitly displaces "tell me what you're feeling."  Jake drinks rather than talk about his war wound, and Brett does the same rather than discuss her sexual desires, yet both say they don't want to drink anymore (meaning they want a resolution that isn't possible).  I think of drink in the "Ag" story of /In Our Time/ (chapter 10 of the 1924 edition) where "it was understood" but not discussed, and where the young man so much like Hemingway restores his wounded masculinity by proving himself on a "shop girl," and in doing so contracts gonorrhea.  The point, I think, for Hemingway is that such "manliness" doesn't do manly men any good nor the women they're with...  After all, not all men in patriarchy get to be patriarchs, and even then such a position limits the subject position in important ways.  But how to talk about that in his time and place?  I see Durrell subverting the same norms in similar ways, but maybe with more anxiety.
> 
> I think Said suggests in one of his lectures that readers would want to see themselves as inhabiting the exciting sexual adventures of Durrell's Alexandrian colonials (or am I thinking of Vassanji's lecture in Ottawa?).  I must admit I simply don't see it that way and have never felt the desire to be like Darley -- he seems to be doing rather poorly in many respects...  I certainly don't see him or Nessim as "manly" in any way that calls out as desirable.
> 
> A close reading of a poem like "Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels" might be productive for this.
> 
> All best,
> James
> 
> 
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> 
> 
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Sun Nov 29 12:10:12 2015
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2015 12:10:12 -0800
Subject: [ilds] Alcoholism
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	<CAByv6Tc2mXp+aVQCt0z34QLKbvCKi=Wf-f=RJNrrmYjeSKCj5Q@mail.gmail.com>
	<BAY175-W1469D19B524766E5E02A19D8020@phx.gbl>
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Hello all,

In haste before a book launch tonight...

I've always struggled a bit over the mythical elements of the Quartet. 
In one sense, gesturing to the Fisher King goes to the roots of 
Durrell's kinship with the High Modernists, and I see a lot of struggle 
with Eliot's influence across the books of the Quartet (discussed on 
this listserv in the past as well).  Carol Peirce probably did more to 
elucidate that side of things than anyone else.

At the same time, we can't forget that "sex" also means gender, and the 
books had the "bisexual love" modified to "modern love" late in the 
game, and the continuation of the epigram from Freud in his letters to 
Fliess for /Justine/ reads "As for bisexuality, I'm sure you are right."

Wounded in one's sex nicely carries across all those potential meanings, 
linking the Fisher King to bisexuality, to physical traumas -- all are 
key to the Quartet, and Durrell seems to have learned his lesson from 
the "newly god-like" Keats emerging from his shower: Negative Capability 
(in the real Keats' sense of the term).

Best,
James

On 2015-11-28 11:28 AM, david wilde wrote:
> I understood/understand this remark refers to the well-known story of
> Parsifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_von_Eschenbach>,
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal).  David Wilde
>
> Amazon
> http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003FP9HTC