William Faullkner

We get a little more light on Faulkner's drinking problem.

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Whisky and writing intertwine throughout Faulkner’s life, feeding each other, blocking each other, never allowing him to achieve any stability, always acting out a salute to other men he feared he could not resemble. By the time he was fifty the end seemed inevitable. There are only so many times one can dry out in a clinic and fall drunk off a horse. It was actually something of a miracle that Faulkner outlived his dear mother for a year before one more courageous binge, one more salute to the truly brave, as he saw it, did him in, aged sixty-five.

-- Tim Parks

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A Writing Tip

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A sober writer is a pretentious writer

Choose your drug: alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms… Any one of these will make your writing better, especially if you’re writing something personal.

Writing is only interesting to other people if it is deeply revealing. Your brain has a self defense mechanism which prevents you from divulging too much of yourself to perfect strangers. Fortunately, this mechanism can be easily bypassed with chemicals.

If you’re not terrified to click the little green publish button, drink more and rewrite.

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Ash?

Oh, oh, still no Ash. I was thinking she had caught on my practicing of trapping them inside on these summer days, and that she has stayed away because of this, as she has done at times in summers past. In fact, Sammy was here this morning, but then left, which seems an even clearer case of preventive strategy. But I have not seem Ash all day.

Hamilton and Jefferson

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Hamilton may have believed that Jefferson’s contributions to the nation paled beside his own and not just because of his own work on behalf of the Constitution. Besides handling Washington’s correspondence, Hamilton had spent five years in combat, exposing himself to enemy fire on many occasions. Jefferson had never set foot on a battlefield. Elected Virginia governor in 1779, he found the job irksome and wanted to resign, prompting Edmund Pendleton to complain to Madison, “It is a little cowardly to quit our posts in a bustling time.”

When the turncoat Benedict Arnold burned and pillaged Richmond in January 1781, the capital stood defenceless despite warnings from Washington to Jefferson. Governor Jefferson fled in the early hours, giving up Richmond without a shot and allowing munitions and government records to fall into British hands.

In June, in Jefferson’s waning hours as governor, the British pounced on Charlottesville and almost captured the Virginia Assembly gathered there. Then, when word came that a British cavalry was approaching Monticello, Jefferson scrambled off on horseback into the woods. He was accused of dereliction of duty and neglecting the transfer of power to his successor. Though the Virginia Assembly exonerated him of any wrongdoing.

Hamilton wasn’t the only one who suspected Jefferson of cowardice. He later wrote mockingly that when real danger appeared, “the governor of the ancient dominion dwindled into the poor, timid philosopher and, instead of rallying his brave countrymen, he fled for his safety from a few light-horsemen and shamefully abandoned his trust!”

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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Daily Fun

tatiana

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