KEY POINTS:
Yesterday, I began writing the column the editor had requested about the long-term effects of global warming on the New Zealand tourism industry.
Before I could really get my teeth into it, I found myself having a couple of drinks at an inner-city Korean restaurant and then heading
home to polish off a two-litre bottle of bourbon and the liquid contents of a Warehouse lava lamp.
I am not sure, how, why or even when this binge began, but I know that technically it came to an end once I resumed writing my column and then blacked out.
This behaviour must all appear a little extreme to the average reader, but apparently we creative types need to do this kind of thing once in a while; these "releases" keep our minds sharp.
When I came to, rather than continue with my global warming piece, I opted to get on the internet and research how many of the literary geniuses of the past had been afflicted by similar drinking behaviour.
To my surprise, not one had mixed Coruba with Lava lamp oil, but it wasn't long before I was taking solace from the fact that many giants in literature have turned to the bottle to get themselves through - the link between creativity and abnormal drinking behaviour was plain to see.
The list of abusers is long and impressive - Dylan Thomas, Capote, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Shaw and of course the tragic American hero Ernest Hemingway. The newest biography of Hemingway by Kenneth Lynn deals very forthrightly with his drinking: "Hemingway had the same capacity for alcohol that his characters did, and in The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley drank three martinis apiece before lunch, which was accompanied by five or six bottles of red wine."
Apparently, in 1939 Hemingway was ordered to cut down on his drinking. He tried to hold himself to three Scotches before dinner, but he couldn't do it, and in 1940 he began breakfasting on tea and gin and swigging absinthe, whiskey, vodka and wine at various times during the day.
Not be outdone, it has been said that while Capote was writing In Cold Blood, he would have a double martini before lunch, another with lunch and a stinger afterward. He could stay off the booze for three or four months, and then he would be back on it.
Some experts believe that writers can be monomaniacal about their work, obsessional about rewriting, insecure about any success they might have, paranoid about editors and publishers and riddled with anxiety about their talent.
This I can relate to. Often at the Herald on Sunday, my columns have been edited prior to my even submitting them. I find this infuriating, and more often than not, it has driven me to skulling the cooking sherry and its partner in crime, the balsamic vinegar, which sits just to the left of the oven. Whatever the reason for this compulsive behaviour, my research has unearthed the fact that most of the great writers in history have drunk to excess and as a result have experienced blackouts. I made a quick trip to an inner-city bottle store via Auckland Library and stumbled across some astonishing documents.
The following is the original manuscripts to some of the world's greatest novels: "It was the best of times, it was the wo...
Clearly, Dickens's mid-tequila binge had blacked out before he could complete the paragraph, let alone the sentence. It was 17 lines later that he had come to and was able to continue writing. A clever sub-editor had to step in and complete the opening paragraph on his behalf.
Consider this example from Hemingway's 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea: "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
Then Hemingway blacked out and didn't pick the novel up again until around page 37. Once again, a clever sub-editor stepped in and saved the day, and the reader was never the wiser.
Who can forget this great blackout. "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since...
Those, of course, were the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald before he blacked out while writing The Great Gatsby in 1925.
More examples of these phenomena can be found in a book I plan on releasing after Easter entitled Great Writers - The Blackout Years.
Incidentally, this book has a water resistant back cover that you can tear off and use as a drink coaster.
