BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Drinkers like me, and Adrian Chiles.

Quit drinking?

But I'm no quitter.

I'm a regular reader of The Guardian, and remember Emine Saner's review of the television program, which was published in August. It seems to me I'd made note of it in this space, but apparently not.

In my own case, a lifetime of drinking far more weekly units of alcohol than recommended by Great Britain's National Health Service has resulted in an unreliable memory, and I don't dispute it.

There'll be no deep thinking from me, at least not today. We turn instead to a British television personality, Adrian Chiles. 

Drinkers Like Me – Adrian Chiles review: the complicated, conflicted world of boozing, by Emine Saner (The Guardian)

The broadcaster’s film about ‘nice, regular drinking’ soon becomes an analysis of much more, from his physical and mental health to society’s difficult relationship with alcohol

Adrian Chiles has a drinking problem. Or maybe he has an Adrian Chiles problem, alleviated by drinking. Anyway, he’s definitely not an alcoholic, he says in his exploration of “nice, regular drinking” in Drinkers Like Me – Adrian Chiles (BBC Two).

Looking back on the past week, which included a wine dinner at La Chasse on Monday, I've had two glasses of vino and maybe eight or nine beers. Or ten. I don't drink every single day, and often go two or three days between drinks, but it still averages out to a couple drinks daily.

I've made a conscious effort for quite some time to try keeping my consumption of beer to the lower ABV ranges, and all in all, I drink far less than during my peak Public House period, now more than ten years ago.

At 58, it's absolutely inconceivable to me that I could still put away as much beer (and sometimes wine) as I did then. A 12-pack of Sierra Nevada during an NBA doubleheader on Sunday afternoon?

It hurts just thinking about it, so what does all this mean?

I've no clue. However, here is a year's-end summary of Chiles' moderation efforts, written by the reduced drinker himself.

What happened next? ‘Drinking for the sake of drinking. It’s madness’: how Adrian Chiles cut back on booze, by Adrian Chiles (The Guardian)

He used to drink an awful lot – and now drinks a lot less. It is well worth the effort in the long run, he says

 ... The documentary I made this year, Drinkers Like Me, definitely changed me. I used to drink an awful lot and hardly ever talk about it. Now I drink a lot less, but talk about it all the time. I can’t go for a quiet pint without someone having a word with me. This could involve a gentle expression of concern that I have fallen off the wagon (I never went on the wagon). Or, more often, a long sort-of confessional about that person’s drinking habits. Everyone seems to have a story about alcohol, about how much they drink or used to drink or how much their families drank or whatever. And this year we were even told that no amount of alcohol is good for our health.

His conclusion.

Moderating, as opposed to abstaining, is seen as a bit of cop out. Trust me, it isn’t. It requires constant thought; hundreds of decisions have to be made every week. But it is worth it: I am a bit lighter, a bit calmer, a bit healthier and what I do drink, I enjoy more.

For me, alcohol is like fire, water, religion, politics and many other things: it’s not the thing itself, it’s what you do with it. It can do you and others harm, or a little good. I think I am managing to edge from one to the other.

Under the Volcano ... and an inquiry into the life and death of Malcolm Lowry.

And now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal.
-- Malcolm Lowry, in Under the Volcano

In 2015, I had the pleasure of reading the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, a substantial portion of which takes place in Mexico. At present, I'm wading through Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer, another hefty novel centering on Mexico, and also writing a column about mezcal for Food & Dining Magazine.

It was only a matter of time until an old fascination came back to seize me: Under the Volcano, the legendary novel by Malcolm Lowry, telling the story of the doomed, self-destructive Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, stumbling drunkenly through his last day on earth, amid the Day of the Dead, in the shadow of two Mexican volcanoes.

Booze flows through Lowry’s writing. It’s a way of escape, as much as the sea voyages and plane journeys he wrote about. In Medieval times, a definition of possession included drunkenness, and Lowry was well aware of drink’s shamanic association:

“The agonies of the drunkard find their most accurate poetic analogue in the agonies of the mystic who has abused his powers.”

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this 1976 documentary film about Malcolm Lowry, arguably the English-speaking literary world's most infamous alcoholic, is that Richard Burton, himself a legendary drinker, was both willing and eager to act as conduit for Lowry's voice.

This feature-length Oscar®-nominated documentary focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano. But while Lowry fought a winning battle with words, he lost his battle with alcohol. Shot on location in four countries, the film combines photographs, readings by Richard Burton from the novel and interviews with the people who loved and hated Lowry, to create a vivid portrait of the man.

The excellent short essay at Dangerous Minds offers this disclaimer:

(The documentary) does create a vivid portrait, but one under the shadow of Lowry’s last wife Marjorie Bonner, and it was not until after her death, in 1988, and the publication of Gordon Bowker’s top class biography, Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry, that a complete picture of Lowry came to fruition.

D.T. Max's 2007 essay in The New Yorker provides more information on Lowry's "mysterious demise."

Margerie at first told friends that there had been a suicide note but then said that there wasn’t. The lack of a note surprised them. Alcohol would hardly have stopped his pen—he wrote while drunk all the time. And he was someone for whom written words accompanied nearly every moment of life; he even scrawled observations as he sat drunk in bars. Some four hundred jotted notes to Margerie are in the British Columbia archive—messages from El Leon to Miss Hartebeeste. “Lowry was always saying, ‘Make notes,’ “ Markson told me. Lowry’s despair was always part theatre; and, for such a person, self-destruction practically demanded documentation.

To me, the film's early 1970s footage of England, New York City, Mexico and Vancouver is what resonates. The dive bars in the Big Apple? Those are pre-gentrification. The Mexican urban vistas wouldn't have been altered much from Lowry's period of residence prior to WWII. The "beer parlor" in Vancouver -- well, who among us knew there was such a thing?

Having read Kunstler's forecast for 2017, it's obvious that we're headed back ... toward Lowry, not away from him.

But look at that sunlight there, look at the way it falls through the window. What beauty can compare with that of a cantina in the early morning? This cantina has been open all night and so cannot compare with the beauty of one which has just opened, which most of them do in a couple of hours, and not even the opening gates of heaven could mean as much to me as the iron screen that rolls up with a crash, as the unpadlocked, jostling, jalousies which admit those whose souls tremble with the drinks they unsteadily carry to their lips. All mystery, all assuagement of hope, all disappointment is here, beyond those swinging doors. "And do you see that old woman from Tarasco over there playing dominoes?" he asked aloud. But his glance implied: how, unless you drink, can you understand the beauty of an old woman from Tarasco who plays dominoes at seven o’clock in the morning?

"New Albany-Floyd County school board candidates answer questions at forum."

I'l readily concede that yet another Democratic-sponsored event at the Roadhouse (why?) didn't seem the best of times for me on a Thursday night, with so many bottles of booze enticingly reposing over there in yonder liquor cabinet.

I'm voting for Randy Smith. Beyond that, you're on your own.

New Albany-Floyd County school board candidates answer questions at forum, by Jerod Clapp (News and Tribune)

The at-large candidates for school board in New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated schools answered questions at a forum Thursday night. They talked about infrastructure issues, stances on vouchers and much more.

NEW ALBANY — With more people in the audience than a typical school board meeting, most of the candidates running for seats in the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. got a chance to answer questions at a forum Thursday.

Among the issues discussed, candidates voiced their thoughts on the upcoming referendum for the district, long-range infrastructure plans and staff retention.

The life and death of Charles Kennedy.

Kennedy in 1987 (photo credit to the Washington Post)

In 1988, I was fortunate to land my first and only "real" corporate job abstracting periodicals at the now long-defunct UMI Data-Courier in Louisville. I lived off my evening package store pay and bankrolled as much as I could to make what became a six-month stay in Europe in 1989.

During my tenure at UMI Data Courier, it transpired that our British and other English language publications from abroad (The Economist, The Spectator, New Statesman, even Punch) were increasingly shunted onto my stack of work by fellow staffers after it became known that the new guy rather enjoyed reading them, and more importantly, wasn’t troubled by the English essayist’s general habit of hiding the topic sentence somewhere other than the opening paragraph. We had quotas, you know.

Charles Kennedy, who recently died and has been eulogized as a somewhat tragic, Shakespearean political personage, would have been a mere stripling during the period of my abstracting career. We were just about the same age, after all, but he was already a Member of Parliament, destined for greater things -- some of which Kennedy achieved, as with his iconic speech in opposition to the UK joining George W. Bush's war against Iraq.

In the end, Kennedy was felled by drink, and I don't make the citation flippantly. Following are three links that tell Kennedy's story.

The Charles Kennedy Story, by Alex Hunt & Brian Wheeler (BBC News)

Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy led his party to their best ever election result in 2005 but, battling a drink problem, had to resign a few months later. After his death at the age of 55, here's a look back at the life and career of one of the most influential politicians of his generation.

Kennedy's alcohol problems can be seen in a larger context.

Charles Kennedy’s alcohol problem was also Britain’s alcohol problem, by Hadley Freeman (The Guardian)

For the past decade, Charles Kennedy was treated by too many people as little more than a joke. This is, and was, in no way a reflection on the reportedly delightful man himself or his excellent abilities as a politician. It might not be so comfortable for some to remember now, seeing as the coverage of his very sad and all too early death has been focusing on Kennedy’s many strengths, with much emphasis being placed on his stand against the Iraq war.

Yet until yesterday, I hadn’t heard much mention of this for 10 years. Instead, whenever Kennedy’s name has been invoked on topical news shows – by half-assed comedians, by too many members of the public – it has been followed by a joking reference to his drinking problem.

Note the title of this 1999 profile of Kennedy, written as he was about to assume leadership of the Liberal Democrats. His brief period living in Bloomington, Indiana during a time when Indiana University enjoyed a nationwide reputation as a "party" school makes me wonder whether any friends ever crossed paths with him.

Profile: Charles Kennedy - The liberal party animal, by Donald MacIntyre (The Independent)

(Kennedy) was president of the university union before winning a Fulbright scholarship to Indiana University where he went to do to a PhD - and teach - political rhetoric after a spell working as a seasonal radio reporter in the BBC Highland office in Inverness. He was at Indiana University when the Liberal/SDP Alliance candidacy for the seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye came up. Among several people he consulted was his former colleague - and later the BBC's hugely respected Scottish political editor - the late Kenny Macintyre, who had been something of a mentor and had urged him to have a crack at it. His father Ian toured the constituency, the largest in Britain - "two million acres of mountain glen and moors" as Kennedy junior described it - with his son, playing the fiddle to attract the more apolitical to meetings. At one, in Skye, a wag urged him not to prolong his speech shouting: "Aye, we know who you are, now come on Ian give us another tune."

Kennedy won the election at the tender age of 23. He was only 55 when he died.

Perhaps sometimes, being precocious isn't the best design for life.

ON THE AVENUES: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

ON THE AVENUES: “The Drinker” (A Book Review).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

A respectable 40-year-old businessman returns home from a normal workday to discover the maid has neglected to replace the floor mat by the front door. Annoyed at the omission, he tracks mud into the entryway, is mildly chided by his wife and becomes uncharacteristically angered.

A short time later, he suddenly recalls the existence of a long-forgotten, stale and vinegary bottle of red wine stashed in the cellar. Although a virtual teetotaler, a glass of this rancid wine helps considerably to take the edge off his day, and he feels far better. The floor mat spat now forgotten, he gifts his wife with money to buy herself something special, and goes to bed.

Next thing we know, his permanent residence is an insane asylum.

---

For Americans of a certain age, to read Hans Fallada’s novel The Drinker is to immediately recall the Simpsons episode wherein a flashback depicts Barney’s very first drink of beer, as offered to him by Homer. With one swallow, the well-groomed and sober young preppie morphs immediately into a swollen, drunken slob, forever destined for dissolution, and hilariously so.

A similar downward trajectory awaits Fallada’s main character, Herr Sommer – and there is very little humorous about an amazingly detailed and poetically rendered descent into lunacy. However, the story of The Drinker doesn’t end with a gripping, frightening novel, because the circumstances surrounding Fallada’s work of fiction hardly were imaginary at the time of writing.

Hans Fallada’s real name was Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen. He was born in Greifswald, Germany in 1893, and died in Berlin in 1947. In 1944, with World War II still raging throughout the continent, Fallada managed to write The Drinker in two weeks flat while incarcerated … in an insane asylum. It would have been an incredible feat anytime and anywhere, much less one undertaken secretively in an institution run by the Nazis, who obviously were unbound by the inhibitions of Hippocratic oaths.

In fact, Fallada’s entire life was not easy. An severe injury to his head during adolescence seemed to have changed him, and it may have directly led to lifelong mental health issues, suicide attempts and drug addiction, and yet, in that strange way sometimes characterizing an artist’s process of creation, Fallada became an exceptionally gifted writer prone to frenetic periods of work activity followed by elongated spirals into madness.

During the 1920s, Fallada married and enjoyed an extended period of domestic harmony and commercial success, including a worldwide readership for his novel, Little Man, What Now? But a collision course with Hitler’s totalitarian regime was inevitable owing to its inclination to channel all manifestations of art into approved support for the regime.

The storm clouds gathered, and yet Fallada chose to remain in Germany and not seek exile, spending the war years walking a tightrope -- neither an overt collaborator, nor seeking involvement with the resistance. From our vantage point these many years later, cohabitation with repression does not seem the ideal path for a writer with only a fragile grip on sanity, who already was peering into the abyss with clocklike frequency.

Fallada tried waiting it out. Perhaps the pressures hastened his demise, but maybe he was just doomed, anyway -- just like the rest of us.

---

Does Fallada’s wartime work as a writer represent acquiescence with the various Goebbels party lines, or was he endeavoring to write between them? The debate persists to this day. Was The Drinker allegorical, suggesting the common man’s struggle to cope with oppression? Or, was it an autobiographical work so meticulously researched from personal experience that larger themes aren’t really necessary?

Of course, it’s up to the reader.

Getting through The Drinker is like watching a cat torture a mouse before killing it. As the pages turn, Herr Sommer’s layers of dysfunction are unsparingly peeled away by the first-person narrative, and the deep-seated rot exposed. It becomes clear that none of the character’s many difficulties originate with that first drink of wine; rather, the alcohol merely delineates them.

Sommer already has started losing grip of his business, and growing apart from his wife, whom he resents for being efficient when he is anything but. The lies and self-deceptions merely require readily available fuel to combust into elephantine self-destructive proportions, and bottles of schnapps and cognac consumed with the speed that most of us reserve for ice water after a hot afternoon in the garden couldn’t be better for ignition.

When describing the weeks-long binge embarked upon by Sommer, Fallada’s prose is hazy and replete with confusion, self-loathing and false bravado, but when he lands in jail and begins drying out, matters become quite clinical. Eventually transferred to the asylum to receive the “help” he quite clearly needs, the inmate offers a portrait of daily life there that is detached, detailed and thoroughly horrendous.

By novel’s end, has anyone been saved?

It’s unlikely. There are no Hollywood happy endings to The Drinker, a novel that I recommend unreservedly, although not without certain caveats: If you’ve ever wondered whether your most recent drink was one too many, owing not to ordinary intoxication but to extraordinary curiosity as to whether there might come a point when the altered state persists even after the alcohol’s all gone … well, Fallada’s tale will not be an easy read for you.

It wasn’t easy for me. So, is it Happy Hour yet?

AB-InBev guilty of exploiting Native Americans AND Bud Light Lime-A-Rita.

I recall a minor episode in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," wherein the mob mistakes a poet named Cinna for a conspirator of the same name.

Cinna the Poet. Truly, my name is Cinna.

First Citizen. Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

Cinna the Poet. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

Fourth Citizen. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

In like fashion, there's no need to tear Anheuser-Busch InBev (let's not omit the multinational connection, Nicholas) to pieces solely on one persuasive count of exploiting Native Americans. Just tear AB-InBev over its bad beer.

A Battle With the Brewers, by Nicholas D. Kristof (New York Times)

After seeing Anheuser-Busch’s devastating exploitation of American Indians, I’m done with its beer.

The human toll is evident here in Whiteclay: men and women staggering on the street, or passed out, whispers of girls traded for alcohol. The town has a population of about 10 people, but it sells more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually — because it is the main channel through which alcohol illegally enters the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation a few steps away ...

... For now, Pine Ridge’s alcohol problem is matched only by Anheuser-Busch’s greed problem. Brewers market beers with bucolic country scenes, but the image I now associate with Budweiser is of a child with fetal alcohol syndrome.

That’s why I’ll pass on a Bud, and I hope you’ll join me.