My theory of the tortured artist is to be an artist, you don’t have to be tortured. But it helps.
I am in graduate school. Because I have nothing better to do, I wanted to prove my thesis. As research I observed some people and asked some questions about drinking and drugs and art. All of the people who appear in this study are of legal drinking age. Also I have changed their names. Also everything below is made up.
I began by reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was hard, difficult, and took me a couple hours. And then, to confirm my data, I watched the movie. Then I watched Pineapple Express because it’s hilarious and also about drugs.
But let’s start with Hemingway. People take you more seriously if you open with Hemingway. Professors love Hemingway. Throughout my life, I have heard Hemingway referred to as an “alcoholic,” which qualifies him as a “tortured artist.” I should admit that I know more about alcoholism than I do about Hemingway.
Alcoholism is “bad.” Hemingway is “good.” The ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in one’s head is a sign of intelligence.
One theory says that Hemingway would not have been Hemingway without alcohol. The Hemingway we know is so thoroughly dripping with ethanol that it’s hard to imagine he wasn’t wrung out and poured into a frat boy’s red Solo cup when he died. On the other hand, we don’t know. What if Hemingway could have written more and better without alcohol? Maybe he would have written even more books, better books. Maybe he would have become the first woman President. Who knows.
And who, exactly, would want to read Hunter S. Thompson stripped of drugs? Actually, what would be left of Hunter S. Thompson if he were stripped of drugs? Maybe he would be a house-husband with a collection of novelty ties from his children and nothing interesting to say.
When I started applying for my MFA, I started asking questions about being a tortured artist. I grew up in a nice house with loving, understanding parents and a consistently kind older sister. I’ve only been on morphine once in my life, and I threw up. (That’s maybe a short story but not a novel.) I get migraines from loud music. I have allergies. I had whooping cough. In short, I am never going to be Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson. My soul is tortured by nothing worse than congested sinuses. So either I can’t be a writer or I have to believe that one can do without the drugs. But let’s be honest. I bolster my confidence by asking myself questions like, “If in order to write anything worth reading, you have to become a depraved human being—should you really be a writer?”
You don’t have to answer. I know it’s a personal question.
The answer is yes.
And just to prove it, I researched a typical graduate student party:
“But I just find Carolyn Kizer to be so much more political than Carolyn Forché. Forché is, essentially, concerned with the private sphere of domesticity.” –John
“I really think if their poetry fornicated you would have a perfect word-baby of the political and the personal.” –Andrew
“Andrew! DRINK DRINK DRINK FLIP YOUR CUP FLIP YOUR CUP!” –Susie
Andrew chugs a beer and flips his cup in 7.9 seconds, winning the boat race for…
“TEAM AWESOME! …so as I was saying, I find that both Kizer and Forché transgress geopolitical boundaries…pass the lighter?” –Andrew
Hours later, like all good writers and graduate students, John takes notes of his social interactions.
“eating marmosets is like having sex with fruit
I need new shoelaces white no.39
the anemones the sea anemones
having fruit is like sexing marmosets”
John has passed out.
“I’m feeling inspired tonight.” –Andrew
“But we’re going dancing! Are you still coming dancing!?” –Susie
“Yeah. I’ll just drink a little bit but not get too wasted and then go home and write when I’m buzzed. I write really well when I’m buzzed.”—Andrew
After a few more drinks at the bar:
“Andrew! I LOVE THIS SONG!”
“Hang on. I’m texting myself a poem.”
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Original art by Ilyse Magy.
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14 responses
Your words about Hemingway are more informed than you purport to know. Towards the end of his life, Hemingway literally only took alcohol baths, i.e. with rubbing alcohol (ethanol). And Hemingway’s youngest son Gregory DID in fact turn into a woman (Gloria Hemingway), although not the first woman president (he drank like dad).
Although I’m not sure I agree that opening with Hemingway gets you any immediate cred. Maybe with writing teachers. With literature professors, the first person to invoke the great Hem is generally received with an obligatory that’s-so-passe-here-in-academia eyeroll.
This writer has a keen eye for amusing detail and her essay made me laugh out loud! She pulled me right into the setting and the chaotic reality of people who think they think clearly when loaded! I especially liked her description of herself as a non-tortured (?) writer with possibilities. She has plenty (of possibilities, not torture). Hope she publishes more with Funny Women!
Do professors love Hemingway? I kind of think not. Him on funny:
“I wouldn’t kid Our Lord if her were on the cross. But I would attempt a joke if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.”
Compelling to finish once I got started since I had no idea where this was going. It is a great poser of a question “Would artists, writers, etc. be better without stimulants or did they need just a tad more to raise the bar?” Or do I?
Or should I just read more from people who aren’t tormented but should be or could be or will never be? I think I should just keep reading.
Why I think Hemingway might have done okay in the writing dept? According to his memoir, A Moveable Feast, this was his general order of business on most days:
1. Write
2. Drink
It works much better than the other way around. I’d love to see that texted poem though.
How come no one ever asks if Pearl Buck would have been Pearl Buck if she’d been drunk instead of sober? Would her earth have been bad instead of good? Would she have disappeared deep into China on a saki binge? Yet another question to ponder.
art + illness = illness
Excellent point, I really enjoyed the column!
I know this is a discussion about literature but I would like to bring in a less literary artist… Al Franken, the Comedian, Actor, writer, and now Senator, who wrote in his book “Oh, The Things I Know” that (and I paraphrase) he went through a period of depression in his life where he felt inept and unable to be productive and live his life. He discovered an Anti-depressant drug that allowed him to enjoy life and go on to be the productive, funny, politically active, actor/senator we love (or hate) today.
Can we agree that an artist can be too tortured, or tortured in the wrong way? Some artists may need to become tortured to have something to say while some may need relief from torture to contribute.
true
That’s pretty funny. I didn’t know women could be funny. You should maybe try your hand at writing.
How funny! I too was pulled in by this writing, and feel as though I have a sense of this writer as she sat musing about classmates and cliches. We’ve all been around drunk colleagues, and people who are struck by their own brilliance. And yes, drunk MFA students really do talk like that.
I do wonder, though, Miss Margaret, if you were perhaps on something when you wrote this? A stimulant perhaps? A legal one? A whole-milk vanilla latte? I think so.
Keep up the writing. You’re going to go far, lady.
Winnie the Pooh didn’t need to suffer for his art.
He sums up the whole writing thing in a nutshell saying…
Well I sort of made it up ,
it comes to me sometimes.
Ah said rabbit
who never let things come to him
but always went and fetched them.
If we do suffer, it is never in silence!
very well written. I’m just tossing up now if I go for the drink or drugs cause I’m on a budget. I want something my biographer can sink their teeth into. Is kudos a drink?
Clapton produced wussy music once he quit heroin. So, did Lou Reed…
Pearl Buck…well, it was good for junior high.
In all seriousness, though, I think that the issue is, no, you don’t have to be zonked to be creative. But, there are reasons why people get zonked, and usually it is because of some tortured aspect of their life. I don’t think it’s causal, but it is symptomatic.
Totally off the point of your article but you mentioned Hemingway and I can’t resist.
I think the problem is that people fixate on the end of Hemingway’s life as an indicator of the pathway of his writing.
The truth is, his insight into the taste of alcohols and the feelings they evoke are throughout his stories (Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, the woman in The Hills like White Elephants) but these are not the markings of an alcoholic but rather of a man who understood the role alcohol played in life. The impact it had on the moment and the escapism that all people could find within it – whether they be in bar or at the cusp of a traumatic breakup.
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